Five steps to the perfect rice salad
Do you feel hungry again an hour after eating a salad? We have the solution for you: rice. A rice salad is a great dish for dinner, but also a super side dish.
You can make a rice salad fresh and it’s the ideal side dish for any barbecue. At the same time, it’s filling enough to eat as a meal. Perfect. There are a few tricks involved, but if you follow these steps, very little can go wrong.
Cooking the rice
The base of your salad is rice, so it needs to be cooked perfectly. You can read here how to do that. It’s also delicious to combine white rice with red or black rice. However, they have different cooking times, so pay close attention.
Cooling the rice
Your rice is perfect now, but it will be a while before you eat it. That’s why this is very important: rinse it under cold water. This prevents it from continuing to cook and keeps your rice salad from turning into a soggy mess. Rinse the rice under a cold tap until it’s thoroughly cold.
Dressing
Just as with any other salad, you can take the dressing in any direction. We usually go for a classic vinaigrette, perhaps with some extra lemon for freshness. But you could also choose one of these four vinaigrettes, Asian-style or with anchovies, for example.
What goes in it?
Anything you like, really. Keep it vegetarian, make it meaty, use up the leftovers in your fridge. Anything goes. We like to keep it vegetarian and simple. For example, with arugula, diced tomato and fresh herbs. Add merguez sausages on the side and you have the perfect summer meal.
Other delicious combinations include fava beans and pistachios or this recipe by Ottolenghi with roast chicken and fresh herbs. But above all, use whatever you like. Roasted vegetables, diced bell pepper, chickpeas—it all works.
Herbs
Just make sure you use soft herbs. Chives, sage, basil, parsley or tarragon all work well. Nobody enjoys chewing on hard sprigs of thyme or rosemary.
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