Spanish Rice with Beans

If you’re looking for a hearty one-pot meal that is tasty & cheap, you can’t beat Spanish Rice with Beans. It is very much a “use what you have dish” and can be adjusted to personal taste easily.

The ‘one-pot’ in this instance is a skillet or wide frying pan – preferably with a cover. If you have a paella pan then this is the time to use it.

Basic Ingredients

Garlic, Onion, Beans, Rice, Stock, tinned Tomatoes or Peppers, Oregano, smoked Paprika, Chilli flakes, kosher salt & black pepper. Optionally a handful of olives chopped and parsley to serve.

In mine I added a few slices of an eating Chorizo and diced some processed pork sausage (the Polony kind), bacon would work but in its native form this is a veggie dish.

Method

Dice a small onion and mince a garlic clove. Add to the skillet with a drizzle of oil (or spray 1Cal) and sweat the onion & garlic.

Add the meat, all the herbs, & spices.

Next add the beans. I used a can of baked beans (extra tomatoey flavour and some liquid), and a can of Pinto beans, but any will work – butter beans, broad beans, even green beans cut into 1/2” lengths.

Sun-dried or flame grilled tomatoes should come next but I decided to use a jar of grilled red peppers, brine and all, to give a slightly different flavour and sweetness.

As the liquid bubbles add a cup of long grain rice and combine thoroughly.

Now add a cup of stock (any will do) and blend in.

Reduce the heat to minimum, cover and leave to simmer. Stirring every 5 minutes or so to keep everything moving.

When the rice is soft its time to serve or allow to cool, box and refrigerate for up to 4 days. This dish makes a great supper but also a healthy ‘lunch on the go’.

It’s a SYN

Per serving I estimate the SYN value to be 7 if using sausages. Optimising with Heck reduces the SYN to 2 and potentially free food if you omit the olives as I did, & use Linda McCartney Sausages and 1cal spray oil.

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Tags: Diet, Easy, Fakeaway, Free Foods, Slimming World, Spain, Tasty