Broccoli au Gratin Rice and Roni

Fellow food friend Debi Wayland of Life Currents posted a recipe for a homemade rice-a-roni on a site called Bon-Bon. The link is here if you want to read her original post.  As I had just made one a while back I checked out her vegetarian version after looking at her stunning photograph of a creamy rice-a-roni laced with broccoli. So I made this dish using Debi's recipe as a guideline with a couple of changes.

The Broccoli au Gratin Rice and Roni was delicious. My husband who is not as big a rice fan as I am, told me at least three times how much he loved this dish and he's excited there's left overs for him to devour this evening while I venture out for a rare night out.

Here then is my version of this wonderful dish:

• 1 cup white rice
• 1/3 cup cut spaghetti
• 2 cups chicken broth
• 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• 1 cup chopped broccoli - fairly small
• 3 tbsp. butter
• 1 1/2 tsp. dried parsley flakes - crushed
• 1/4 tsp. granulated garlic
• 1/4 tsp. salt (I used kosher salt)
• 1/8 tsp. black pepper (I used a fine table grind)

1. In a wide skillet that has a lid, melt the butter. When the butter sizzles, add in the cut spaghetti. Keep stirring until it starts to brown a bit.
2. Turn the heat down to medium low and add in the rice and dried herbs. Stir and slowly add in the chicken broth.
3. Turn the heat up until it comes to a bubble, lid it, turn the heat down to low and cook for 10 minutes. Then add in the broccoli and stir.
4. Cook for about 5 minutes more and fold in the cheese until blended.  Your rice should be perfectly cooked and ready to plate.

I hope you enjoy this as much as we did. I served mine with fried chicken tenders (chicken recipe to be another post). A most economical side dish as it contains both starch and vegetable.

The rice dish cost $3.64 to make. Although I did not cook all the chicken tenders, if you did that recipe would come out to $8.31 including the oil. So the total for a family of four $11.95, $2.98 per person. You could feed more people especially if you have young children.