A rice side dish can be a nice alternative to potatoes or pasta.  Early in our home and cooking life, we used to make a lot of boxed rice dishes.  Not that there is anything wrong with rice-from-the-box, but a couple of years ago we decided to cut preservatives out of our diet where possible and try to cook more dishes from scratch.  The boxed side dishes were among the first to go.  We thought we might miss the flavor from those little seasoning packets that come with boxed rice, but then we found this recipe, which tastes way better than the stuff from the box.  We found the recipe on this awesome site, which has tons of great (non-sponsored) product reviews, happy hour recommendations and lots of fun content to browse, especially when you’re working killing some free time.  Back to the rice — the ingredients are simple:  rice, chicken broth, olive oil, butter, onion, garlic and salt — but they turn plain old white rice into a rich and flavorful side dish.  For obvious reasons, we refer to this dish as “The Good Rice.”

We usually make a half recipe and have made a few changes to the original version.  Start by chopping about a fourth to a half of an onion.  Then mince a clove or two of garlic.

Heat about half a tablespoon each of butter and olive oil over medium heat.

Stir the onions with a generous pinch of salt in with the butter and olive oil.

Cook the onion over medium-high heat until the onion is soft — about 5 minutes.  Then add the garlic and cook until fragrant — about 1 minute.

Add the rice and stir everything together…

…then cook until the rice browns a bit — about 5 minutes.  Stir often so the rice doesn’t stick and get too brown.

Add the chicken broth and increase the heat to bring it to a boil.

Then turn the heat down to low and cook (covered) until most of the liquid evaporates — about 10-14 minutes.

On this night, we served the rice with pork tenderloin and snow peas.  We garnished the pork with green onion and added some to the rice for a little extra flavor and crunch.  Not only is this rice dish good, it goes well with lots of different proteins, it doesn’t take too much more time to make than the boxed variety, it’s cheaper, and the best part — its ingredients are simple and preservative-free.