Many people use boiled rice as a starchy 'side dish' in place of potatoes. You can give that boiled rice a flavour, nutrition and texture boost with…… legumes! Here are some ideas, using legumes that tend to hold their shape well with cooking, and add good textural and visual interest to your dish.
Chick peas (or garbanzo beans):
Soak in water overnight (or during the day while you're at work), simmer in salted water for 40 minutes or so until tender, drain, and stir through your cooked rice just before serving. Start with a proportion of one part chick peas to three parts rice.
I find chick peas to be the least flatulence-inducing of the legume family.
Remember that cooked chick peas can be frozen successfully, so cook double the quantity and freeze the rest in portion-sized containers. Then you can thaw a portion quickly to sprinkle over a salad, or add to a soup.
Black eyed beans (also known as cowpeas):
Soak for a couple of hours then simmer in salted water for only 30 minutes or so. If you cook them for too long they will tend to fall apart, so taste test from time to time after 20 minutes cooking. They should be firm to bite, but not crisp, and certainly never mushy. Because black eyed beans have a softer texture than chick peas, you could easily use 1/3 beans to 2/3 cooked rice.
Black eyed beans don't freeze well, however you could certainly cook a little extra, refrigerate, and sprinkle over tomorrow's salad.
Shopping tips:
The best place to buy dried legumes is in a health food store; They generally have a higher turnover of legumes than the supermarkets, and you can often buy just a small quantity to try them out.
Nutrition snippets:
- Legumes are naturally high in fibre, with about 4g of fibre in one cup of cooked chick peas. Cooked black eyed beans have a massive 9g of protein in every 100g.
- Legumes contain lots of vitamins and minerals too.
- Legumes are a good source of complex carbohydrates, with a low GI number.
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