Spanish Rice Skillet

When I make my Grandma’s Spanish rice, I always make more than is needed for that meal.  I love to eat the leftovers for days.  I can open the fridge door, pop off the container lid, and eat it cold, right there with a fork…that’s how deep my love for this dish goes.Besides just eating the rice cold out of the fridge, I do love making various skillet dishes with it.  Creating new dishes with leftovers is serious fun.  Yes, feel free to mock me for my warped sense of what fun is. But in all seriousness, I greatly enjoy the challenge of taking one dish and turning it into something else.  It gets boring eating the same thing over and over, and since I have yet to learn to cook on a smaller scale, getting creative is my task.

I do love to cook fancy meals, but I don’t have the time for that level of cooking every night.  I am a busy single mom, I want tasty and nutritious and sometimes, I need fast.  Meals like this one are perfect because everything is done in one pot, prepped and cooked in about 20 minutes (if you have leftover rice, otherwise, add 15 minutes to make the rice from scratch.)

If you don’t have left over Spanish rice, but do have some cooked white rice, message me, I’ll tell you how to turn that into Spanish rice in a pinch. If the beef is really lean and doesn’t render much fat, you might need to add some extra virgin olive oil when it’s time to add the onions and peppers.  If your beef renders a lot of fat, drain most of it off, but leave a bit in the pan to help cook the onions and peppers. This is a very quick yet tasty way to feed your family quickly.  I love the flavor of the Anaheim chili.  It isn’t very spicy…even for me, but a sweet and mild bell pepper can easily be swapped in for the Anaheim chili.