Join Chris Morocco in the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen as he demonstrates 5 easy recipes that give new life to leftover rice. Whether it's been waiting in the fridge after a night of takeout or you simply made too much, these 5 dishes transform leftover rice into something brand new, unexpected, and delightful.You can't have a leftover rice dish without The Perfect Pot of Rice.
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00:00 I'm Chris Morocco here in the BA Test Kitchen,
00:02 and today we're talking about rice.
00:04 The kind of leftover rice you probably have
00:06 in your fridge right now.
00:08 Cooked, cooled rice, every dish's best friend.
00:11 It is untapped potential.
00:13 You can take it anywhere.
00:15 Whatever you do, don't throw it out.
00:17 So, making rotisserie chicken congee.
00:26 Congee goes by other names, you know,
00:29 depending on the cuisine.
00:31 Sometimes known as juke, et cetera.
00:33 Just a rice-based porridge.
00:35 In the theme of starting with the leftover rice,
00:39 let's use a rotisserie chicken to its fullest potential.
00:43 So, first things first, a little aromatic base
00:45 just to get this broth on its way.
00:48 Scallion, just nice sections.
00:50 We don't need perfectly even fine bits.
00:53 Slicing our ginger, and then garlic.
00:58 All right, last thing to do before we can start cooking
01:02 is take apart this chicken.
01:05 I love rotisserie chicken.
01:06 It's overcooked chicken in the best possible way.
01:09 This is very firm, but that meat is tender.
01:14 It comes right off the bone.
01:16 We're gonna throw the meat into the porridge itself.
01:19 The skin, that's not stuff that's really gonna come back,
01:22 but for the broth, it's really, really good.
01:26 Little neutral oil just so we can sweat down
01:28 these aromatics.
01:30 Moderate heat by softening them slightly in oil.
01:34 I'm extracting some of their flavor.
01:36 And I really want a very modest amount of water.
01:39 I want the chicken to fit below the surface,
01:42 but I don't wanna have to reduce this stock down later.
01:45 It's been about 20 minutes.
01:47 As you can see, we were able to extract a lot
01:51 from those chicken bones and skin.
01:53 It's heavily seasoned to begin with.
01:55 This broth is pretty much seasoned and ready to go.
01:57 So I'm just straining all those solids out of the broth.
02:01 So we can bring this right back over to the stove
02:03 with our rice and we can get this congee cooking.
02:06 So by starting with cooked rice,
02:09 probably take 15, maybe 20 minutes
02:11 to get it to a nice porgy consistency.
02:14 Oh yeah, we're kinda starting to stick
02:16 to the bottom of the pot,
02:17 which tells me it's getting nice and thick.
02:20 Oh, it's so good.
02:24 It's just kinda the ultimate comfort food.
02:26 It's like a warm hug for your mouth.
02:28 I don't even know that I need all of this.
02:31 Stir it in there, just let it warm through.
02:33 As it's sitting, it's kinda setting up
02:37 and I just want like a little bit more fluidity to it.
02:40 Beautiful.
02:43 So I'm putting my scallion and my cilantro on.
02:47 Just doing a drizzle of toasted sesame oil.
02:50 I like putting it on raw.
02:52 It really preserves the aromatics of the sesame.
02:55 I've got chili crisp.
02:56 Just adds like a little pop of texture,
02:58 adds a pop of heat,
03:00 and then a little finishing dose of soy.
03:03 The soy is obviously giving you
03:05 an additional layer of seasoning.
03:07 Some toasted sesame seed.
03:09 There it is, oh my God.
03:12 Rotisserie chicken congee.
03:13 It's looking good.
03:15 Oh my God.
03:18 [chewing]
03:20 I mean, it's really good.
03:23 It's really good.
03:26 Here, eat that.
03:28 I just love the degree to which we're able to transform
03:33 a rotisserie chicken leftover rice
03:35 into something that feels like should've taken hours.
03:38 So I'm gonna be making golden fried rice.
