This is a fantastic dish, feeds 10 – 15 people and you can cook the rice the day before and have it cold in the fridge, putting it all together at the last minute. It makes a lot, so if it isn’t for a BBQ, be prepared for leftovers. It lasts in the fridge for at least a week, (not that it has ever lasted that long in my fridge) so you could have a little for lunch each day!
It started out as just a bean salad, beans, corn, tomato, onion, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. If you want to leave out the brown rice… it is actually a pretty good salad on its own. I just needed to pad out the bean salad one day and I had some left over brown rice, so I just threw it all together. I had run out of balsamic, so in went some mayonnaise. This is what happens when you love to cook, things just evolve. So that is how this wonderful salad came into being. The finishing touches, like the mustard lime juice etc. came to happen with tasting!
So take a chance and instead of having a creamy potato salad, why not try this creamy brown rice salad for a change and see what everyone thinks, at the very least, it will be good with the ham and turkey for leftovers on Boxing Day!
Organic Brown Rice Salad Ingredients
Please note that Thermomix weights are in brackets, but may not reflect the same weight as the ingredients of the conventional.
2 cups of Organic Brown Rice (500g)
2 ½ Cups Water (1200g)
1 large Red Onion
Juice of 2 Limes
1 – 2 Tin Organic Kidney Beans
1 – 2 Tins Corn Kernels
1 Punnet of Cherry Tomatoes, or chopped up normal tomatoes
½ – 1 cup of Whole Egg Mayonnaise
If you would like a good mayonnaise recipe off the recipe community (Thermomix) click HERE!
2 Tablespoons of Sour Cream
1 Tablespoon of Grain Mustard
Salt and Pepper to Taste
Method
Cooking Rice (the absorption method)
1. Put brown rice and water into a large pot and bring to the boil. Let the brown rice boil with the lid on for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
2. Turn off heat, remove the lid, place a folded tea towel over the saucepan and then put the lid back on. This will ensure that no steam escapes.
3. Leave off the heat for 20 minutes then remove lid and tea towel and stir to make sure all rice is cooked perfectly then allow rice to cool.
4. While rice is cooling: juice the limes and add to the finely chopped red onion; combine mayonnaise, sour cream and mustard and mix well; rinse kidney beans from the tin.
5. When Brown rice is cool (you may like to put it in the fridge if you are in a hurry) combine all ingredients and mix well. EASY! You choose how Mayonaisey you want it and how much extra ingredients you want to put in. I like lots of kidney beans and corn, so I always put two tins in, but that may be different for you!
6. Salt and pepper to taste.
I find that Brown rice is always better than white for this dish as it doesn’t tend to go gluggy.
THERMOMIX METHOD
Please note Thermomix measures in brackets in the ingredients list
1. Put 1000g of water in to the mixing bowl then place mixing basket into mixing bowl and weigh in 500g of brown rice.
2. Remove mixing basket and thoroughly rinse rice under running water so that all the rice is wet and place back into mixing bowl.
3. Cook rice 30 minutes/Varoma/speed 3 (MC in). When finished remove immediately and rinse (in the basket) under cold water and leave to drain.
*NB While the rice is cooking, why don’t you place some chicken breast in the Varoma and place it on top of the lid… then when cooked, shred the chicken on reverse speed 4 and you have some chicken to go over the salad for lunch!
4. While rice is cooling, in a bowl add the lime juice, finely chopped red onion.Add mayonnaise, sour cream and mustard and mix well; rinse kidney beans and halve cherry tomatoes and combine all ingredients well.
5. When Brown rice is cool (you may like to put it in the fridge if you are in a hurry) combine all ingredients and mix well. EASY! You choose how Mayonaisey you want it and how much extra ingredients you want to put in. I like lots of kidney beans and corn, so I always put two tins in, but that may be different for you!
6. Salt and pepper to taste.
This is another fabulous recipe that feeds a lot of people, it is fresh tasty and can be made ahead of time. Please feel free to stir through some parsley or even some baby spinach… what ever your fancy!
Do you have salads at your family’s Christmas or do you have a traditional roast? What is your favourite thing to cook for Christmas? I can’t wait to hear from you all! 🙂
Enjoy Irresponsibly!
Liz x
If you like this maybe you might like these as well?
It’s definitely getting to be bbq weather so this will come in handy! Thanks Liz! 😀
Thanks Lorraine… it is really yummy 🙂 Liz xx
What a good idea Liz, love it. 🙂 I am totally skint on the cash until I go on holidays, so getting super creative using up all the things my cupboard has to offer. Rice is a plenty, so it’ll be fun to whip up a batch. Thank you!
Because my bro and I were chefs for a good chunk of Christmas’ this past decade, we often didn’t eat Christmas foods at all, cereal, eggs on toast and we were done. But in recent years, yes, seafood salad feature on our Chrissy dinner plates. Favorite thing to cook at Christmas… Do I lose brownie points if I say I detest Christmas cooking? LOL!
Yes it is a great budget salad, and you use mostly things from the cupboard! No you don’t loose brownie points for saying you don’t like Christmas cooking, I’m not really a fan either… it is hard to get motivated for Christmas cooking sometimes 🙂 fortunately this year I have my blog to keep me motivated 🙂 thanks for dropping by as always 🙂 Liz x