This is the quick version of yellow rice. Nothing gets fried first: the onion, garlic, oil and turmeric all go straight into the cooking liquid, the rice follows, and thirty-five minutes later it is done.
The Colombian touch is the potato, cooked in with the rice rather than served beside it. It is optional, and it changes what the dish is.
Not the same as Caribbean yellow rice
Yellow rice exists all over Latin America and the versions are genuinely different, so it is worth knowing which one you are making.
- Dominican and Puerto Rican — built on a sofrito fried at the start, coloured with achiote or annatto, often with olives, capers or pigeon peas in it. Deeper flavour, more work.
- Spanish — coloured with real saffron, which is a different spice at a completely different price.
- This Colombian one — nothing fried, turmeric for colour, and diced potato cooked in with the grains.
If you were expecting the Caribbean kind, this will taste plainer than you remember. That is the trade for it taking half the time.
The yellow: turmeric, not saffron
The recipe offers a teaspoon of ground saffron or turmeric, and in practice it means turmeric.
In Colombia, the yellow powder sold as azafrán molido is a colouring, usually turmeric-based. It is cheap and it is used by the spoonful. Spanish saffron is the dried stigmas of a crocus, the most expensive spice there is, and it is used by the pinch. A teaspoon of it in this pot would cost more than everything else in the recipe put together and would taste bitter and faintly medicinal.
So buy turmeric. The colour is identical and the flavour is what this dish is built around.
About that pound of potato
A pound of diced potato against one cup of dry rice is a lot, and it is worth deciding on purpose rather than by accident.
With all of it in, there is more potato than rice in the pot and the dish becomes a meal, filling enough to eat with nothing but a salad. That is presumably why it is marked optional.
Half a pound keeps it recognisably a rice dish with potato through it. None at all leaves you with a plain yellow rice to put beside something else. All three are fine; they are just three different dishes.
Cut the dice small, around a centimetre, so the potato is cooked by the time the rice is.
Use broth, not water
The recipe allows either, and this is the one place where the choice really shows.
Because nothing is fried at the start, there is no browning anywhere in this dish to build flavour from. Everything the rice tastes of comes out of the liquid it absorbs. Water gives you coloured rice; chicken broth gives you something worth eating on its own.
Two rules for the texture
Get the ratio right. Two and a half cups of liquid to one cup of rice. More than that and the grains go soft and collapse into each other.
Leave the lid alone. Once the surface liquid has gone and the heat is down, the rice finishes in trapped steam. Every time the lid comes off, that steam leaves, and the top layer ends up hard while the bottom overcooks. Twenty minutes without looking.
Do not stir it during that stage either. Stirring rice while it steams breaks the grains and releases starch, and starch is what makes rice gluey.
What to do with it
As a side it goes with anything grilled or roasted: chicken, pork chops, beef, fish. As a base it takes peas, carrot, diced chicken or leftover beef, which turns it into a one-pot meal in the same thirty-five minutes.
Other Colombian rice dishes
- Colombian white rice — the same technique without the colour, and the base of everything.
- Paisa rice — the fridge-clearing one from Medellín.
- Arroz a la valenciana — chicken, mushrooms and white wine, for when you want something bigger.
- Bandeja paisa — where a plain rice ends up on a Colombian plate.
Colombian Yellow Rice FAQ
Two things. It has diced potato cooked in with the rice, which the Caribbean versions do not. And there is no sofrito: the onion and garlic go straight into the cooking liquid instead of being fried first, which is why it takes thirty-five minutes rather than an hour. Dominican and Puerto Rican yellow rice both start with a fried base and achiote.
Turmeric, in practice. The recipe says a teaspoon of ground saffron or turmeric, and in Colombia what is sold as azafrán molido is a yellow colouring powder, not the stigmas of a crocus. A teaspoon of real Spanish saffron would cost more than the whole meal and taste medicinal. Turmeric gives the same colour.
Yes, that is what the recipe says, and it is worth knowing what it does. A pound of potato against a cup of rice means more potato than rice by volume, so the dish stops being a side and becomes a meal. The potato is marked optional for exactly that reason. Use half if you want it to stay a side dish.
Broth, if you have it. This is a short ingredient list with nothing fried at the start, so there is no browning anywhere to build flavour. The cooking liquid is doing almost all of the work, and swapping water for broth is the single biggest improvement available here.
Get the ratio right and leave the lid alone. Two and a half cups of liquid to one cup of rice, boiled uncovered until the surface liquid has gone, then covered on low heat for twenty minutes. Lifting the lid releases the steam that is finishing the top layer, and stirring at that stage breaks the grains.
It is a side for almost anything grilled or roasted: chicken, pork, beef, fish. With the potato in it, it holds its own as a light main with a salad. Peas, carrot, or diced chicken stirred in turn it into a one-pot meal.
📖 Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 cup white rice
- 2½ cups water or chicken broth (broth is worth it; it is the single biggest difference in the finished dish)
- 1 onion, finely chopped (a regular onion; the original calls it cebolla de huevo)
- Oil
- 1 teaspoon ground turmeric, or Colombian ground azafrán (for the colour; a teaspoon of real Spanish saffron would be ruinous and bitter)
- 1 garlic clove, finely chopped
- Salt and pepper, to taste
- 1 pound potatoes, diced, optional (this is a lot against 1 cup of rice: with it the dish becomes a meal rather than a side)
Notas
Instructions
- Put the water or broth into a pot over medium heat.
- Add the salt, pepper, oil, the teaspoon of turmeric or ground azafrán, and the finely chopped garlic and onion.
- When it comes to the boil, stir in the rice, and the potatoes if you are using them.
- Let it boil uncovered until the liquid on the surface has gone, then turn the heat down low.
- Cover the pot and leave it for 20 to 25 minutes, until the rice is done. Do not lift the lid while it cooks: the rice is finishing in trapped steam, and letting it out leaves the top layer hard.
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