03:44 This version is gonna be influenced
03:47 by Lucas Sin's golden fried rice,
03:49 which I had the pleasure of testing a few years ago
03:51 when it ran in BA.
03:53 It takes the rice and coats it completely
03:57 with just egg yolk,
03:58 so you get literally golden fried rice.
04:01 I'm kind of looking in the direction of South Asia
04:05 and sort of incorporating a tadka aromatic spice base
04:09 with the golden fried rice technique
04:11 to arrive at something that,
04:13 I don't know, it's gonna be an adventure,
04:14 but it made sense at the time that I pitched it.
04:17 So here we go.
04:19 Garlic ginger scallion.
04:20 It's relatively fast to prep,
04:22 and then you are able to cook it in like seconds.
04:25 About half that scallion's for the aromatic mixture.
04:28 Some of it I'm just holding on the side for serving.
04:31 We're incorporating the egg yolk into the rice mixture,
04:35 and the egg whites are being cooked separately.
04:38 So I'm just seasoning the white,
04:40 and I'm throwing a little bit of oil in there
04:42 just so that it cooks up just a little bit softer.
04:45 There's no substitute here
04:47 for just working this mixture around by hand.
04:50 Break those clumps up, coat every single grain in egg yolk.
04:55 I just want this pan to be pretty damn hot
04:58 before I scramble the whites.
05:00 Set them aside.
05:01 Just wanna get it in and get it out.
05:04 So next step is toasting the spices in ghee.
05:07 I don't want like quite such insane heat
05:10 because I wanna be mindful of toasting the spices,
05:13 but not burning them.
05:15 I am going to make a tadka base,
05:18 which is this blend of spices that are bloomed in a hot fat.
05:23 You can see the mustard seeds popping.
05:26 That's a good sign.
05:27 Now I'm gonna do chili flake, a little bit of turmeric.
05:31 Turn the heat up, and in we go.
05:33 We wanna bring the rice back to a place
05:37 of being crispy on the outside,
05:39 but still kind of chewy and a little bit soft on the inside.
05:43 So now that the tadka is all mixed into the rice,
05:47 I'll just take a little bit extra ghee,
05:49 run it around the outer edge,
05:52 just so it drips down to the bottom
05:54 and forms that nice layer of fat
05:57 in between the rice and the skillet.
05:59 The rice is gonna start to crisp.
06:01 It's heating through.
06:03 You wanna just like give it a head start towards that end
06:06 by not tossing it all the time,
06:08 just letting it develop a little bit of a crust
06:10 before you start moving it again.
06:12 I'm gonna make a little well,
06:14 drop a little more ghee in it,
06:15 and I'm gonna fry out my aromatics.
06:18 Just wanna soften them.
06:20 Don't want them to be straight up raw.
06:22 I think we can toss this through now.
06:25 Egg white can go back in.
06:28 I didn't wanna overcook the egg white.
06:29 You saw how fast it cooked,
06:31 and I don't want it to get all rubbery.
06:33 I'm gonna do a little bit of soy
06:34 just for a final seasoning,
06:36 and also just completing the thought
06:37 about the different influences at work in this dish.
06:41 Nice.
06:42 Final topper, some more scallion, and that's it.
06:46 Golden fried rice.
06:48 Mm, yeah, I'm into it.
06:51 Fried rice is like one of the default uses we think of
06:56 when it comes to leftover rice,
06:57 but a couple key differences here,
06:59 couple tweaks in how this dish came together,
07:02 and it's like really kind of unexpected
07:05 how transformed it is.
07:06 [upbeat music]
07:08 So this use of leftover rice
07:10 is turning it into this crunchy, savory element
07:14 that's then gonna be used in a salad.
07:17 It's gonna be a range of colors, textures, flavors,
07:21 but using that crispy, savory rice as this base element.
07:25 Crispy tofu rice salad, like with all the other dishes,
07:28 I could see it, cook them in my mind, you know, no problem.
