Turkish Rice Pilaf

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Turkish rice pilaf
Who doesn’t like a few pistachios on their pilaf?

Well, we have no idea if this is really a Turkish version of rice pilaf. We simply made that up. But, based on the ingredients, it seems as if it could be Turkish, so, we’ll go with it. We came up with this dish when we brought back our okra from the CSA. We knew we’d be making fried okra for dinner, but, let’s face it, fried okra does not a dinner make. We’d need a little more. So, we figured rice, then we thought about rice pilaf based on what we had in the house, and Turkish Rice Pilaf came about.

This is really based on our standard recipe for Rice Pilaf, with a few substitutions. Instead of raisins, use sliced dried apricots and dried cherries, pistachios in place of sliced almonds, that sort of thing.

We will say that we increased the amount from what we list here, because we had plans to use the leftovers to make stuffed bell peppers (for those, we added sautéed mushrooms, and topped with chopped toasted hazelnuts), so our photos will show larger amounts than might be expected.

Turkish Rice Pilaf

Servings: 2 servings
Author: Shawn

Ingredients

  • 1 tsp unsalted butter
  • 1/3 cup finely diced onion
  • 1/4 tsp kosher salt or to taste
  • 1/3 cup basmati rice
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 2 Tbs heavy cream
  • 1/4 cup mixed sliced dried apricots and cherries
  • Pinch freshly grated nutmeg
  • 1/4 cup pistachios

Instructions

  • Melt butter in a skillet, add onions and salt, and sauté until tender. Add rice and cook, stirring for 1 minute.
  • Stir in water, heavy cream, apricots and cherries, and nutmeg. Bring to a boil. Cover and reduce heat to very low, and simmer 20 minutes or until rice is tender and liquid absorbed.
  • Fluff with a fork and serve garnished with pistachios.

Ingredient discussion:

If you don’t have basmati rice, regular white rice will be fine. We did a mix of dried apricots and cherries, but just dried apricots will be good, too. Don’t have pistachios? Toasted hazelnuts would be great, or sliced almonds.

Procedure in detail:

frying onions
Adding the salt at the beginning seems to help the onions cook a bit faster.

Cook onions. Melt the butter in a large skillet until foamy. Add the onions, sprinkle with the salt, and stir to coat. Continue cooking and stirring until the rice is tender, about 5 minutes.

adding rice
Stir the rice around, not really to toast it, but to get the grains coated with butter.

Add rice. Add the rice and stir to coat. Continue cooking, stirring gently so you don’t break apart the rice, for about 1 minute. It won’t really toast the rice, but the butter will help to encapsulate the rice grains to keep them separate while cooking.

adding apricots and cherries
Apricots and cherries seem like the perfect combination for a Turkish pilaf.

Simmer. Add the water, heavy cream, apricots and cherries, and nutmeg, and bring to a boil, gently stirring as needed. Once boiling, reduce heat to very low, cover, and let simmer for 20 minutes or until the rice is tender and liquid absorbed. Fluff gently with a fork.

rice pilaf
Gently fluff with a fork to separate the grains of rice before serving.

Serve. Scoop rice onto plates and garnish with the pistachios.

We really like rice pilaf. The fat from the butter and cream helps to keep all the grains of rice separate, and, while it might seem odd, the fruit really goes well with the savoriness of the rice. With this pilaf being only slightly more effort than making plain rice, how can we not give it 5 stars?

Worth the trouble?

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