This post may include affiliate links.
If you make a purchase, I'll earn a small fee at no extra cost to you.
Make copycat rice-a-roni from scratch, just as fast as the kind in the box. Plus this secret ingredient puts your homemade version over the top on taste!
We had Rice-a-Roni all the time with dinner when I was growing up. We even ate it a lot as newlyweds, when our food budget was $25 a week.
I didn’t give it a second thought until we started to eat healthier a few years back. Then I looked at the ingredients and saw that it contains more food additives than food!
For example:
- Disodium Guanylate
- Disodium Inosinate
- Ferric Orthophosphate
- Ferrous Sulfate
- Thiamin Mononitrate
Granted, some of those are vitamins that they spray on the food to make it “better for you,” but that’s a whole different rant altogether.
It’s easy enough to make rice-a-roni from scratch–but I’m going to let you in on the secret ingredient that makes it 100% perfect.
Are you ready? You’ll never guess.
By the way, I can pretty much guarantee that this is not in the boxed stuff–but it will make your version over-the-top good.
This is RealSalt Organic Natural Season Salt and it is AH-MAZ-ING. Nope, they don’t know who I am and they didn’t pay me to talk about their products. We love them and use them all the time, so that’s why I’m giving you this specific product recommendation.
What’s so special about RealSalt? It’s a combination of what it doesn’t contain and what it does. Many salts contain anti-caking agents and even dextrose (sugar). Others have been heat processed and stripped of their natural trace minerals.
RealSalt, on the other hand, is unrefined and full of natural minerals and flavor. See all those colored specks? Minerals, baby!
It contains more than 60 trace minerals, so it’s great for seasoning food, adding to homemade electrolyte drinks, and even for soaking in a detox bath (in bath salt form, of course).
Organic Natural Season Salt contains Real Salt, organic onion, organic coriander, organic mustard, organic black pepper, organic paprika, organic celery seed, organic turmeric, and organic parsley. We use it on just about everything. It really puts the rice-a-roni over the top! Which reminds me…back to the recipe.
Tools Used to Make Homemade Rice-a-Roni
Here are the tools I recommend to make this recipe quickly and easily:
RealSalt Organic Natural Season Salt: unrefined and full of natural minerals and flavor, it makes this rice taste amazing!
Cast iron skillet: or other skillet pan that’s big enough to hold all of the ingredients
Canning Jars: prep the dry ingredients and store them in canning jars until you need them.
Homemade Rice-a-Roni
Ingredients
1/3 cup uncooked thin spaghetti, broken into small pieces
2/3 cup uncooked long-grain rice
2 tablespoons butter
2 cups chicken broth
1 teaspoon RealSalt Organic Natural Season Salt
Instructions
Melt the butter in a skillet and saute the pasta and rice until slightly golden. Add the chicken broth and RealSalt and bring to a boil.
Cover, reduce heat and simmer for 18-20 minutes until liquid is absorbed. Garnish with parsley or slivered almonds and serve.
Pat yourself on the back! You just made rice-a-roni from scratch in the SAME amount of time it takes to make the boxed stuff.
Kitchen Tip
Mix up a big batch of the dry ingredients in a canning jar so it’s ready to fix at a moment’s notice. Just use 1 cup of mix for every 2 cups of chicken broth.
Homemade Rice-a-Roni
Make copycat rice-a-roni from scratch, just as fast as the kind in the box. Plus this secret ingredient puts your homemade version over the top on taste!
Ingredients
- 1/3 cup uncooked thin spaghetti, broken into small pieces
- 2/3 cup uncooked long-grain rice
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 2 cups chicken broth
- 1 teaspoon RealSalt Seasoned Salt
Instructions
- Melt the butter in a skillet and saute the pasta and rice until slightly golden. Add the chicken broth and RealSalt and bring to a boil.
- Cover, reduce heat and simmer for 18-20 minutes until liquid is absorbed. Garnish with parsley or slivered almonds and serve.
- Pat yourself on the back! You just made rice-a-roni from scratch in the SAME amount of time it takes to make the boxed stuff.
Recommended Products
As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programs, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Hi
Please include your recipe for the DIY Salt that combines all those spice ingredients as I don’t have access to that product but the flavor they’d provide is what I need. Thanks
I have made my own for years. Who knew rice and pasta could taste so good together? I sauté some onion first and I throw in a little parsley at the end.
no no no~ the recipe is:
1/2 cup FINE egg noodles,or vermicelli
I cup Uncle Ben’s rice
I tsp salt
1/2 to 1 stick of (real) butter
2 1/2 cups chicken broth
brown the egg noodles in butter, add rice, salt & chicken broth bring to a boil then lower the heat cover 7 simmer. End of story…..ok maybe more butter!
Do I dare and ask if you use homemade chicken broth
Hahaha! Nope, I use organic broth from the store.