this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
19 points (100.0% liked)

Cooking

7549 readers
456 users here now

Lemmy

Welcome to LW Cooking, a community for discussing all things related to food and cooking! We want this to be a place for members to feel safe to discuss and share everything they love about the culinary arts. Please feel free to take part and help our community grow!

Taken a nice photo of your creation? We highly encourage sharing with our friends over at [email protected].


Posts in this community must be food/cooking related and must have one of the "tags" below in the title.

We would like the use and number of tags to grow organically. For now, feel free to use a tag that isn't listed if you think it makes sense to do so. We are encouraging using tags to help organize and make browsing easier. As time goes on and users get used to tagging, we may be more strict but for now please use your best judgement. We will ask you to add a tag if you forget and we reserve the right to remove posts that aren't tagged after a time.

TAGS:

FORMAT:

[QUESTION] What are your favorite spices to use in soups?

Other Cooking Communities:

[email protected] - Lemmy.world's home for BBQ.

[email protected] - Showcasing your best culinary creations.

[email protected] - All things sous vide precision cooking.

[email protected] - Celebrating Korean cuisine!


While posting and commenting in this community, you must abide by the Lemmy.World Terms of Service: https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/

  1. Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, or advocating violence will be removed.
  2. Be civil: disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally insult others.
  3. Spam, self promotion, trolling, and bots are not allowed
  4. Shitposts and memes are allowed until they prove to be a problem.

Failure to follow these guidelines will result in your post/comment being removed and/or more severe actions. All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users. We ask that the users report any comment or post that violates the rules, and to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I had this dish in Denver. The bar tended to sell mexican food, but I am not sure if this is specifically a mexican dish.

The actual meal itself (onion, coconut etc) I am not looking for specifically. I haven’t been able to find a recipe where crispy rice in general is made in a cast iron pan.

The bottom and sides were crispy, and the middle was very creamy rice. Does anyone have a recipe or suggestions?

all 18 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorched_rice

Personally, I really like the version from Iran. They (and I'm sure there is regional variation in it) mix some yogurt into the rice, which seems similar to the dish you had.

Plain, white rice will brown a little where it contacts the pan. Adding a fat like oil or butter will conduct heat better so you get a thicker layer of browning. It's basically frying. The addition of an acid increases the rate of caramelization, so yogurt helps with that.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Paella is generally supposed to have a little bit of crispyness to it and is cooked in a large wok like cast iron pan IIRC, might be a helpful starting point

[–] [email protected] 3 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

thanks! i’ll check it out

[–] [email protected] 4 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

In a paella it’s called socarrat and is considered the best bit of the dish.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 19 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Cast iron is excellent for delivering a lot of consistent heat - I use it for searing steaks and greatly prefer it to a grill.

If you want to make it extremely crispy you'll want to make sure the precooked rice is relatively dry (instead of 1 cup to 1.75 or 1.5 cups of water use 1.25 or 1 - make sure the rice is still edibly hydrated as some rice variants take different water ratios).

It's possible incorporating sugar into the rice (i.e. coconut milk instead of water) will help it crisp faster but with the approach I'll suggest below there's a danger of burning the sugar which will end up tasting like shit - you may want to reserve coconut milk to partway through the process.

With your rice and stuff for the middle prepared (the middle can be whatever you want like (maybe start with a recipe for a Thai/Indian curry? Or some mix of poblanos, cheese, and meat/beans for more Mexican flavors?)) Mix some rice into the middle for consistency and set both aside and prepare your pan. Everything in this middle mixture should be pre-cooked and food safe, if you have meat make sure it has been cooked to a safe temperature.

You should set your stove to high and place your cast iron pan on it to warm for a few minutes, how long will depend on your cook surface but put some oil into the pan and wait until it's shimmering/wicked fucking hot - consider using an oil with a high smoke point. Keep an oven mit in reach to manipulate the pan.

Once it's piping fucking hot pour in the rice that's still separate and use cookware (metal or wooden- not plastic - maybe silicon if you really trust it's an actual heat resistant silicon) and press it into the pan including up the edges - once that's done drizzle oil around the edge of the pan so that those edges have extra help crisping up. Do not touch, do not stir, do not disturb but do watch it like a hawk.

Once it starts to fry a bit short of your desired firmity pour in the middle and let the mixture cook through. If it's too moist you can always transfer it to the oven to dry out but you're essentially just warming the central mixture and trying to get that yummy flavor to soak into the crispy layer.

It's always fun to improvise in the kitchen!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 19 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 18 hours ago

No worries - cooking is super fun I hope you make something delicious.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

Maybe look at recipes for dolsot bibimbap. When it’s cooked in a stone bowl it develops the same bottom crust.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 18 hours ago

Chef Edward Lee has a recipe for simulating that crust using a cast iron skillet.

He's all about mixing influences from his Korean heritage and Kentucky upbringing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 19 hours ago

awesome thanks

[–] [email protected] 3 points 19 hours ago

That sounds line it might be a paella, which is a spanish dish. Try looking up recipes for paella and see if that sounds like what you're after.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

You don't know the name of the place? From the looks of it, it might be some sort of Risotto.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 19 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

It's a take on sticky coconut sticky rice. This isn't a very authentic process to making it, so I can't speak to the quality of instructions, but it hits the right notes: soak the rice, infused with coconut milk, spice and cover

Cooking it on a cast iron skillet will be tricky to avoid burning if you're not super familiar with controlling the heat. You'll probably burn it the first few tries instead of just making it crispy, but give it a shot.

Edit: oops forgot the link