Rice cooked in broth with sliced chorizo, tomato, oregano and cumin, and peas if you want them. The fat that comes out of the chorizo in the first two minutes is what flavours the whole pot.
Start with the chorizo and keep the fat
Two minutes in hot oil, stirring, before anything else goes near the pot. The chorizo browns a little and renders out a quantity of orange fat.
Do not pour that off. It is carrying the paprika, garlic and cumin that were inside the sausage, and it distributes them through four cups of liquid and every grain of rice that follows. A rice with chorizo cooked in clean oil tastes of rice with sausage in it. This tastes of chorizo throughout.
The rice that was missing
Until this rewrite, the ingredient list on this page contained onion, garlic, chorizo, oil, broth, tomato sauce, oregano, cumin, peas, salt and pepper. It did not contain rice.
The method asks for it in the third step. Anyone shopping from the list came home without the main ingredient of a dish named after it.
The quantity is two cups, and it is worth saying where that comes from, because the recipe itself never gave one. What it does state is the liquid: four cups of broth and 240 ml of tomato sauce, for six people. Colombian rice is cooked at roughly two parts liquid to one part rice, which puts it at two cups.
Cover it and leave it alone
Once it boils and the heat goes low, the lid goes on for thirty minutes. That is where the cooking happens, and the steam under the lid is doing it.
Every time the lid comes off, that steam escapes and the rice at the top stops cooking. Resist checking.
Tomato sauce, not fresh tomato
Two hundred and forty millilitres of tomato sauce goes in with the liquid, which is a considerable amount and gives the rice its colour.
It is already cooked and already concentrated, which is why it can go in at the same time as the broth rather than needing its own stage. Fresh tomato would need cooking down first and would add water the ratio has not accounted for.
More rice
- Arroz primavera — with vegetables instead.
- Colombian white rice — the plain one.
- Paisa rice — the one from Antioquia.
- Red rice — the other tomato rice.
Rice with Chorizo FAQ
Two cups. The original recipe never said, which is a strange gap in a dish named after rice, and the figure comes from what the recipe does state: four cups of liquid plus 240 ml of tomato sauce for six servings, at the usual Colombian ratio of two parts liquid to one part rice. Judge the pot by the grain all the same.
No. That fat is the recipe. Two minutes over medium-high heat renders enough to turn the oil orange, and it carries the paprika and garlic from the sausage into every grain of rice.
Colombian chorizo, which is fresh rather than cured: a soft sausage that needs cooking, seasoned with garlic and cumin. Mexican chorizo is closer than Spanish, which is dry-cured and behaves differently in a pot.
Two minutes before the end, because they are already cooked. If yours are raw, the recipe's own note says to add them with the rice instead so they cook through.
Yes, and with chorizo in the pot it matters less than usual. The sausage fat, the tomato sauce, the oregano and the cumin are doing most of the flavouring.
Because the steam trapped under the lid is what cooks the top layer of rice. Lifting the lid lets it out and leaves the grains at the top hard.
📖 Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 cups Rice (derived from the 4 cups of liquid: see the notes)
- 4 chorizo (sliced)
- 2 tablespoons oil
- ½ onion (sliced)
- 2 cloves garlic (minced)
- 4 cups water or chicken broth
- 240 ml tomato sauce
- ½ teaspoon dried oregano
- ½ teaspoon ground cumin
- 2 cups peas (optional)
- Salt and pepper
Notas
Instructions
- Heat the oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Cook the chorizo, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes.
- Add the onion and the garlic and cook until the onion turns translucent.
- Add the water or broth, the tomato sauce, the oregano and the cumin. Stir well, season with pepper, and add the rice.
- Bring it to a boil, then turn the heat down to low.
- Cover and cook for 30 minutes more, or until the rice is tender.
- Add the peas and cook for two minutes more.
- Serve immediately.
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