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Simple Butter Cilantro Rice Recipe

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This Simple Butter Cilantro Rice is anything but boring and makes a flavorful side dish for Cinco de Mayo or any weeknight meal!

Simple Butter Cilantro Rice gets a ton of flavor from a simple grocery store ingredient! This easy side dish is perfect for Cinco de Mayo or any weeknight meal!

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I am always on the look out for simple side dishes. I have roasted every vegetable known to man, cooked potatoes a thousand ways to Sunday and made every boxed pasta, rice and noodle dish in my grocery store. But there is just something about a simple bowl of rice that is comforting and homey. With butter and one grocery store ingredient, you can make a flavorful rice dish that will be welcome addition to your recipe rotation!

Simple Butter Cilantro Rice Recipe

Simple Butter Cilantro Rice gets a ton of flavor from a simple grocery store ingredient! This easy side dish is perfect for Cinco de Mayo or any weeknight meal!

How to Make Cilantro Rice

Basic long grain rice gets amped up with butter (you can never go wrong with butter) and the addition of recaito. Recaito – it may be called sofrito even though there are no tomatoes or culantro cooking base – is a puree of green peppers, onions, garlic, culantro, peppers and spices. It is a flavorful blend that can be added to soups, stews, salsas, marinades, chicken dishes and rice. There are a ton of recipes on the web to make homemade recaito or you can find it in the Hispanic/Latin area of your grocery store. (This is the brand of recaito I buyaff link)

If you look closely, you can see the spices and bits of garlic and onion that give this rice tons of flavor with very little effort! That is no-fuss food if I’ve ever seen it 🙂

Simple Butter Cilantro Rice gets a ton of flavor from a simple grocery store ingredient! This easy side dish is perfect for Cinco de Mayo or any weeknight meal!

Sweet readers: I am not Latin cuisine expert. So, if you are wondering like I was, culantro is not the same as cilantro. Culantro is an entirely different herb and part of the recaito cooking base. I really like the fresh flavor of cilantro, so I also serve fresh cilantro to sprinkle on top of this rice. Since Culantro Cilantro Rice sounded silly, I went with the simpler title of Butter Cilantro Rice.

My friend, Maria, who so kindly sends me rice con gandules & salchichas and homemade meat stuffed potato balls, gave me a jar of this culantro cooking base. I thought it sounded like a great way to flavor rice and here we are 🙂

So, whatever you call it, just call it delicious!

Simple Butter Cilantro Rice is an easy side dish that packs a ton of flavor with almost zero effort!

This Butter Cilantro Rice is a meal time work horse:

Simple and flavorful, this Butter Cilantro Rice recipe is the perfect side dish for your Cinco de Mayo menu or any weeknight meal!

If you try this recipe, please comment and rate it below, I love hearing from you!

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Simple Butter Cilantro Rice in w light blue bowl with two forks

Simple Butter Cilantro Rice Recipe


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  • Author: Melissa Riker
  • Total Time: 30 minutes
  • Yield: 3 cups cooked rice 1x

Description

Simple Butter Cilantro Rice gets a ton of flavor from a simple grocery store ingredient! This easy side dish is perfect for Cinco de Mayo or any weeknight meal!


Ingredients

Scale
  • 1 1/2 cups water or chicken stock
  • 1/2 cup recaito culantro cooking base see notes
  • 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
  • 1 cup long grain rice (not instant rice)
  • Salt & pepper to taste
  • Fresh cilantro for garnish

Instructions

  1. In a medium sauce pan, bring water (or stock) to a boil.
  2. Reduce heat to low and stir in rice, recaito culantro cooking base, butter and salt/pepper.
  3. Simmer for about 20 minutes or until the water is absorbed.
  4. Fluff rice with a fork and spoon into serving bowl.
  5. Garnish with fresh cilantro.

Notes

*I found the green recaito culantro cooking base in the Hispanic/Latin section of my grocery store.

  • Prep Time: 10 minutes
  • Cook Time: 20 minutes
  • Category: side
  • Method: stovetop
  • Cuisine: Mexican

Nutrition

  • Serving Size: 1/2 cup
  • Calories: 166
  • Sugar: 0.2 g
  • Sodium: 243.9 mg
  • Fat: 6.1 g
  • Trans Fat:
  • Carbohydrates: 24.8 g
  • Protein: 2.4 g
  • Cholesterol: 15.3 mg
Simple and flavorful, this Butter Cilantro Rice recipe is the perfect side dish for your Cinco de Mayo menu or any weeknight meal!

More Simple Side Dishes!

Super simple recipe for classic Crispy Roasted Potatoes!
Cheesy baked black beans and rice - great side dish for Cinco de Mayo
Easy and delicious, these Oven Roasted Butter Garlic Carrots are done in 30 minutes! Bet you can't eat just one!
Beautifully roasted Spring vegetables bursting with lemon!

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Its easy! I will show you how.

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