Cheezy Baked Wild Rice Hotdish - Rice Week # 2

Many many months back, Gertrude from My Kitchen Snippets organized a simple contest by guessing the flavour of her chiffon. And well, I sort of won it. And she sent me some cupcake liners and a pack of wild rice as my present. Wild rice!!! I never would’ve thought I will get a pack of that. It made a very nice gift, something that we cannot buy here. And finally today(many months back), I got my butt of the couch and cooked a hot dish with the rice. Finishing it at one go!!

Many moons back, I saw on Pei-Lin’s blog a dish called hotdish, made with wild rice. I never would’ve thought, I’d get a chance to try to make this. But when I received the rice from Gert, I knew I had to try this hotdish. After reading through her recipe, I dread at the thought of baking the rice for 1 hour, and that’s with cooked rice and everything else cooked! I even asked Pei-Lin whether I can skip that step and omit the milk. She said, no, baking gives the rice a crust and sort of hold everything together. So, I improvised, reduced the milk and made a cheese topping instead, kekeke, so that I still get a golden crust without that amount of cooking time. Excuses!!!! Actually I just wanted the rice to be cheesy.. kekeke. But then still, 1 hour is definitely too too long to bake cooked rice. My electricity bill is more than RM400/month (2 adults 2 kids at home only), and I do not want to jack it any higher.

Cheezy Baked Wild Rice Hotdish

Recipe adapted from Dodol-Mochi

142gm wild rice
2.5cups water
350gm minced beef (can replace with other meats)
½ tsp ground oregano
Some cooking oil
1 Tbsp butter
1 cup chopped celery
200gm coarsely chopped fresh button mushrooms
1 onion, chopped
½ tsp salt
1 can Campbell Mushoom Soup (300gm can)
1/3 can of milk (measured with soup can)
Grated mozzarella, as much as you like

1. Rinse wild rice and put into a heavy based pot (can use rice cooker too) and put in water. Bring to a boil and lower to a simmer. Cover with lid and cook for 45 minutes until rice kernels puff open. Drain away excess water and set aside.
2. Heat a pan/wok and put in some cooking oil and cook beef and oregano until fragrant and browned. Remove and set aside.
3. In the same wok/pan, put in some butter and sauté onions until translucent. Put in mushrooms and cook until fragrant and wilted. Put in celery and salt, and toss for a few seconds and dish up everything and set aside.
4. Mix cooked wild rice, browned beef and cooked vegetables together. Pour in can of soup and milk. Mix well. Taste, if not salty enough, add more salt, but it’s just nice for me at this point. It gets saltier when baked with cheese, don’t forget that.
5. Spoon rice mixture into greased baking pans and top with grated mozzarella. Bake at 180(fan)/200C until cheese melts and gets golden

Thank you Gert for the rice and thank you Pei-Lin for the recipe. It’s truly a new experience for our whole family.

Added at 12:16pm 14/9/2011: The rice itself tasted like non sticky black glutinous rice, with a nutty aroma. BMS Organics has a different strain of wild rice, which is short like Japanese rice, but dark like this as well. Please google for BMSOrganics chain stores, but I know there's one in Empire Subang and one in Ipoh Garden East next to Signature Kitchen.