07:32 This one is a sort of a hybrid of crispy rice salad
07:37 developed by Shilpa.
07:39 Hers uses ground chicken.
07:41 We're using crispy tofu instead.
07:44 Gonna start by cutting up our aromatics.
07:47 So we're not gonna be cooking any of them here.
07:50 This is gonna be showcasing raw ginger.
07:53 I'm gonna do a very thin shred here.
07:57 Really helps make sure you get ginger
07:58 that's not overly powerful.
08:01 Gonna slice up the red onion.
08:02 Again, this is gonna go in raw.
08:05 Thin slices of Serrano chili.
08:08 We're gonna put our fish sauce and our sugar
08:10 in with our chili.
08:11 It's gonna be part of our dressing.
08:13 And again, we're just tasting and we're adjusting on the fly.
08:16 This is food that you can just sort of feel your way through
08:19 when you're cooking.
08:20 I like the idea of keeping this vegetarian.
08:24 Some people like to press their tofu.
08:26 I like just lightly squeezing out a little bit of the water.
08:30 I'm gonna do slightly smaller pieces
08:32 because I want them to incorporate into the salad well.
08:36 I'm gonna season and toss it with salt
08:38 and cornstarch as well.
08:40 Cornstarch loves getting crispy.
08:43 So it's just gonna give a little bit of texture
08:45 to this outer kind of shell of the tofu.
08:48 I like this technique of Shilpa's.
08:51 She's taking the rice and she's coating it
08:54 in the curry paste.
08:56 Coating the rice in this mixture
08:58 means it's gonna be on every single grain
09:01 and make sure it suffuses all of the rice.
09:05 I wanna go like moderately hot.
09:08 The tofu just has a lot of moisture in it.
09:10 You want like an active, crispy sear.
09:14 I'd say like we're somewhere in the five
09:17 to eight minute range.
09:19 The hardest part is not messing with it,
09:21 letting it get crispy, doing its thing.
09:23 All right, so you see we're getting some really nice,
09:25 lacy crispiness on the outside.
09:28 I'm gonna hit it with some of that curry paste
09:30 and see if I can get them nice and coated.
09:32 I'm just gonna go ahead and pull it to the side here.
09:38 Now some more oil and rice can go in.
09:42 So the goal here is crispiness, right?
09:46 And to warm the rice through.
09:48 You know, we've been at this like maybe getting close
09:50 to five minutes.
09:51 I'd say two to three more minutes and we should be there.
09:54 We're starting to get some nice crispiness.
09:56 Color is deepening and intensifying.
09:59 So now like this is kind of what we're going for.
10:02 Nice, big, jagged clumps.
10:05 In the theme of, you know, make sure all the flavors
10:09 are kind of dialed up.
10:10 You can almost treat the herbs like lettuce.
10:13 I've got the cooked rice.
10:15 I've got the tofu.
10:17 I'm gonna throw in a handful of the red onion,
10:19 ginger, batons, peanuts, a good splash of dressing.
10:25 Toss it all together in a bowl,
10:27 just as a way to easily adjust seasoning.
10:30 The rice becomes so dense with like texture and flavor.
10:35 And tofu kind of provides like a little bit
10:37 of like negative space and something a little bit soft,
10:40 a little bit yielding in there.
10:42 So I like serving this like a good handful of lettuce leaves
10:46 and you just have a riot of flavor and color.
10:50 I just love that.
10:52 Shilpa, this is really your dish.
10:53 I mean, I just kind of like cooked it
10:55 and put tofu in it instead.
10:57 - It looks really good.
10:58 - You can kind of fill the lettuce
11:00 with this mixture as you eat it.
11:02 - I like that you caramelized everything.
11:06 Otherwise I think it would have been too bland otherwise.
11:08 You get some crispiness from the rice as well.
11:10 There's a lot of texture.
11:11 The onions, the ginger. - There's a lot going on.
11:12 - To me, the ginger was the eye opening.
11:14 - I didn't soak it.
11:15 - Oh my God.
