An adventure with Cilantro Rice

This all started when I didn't feel like making dinner on Friday night, and thought about cashing in on my Groupon at one of those places that makes the dinner for you, and all you have to do is warm it up. Well, they had run out of the beef bourguignon, and all they had left was pulled chicken tacos with cilantro rice.  I didn't feel like using my Groupon to get tacos--I can make those blindfolded. But I was intrigued by the cilantro rice. My cilantro plant was begging to be used, and this was my opportunity to do something about it. After googling some recipes, I found this one on Chowhound:  http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/328780#1900565

I used everything except the scallions. I also used corn oil instead of olive oil--because that's what I had on hand. The one jalapeño pepper I had on hand had already turned red, and that was OK. So, the rice had specks of red. I used two cups of rice but I didn't use the proportions called for in the recipe. I used a bit less than 2/3 cup of cilantro, one half of a sweet onion, one finely chopped red jalapeño, a pinch of cumin powder, about 1 teaspoon of grated lime rind, one teaspoon of lime juice (small limes), 1-1/2 teaspoons salt, and 3 teaspoons of chicken bouillon powder. I'll make it again, but next time I'll reduce the rice to 1-1/2 cups, plus cut out the salt.

I didn't puree the ingredients as the recipe called for, i just threw them on while cooking the rice in the Mexican fried rice style. I also used about 3-1/2 cups of water. The bouillon gave it a nice flavor. If you have chicken broth on hand, use that.

One of the comments on this site mentioned this recipe reminded them of the one at Chipotle.  Never tried it there, so I wouldn't know.

This was the perfect side to a roasted chicken from Costco. Plus, I made a very basic romaine, tomato, & cucumber salad with a simple vinaigrette. I couldn't resist sprinkling some grated lemon rind on the salad.  Results?  Yum. The husband liked it, but not the 11 year old ("Mommy, you need to leave out the cilantro". The kid will grow up.