Spanish Rice Casserole-Secret Recipe Club

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Mother's Day, and now it is time for this month's Secret Recipe Club post.  I cannot even begin to express how thrilled I was when I received this month’s assignment.  Miz Helen's Country Cottage is one of my favorite blogs, and she is one of my blogging heroes.  I have subscribed to her blog for a number of years.  When I saw she was a blogger of a “certain age”, I thought maybe, me at my age,  could be a blogger, too.  She also cooks “down home” comfort food, just the kind I like.  Two great features of her blog are her weekly "What's for Dinner Next Week" post and her "Full Plate Thursday"  link-up.

I have used many of her recipes such as Spicy Cranberry Coffeecake and Slow Cooker Bar B Que Pork Roast.  My printed-out pile of “to try" recipes from her site is at least a half inch high.  It was very difficult to choose a recipe for this post as there were so many I wanted to do.

I finally settled on Spanish Rice Casserole for several reasons.  I like rice a lot, hubby not so much.  He was going to be out of town so I thought that was a chance to make something that only I liked.  We were gifted with a beef quarter for Christmas so I have a lot of good ground beef on hand.  The recipe made a lot so I could stick some of the casserole in the freezer for future use.

I made three slight changes to the recipe.  My ground beef is put up in 1 1/2 lb. packages, so I used that amount instead to the 2 lbs. Miz Helen used.  I don’t care for green peppers so used red peppers instead.  I always have Mexican Blend grated cheese on hand so I used that instead of the cheddar cheese, pepper jack cheese called for in the recipe.  I like to put a dollop of sour cream on top of my rice and serve it with corn chips.  Next time I make this, I think I will add a small can of green chilies to replace the green color I lost when omitting the green pepper.  Boy, was this ever good.  I am so glad that I am going to have some of this available in the freezer to take care of my Spanish Rice cravings.  This makes lots so would be a great dish to take to a party or potluck.  Thanks, Miz Helen for sharing one of your great recipes.

Spanish Rice Casserole
Miz Helen's Country Cottage
2 lbs. ground chunk (I used 1 1/2 lbs.)
1 T. olive oil
1 yellow onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 green pepper, chopped (I used a red one)
1 1/2 t. cumin
1 1/2 t. chili powder
1 t. salt
1 t. pepper
4 c. rice
1 (10 oz.) can tomatoes and green chilies (such as Rotel)
1 (14.5 oz.) can diced tomatoes
1 (15 oz.) can tomato sauce
4 c. chicken broth
1 c. sharp cheddar, shredded
1 c. pepper jack, shredded (I used shredded Mexican Blend cheese for the two cheeses)

Brown ground beef in a heavy, oven-proof Dutch oven.  Remove ground beef and drain if necessary.  Add olive oil to Dutch oven, heat and add the onion, garlic, and green or red pepper.  Cook until the onion is clear.  Add the cumin, chili powder, salt and pepper.  Stir and cook for about a minute.  Add the rice and cook and stir until the rice is just beginning to turn brown.  Add the tomatoes, tomatoes and green chilies and tomato sauce.  Add the chicken broth, pouring a little of the chicken broth into the tomato sauce can to clean it out before adding to the rice mixture.  Return the ground beef to the Dutch oven.  Bring the mixture to a boil, lower heat, cover and simmer 15 minutes, stirring several times to keep mixture from sticking to the bottom of the pan.  Remove cover and add the cheese to the top of the mixture.  Bake in a 350-degree oven for 20 minutes until the cheese is melted and the rice is fully cooked.  (Note:  because I was going to freeze the Spanish Rice, I did not add the cheese before baking.  I covered the mixture and will add cheese to the individual servings as I heat them.)  There wasn’t an amount of servings listed, but I am guessing this will serve at least 10-12.

To freeze individual servings of this recipe I put 1  1/2 cups of the casserole into zip-top sandwich bags and flattened them out.  I placed them flat on a jelly-roll pan to freeze so I could stack the bags inside a gallon freezer bag and stack them in the freezer to save space.

To learn how you can join in the Secret Recipe Club fun, visit the membership information page.

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