11:16 - I was like, just wait till Shilpa hears that I didn't soak
11:20 the onion and the ginger.
11:21 - No, it's actually really good.
11:22 - Okay.
11:23 - Good job, Christopher.
11:25 10/10, can cook.
11:26 - Chorizo and rice stuffed peppers.
11:31 So rice, it kind of does it all.
11:35 Rice can almost be like breading.
11:38 And by breading, I mean, you know,
11:40 like the thing you put into your meatballs
11:42 or your meatloaf that isn't meat.
11:45 And it just kind of like breaks up that space.
11:47 And often, you know, in a meatball or in a meatloaf,
11:50 you've got bread crumb, you've got egg,
11:53 you've got these elements that serve to bind
11:55 and to lighten the meat mixture.
11:57 Rice does very much a similar thing.
12:00 Today for my peppers, I'm using poblanos and cubanelles.
12:03 Bell pepper would work.
12:05 It's a little bit meatier, a little bit less watery.
12:08 The flavor is just a little bit more complex.
12:11 Also, I feel like it doesn't collapse quite as readily
12:14 as a bell pepper does.
12:16 Bell pepper just kind of like,
12:17 just kind of wants to like loaf on your sofa.
12:20 Not today.
12:23 Okay, so we're gonna do a little spice mixture here.
12:26 Oregano, cumin, coriander,
12:29 and then a little bit of smoked paprika.
12:31 The savory, smoky back note.
12:33 But if all you did was use chili powder,
12:35 a lot of these flavors like already in there.
12:38 Spice mix is done.
12:40 I'm moving on to onion and garlic.
12:44 Because it's just gonna go into that meat mixture raw,
12:47 I wanna dice it fairly fine.
12:50 This is fresh chorizo, not cured chorizo,
12:53 which means it's got the texture of a raw sausage.
12:56 It's been seasoned aggressively with chili powder
12:59 of one sort or another.
13:00 So you could use just any old ground meat in here,
13:03 but I'm looking for something that's got some fat,
13:05 some richness, some flavor and seasoning of its own.
13:09 I'm gonna start out with a moderate amount of rice.
13:12 It's gonna help that mixture kind of set in place.
13:15 All the spices are going in there.
13:17 Just gonna throw in a little bit of oil too.
13:21 I really wanna work this mixture together.
13:23 'Cause the sausage is already seasoned,
13:25 I don't need to season it as though
13:27 it was like straight up ground meat,
13:29 but we still need a little bit of salt
13:31 for all the other ingredients.
13:33 Last thing, I'm gonna do a little bit of cilantro,
13:35 just for a little fresh balance.
13:38 So I'm gonna stuff some of this mixture in,
13:40 and I really wanna pack it in there.
13:42 You can really get quite a bit in there,
13:44 as opposed to if you take the top off
13:46 and kind of stuff it down in there,
13:47 especially with these longer chilies,
13:49 it would be miserable trying to pack
13:51 that mixture down in there.
13:52 Gonna throw it into a 400 degree oven.
13:55 Check this in about 25 minutes.
13:59 Look at the transformation.
14:01 Mixture is cooked, rice on top, a little bit crispy.
14:05 I thought we'd go a little crazy,
14:06 and we'd maybe just scatter a little bit of cheese on top
14:09 and then broil it to finish.
14:11 So this is a mild cheddar,
14:13 a slightly softer, higher moisture form of cheddar,
14:15 because it's got good flavor
14:17 with a little bit of sharpness,
14:18 but it wants to melt, and it wants to take on color.
14:22 Broiling is gonna melt this cheese very quickly
14:24 and hopefully get a little bit of color on it.
14:27 It's like I'm doing this because the last thing
14:31 you wanna do is wander off
14:33 and let all your hard work get screwed up, you know?
14:37 The parchment is starting to burn,
14:39 which I probably should have thought of,
14:41 but we're just gonna take it a little further
14:43 and assume it's not gonna ignite.
14:45 The hardest part about plain chicken
14:47 is knowing when to flinch.
