by Texas Homesteader ~ 

I make rice often. It’s inexpensive and lends itself to many different flavors of almost any meal. But I’ve found a way to make rice even more flavorful and nutritious versus cooking it in plain water. And it’s FREE!

Use Whatcha Got is what I always say! Check out this Homestead Hack. 

Running Out Of Homemade Broth For Cooking

One day as I was making my meal plan that included rice, I discovered I was out of Homemade Broth.

I pondered ways to make sure my plain rice was flavorful enough for RancherMan’s meat-n-potatoes palate without using homemade broth.

Homemade Broths Used In My Homestead Kitchen

You see, I typically have homemade broth in my pantry because I’m constantly using broth in my homestead kitchen. I’m often making & using:

Slow Cooker Chicken Broth

(Pressure-Canning Instructions For Bone Broth)

Instant Pot Bone Broth

Turkey Broth With Thanksgiving Turkey Bones

But with no broth in the pantry for this meal what will I do? Maybe just cook my rice with plain water? Hummm…

Don’t worry, to add more flavor to the rice I won’t have to resort to using plain ole water. I’ll use the flavorful vegetable juice previously drained from cans of veggies that I’ve saved in the fridge for just such occasion.

How I Save Free Vegetable Broth Over Several Days

In the past I’d always hated that the excess flavorful juice from a can of veggies was often just poured down the sink.

So now when I’m serving canned vegetables with our supper I’ll drain the juice from each of the cans of veggies into a jar to save it in the refrigerator for later.

Then I store the jar of saved vegetable broth in the refrigerator to use in my cooking. That juice has extra flavors and nutrients from the veggies contained in the can. And it typically already has sufficient salt too.

So there’s really no need to add additional seasonings at all unless you just want specific herbs, etc.

Using Free Vegetable Broth To Cook Rice

When I’m cooking rice I’ll add 1 part rice to 2 parts liquid. So today I measured out the reserved vegetable broth and my rice.

Then I chopped some onion and sautéed it with the rinsed rice in just a tiny amount of bacon grease until the onion was translucent and the rice was lightly browned.

Now that my rice & onions are ready I just pour in my reserved veggie juice and cook my rice to delicious perfection. 

It’s much more flavorful than rice cooked in plain water and receives RancherMan’s seal of approval.

Favorite Rice Dishes

Rice is pretty cheap. And it’s easy to flavor it specifically to accompany whatever entrée I’m making. So it’s common for me to choose rice as a side dish. RancherMan enjoys the various rice dishes I serve.

Cilantro-Lime Rice – a favorite when garden cilantro is growing well.

Texas styled Spanish Rice – when we’re having Tex-Mex for supper.

Buttered Sage Rice – when I’m serving pork chops or roast.

RancherMan likes the flavor and texture of white rice just fine, but he really loves the more intense nutty flavor and firmer texture of brown rice best.

Add to that fact that it’s also healthier and that means I’m often cooking up brown rice instead to accompany our supper. 

But no matter what kind of rice or how I’m serving it, cooking rice with free vegetable broth makes for a tastier dish.

Reducing Food Waste While Saving Money

I love that this small incredibly simple act reduces food waste since the juice in the can of vegetables is not just poured down the sink and wasted.

There are many advantages to using vegetable broth drained from cans of vegetables:

Adds nutrition to my rice over cooking it in plain water.

Adds flavor from the canned vegetable it was drained from.

Reduces my food budget, I don’t have to buy vegetable broth.

It reduces food waste & it’s FREE!

My own vegetable broth. It’s easy, free and delicious.

Use Whatcha Got!

~TxH~

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