BACHELOR COOKING: Quick Rice Supper

I call this “Bachelor Cooking” because it is a recipe I have developed that can be made fast, cheap, with not much more than a kettle or microwave and with almost no cooking ability. Tailor made for bachelors, busy people-on-the-go and dorm room living.

Thus I present my:

Quick Rice Supper


INGREDIENTS:

Cup-A-Soup (whatever flavour you like best)

Minute Rice (the type you cook in less than 5 minutes. **)

Water

Salt, margarine (optional)

(**Note: You can use the rice in a bag, but you have to boil it separately in a pot for at least 20 minutes and that defeats the purpose of it being “quick”)




EQUIPMENT:

Kettle and/or Microwave

Spoon

Microwaveable Dish
 
Lid, plate, Plastic Wrap, basically something to cover the Dish with  (doesn’t need to be microwaveable)


DIRECTIONS:

 Open envelope of Cup-A-Soup (your favourite flavour) and dump into microwaveable cup/dish/mug (I add a bunch of salt at this time)

 Pour in boiled water from kettle; stir with spoon

 Immediately add “Minute Rice” and stir (CAUTION: Rice will expand 6-10 times it’s size)


  Put Rice, water, soup mixture into microwave. Set for 30 seconds. It will be different times for different microwaves. You'll have to WATCH IT. As soon as you see it start bubbling, TAKE IT OUT


 IMMEDIATELY put lid on it. Lid can be anything that fits relatively securely. Sometimes I use a saucer or Glad Wrap.
 (CAUTION: LEAVE A LITTLE HOLE TO ALLOW STEAM TO ESCAPE)


 Let it sit covered from 5 minutes to 30 minutes or whatever. (I let mine sit about 15 minutes)

KEEP IN MIND: The longer it sits, the softer and BIGGER the Rice gets. The Rice will grow quite a bit and continue to soak up more of the soup the longer it sits.

Take lid off, stir and eat.
(Adjust to what works for you.)

NOTE: You don’t have to use kettle AND microwave. One or the Other will do. But the HOTTER the water, the LESS time the rice will have to sit. A kettle gets the water boiled hotter, but I use both because an extra ‘zap’ from the microwave means I don’t have to wait as long for it


 CLEAN UP: If lid doesn’t get soup on it, it is just wet from STEAM. Rinse with HOT WATER and it’s clean and ready to go again.

FYI : I’ve been timed at 120 seconds prep time and then 5 minutes it sits before eating. That’s potentially 7 minutes from start to eating a hot rice dish.
 
If you were to buy a microwave rice dish already made from the store, it would cost about $2 – $4 (or even more). Doing it this way works out to about 70-80 cents per dish. (Fast, cheap, and mmmm, mmmm good.)

FYI – I use “Spring Vegetable” Cup-A-Soup
Try this out and don’t forget to come back and leave a COMMENT about how it worked or if/how you changed it to make it uniquely your own, or what your favourite Cup-A-Soup flavour to use with this is.