14:48 All right, that's it, I can't take it.
14:51 It smells like a jalapeno popper.
14:55 All right, let's see how we did.
14:57 Mm.
14:59 The softness of the pepper
15:01 to the crispy rice kind of interacting, it's really good.
15:03 Also, just the subtle heat from the pepper.
15:06 There's this unforeseen benefit of the rice,
15:10 which is that it can get so crispy.
15:13 Breadcrumbs would never quite get that crispy.
15:16 The cheese on top too, it gives it just that final blast
15:19 of richness and savoriness.
15:21 Just like a little enchilada sauce, boom, so good.
15:25 Mango sticky rice is a really iconic dish.
15:32 This kind of gets you to a similar place
15:35 in terms of the world of those flavors.
15:37 Coconut and mango love each other.
15:40 Coconut and rice love each other.
15:42 All those things together just brightened up
15:44 with a little pop of salt
15:45 and a little bit of lime and vanilla.
15:48 They're all just great flavors that mesh really seamlessly.
15:52 I'm gonna start off by setting up one of these mangoes.
15:55 Love mango.
15:57 I mean, I friggin' love mango.
15:59 Makes like a ripe honeydew look like friggin'
16:02 open mic night, you know what I mean?
16:04 Just like, why'd you even show up?
16:06 I want the flavor of brown sugar,
16:09 but I don't want like little bits
16:11 of undissolved sugar in there.
16:12 So I'm just gonna be a little bit extra
16:15 and just throw a little water in there and just dissolve it.
16:18 We're just nuking it.
16:20 And you see, we have this nice brown syrup.
16:23 So a little bit of salt in there.
16:24 Then I'm gonna throw a little vanilla in there.
16:26 A little extract would be totally fine,
16:29 but bean, it's just so nice.
16:32 Oh, it really kind of like lifts other flavors up.
16:37 Little bit of lime zest.
16:39 This is gonna give us a little bit of brightness of flavor,
16:43 but without overt acidity.
16:45 So I can just throw the zest right in there.
16:47 It's gonna look so good.
16:49 Toss this together and then move on to the rice.
16:51 So this dish is very forgiving
16:55 of whatever proportions you use.
16:57 I'm gonna start with one can of coconut milk,
17:00 and then I'll do like a couple cups of rice.
17:02 I can always add a little bit more rice,
17:04 and I can always add more coconut milk too.
17:08 So I'm gonna do a little bit of vanilla,
17:09 scrape these seeds out
17:11 so they can infuse fully into the pudding.
17:13 It's gonna put in maybe a quarter cup of sugar.
17:16 Even though it's a sweet dish, I want a pinch of salt
17:18 just to bring out all the flavors we've got here.
17:21 Heat is gonna extract a little bit more of the flavors.
17:25 It's gonna allow that sort of starchy consistency
17:27 of the rice to meld a little bit with the coconut milk.
17:31 All right, so it's really just been five minutes,
17:34 but you can tell how much the rice has now melded
17:37 with the coconut milk.
17:39 It's consistency, it's starting to set up even as it cools.
17:42 You want that creaminess.
17:44 The mango's been macerating.
17:46 It's exuded a little bit extra liquid, and there you go.
17:50 Coconut rice pudding with mango.
17:52 All right.
17:53 Mm, it's got that sweet, savory aspect,
17:58 and yet it still comes off reading as dessert.
18:01 The lightness is also what's so interesting too,
18:04 'cause the rice, as far as pudding-like consistencies goes,
18:08 it's relatively light.
18:10 It's there, and then it disappears,
18:12 and you just want another bite.
18:14 So there it is, five simple dishes, all-star, leftover rice,
18:19 and just incorporating so many different fun elements,
18:22 from sweet to savory,
18:23 taking it to this bold, beautiful, flavor-filled place.
18:27 We forgot the rice!
18:30 - We forgot the rice!
18:30 - Oh, no.
18:31 [beep]
18:32 [beep]