Thai Sticky Rice Recipe (With Video)

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Hello and welcome to Freshly Served, the healthy vegan cooking show. I’m Heather and tonight we’re going to make a Thai flavored rice.

So normally when I do rice its just the rice on its own and it will go with some vegetables underneath or mix in with a salad or something like that.

But this one we’re actually gonna infuse the flavor into the rice so that the rice can be the star of the dish on its own. You can serve this over a bed of greens or with just some plain sauté vegetables or however you want to do it.

Now what we’re gonna do to start is I’ve got a pot back here and this is where I’m gonna cook the rice but before I’m gonna put the rice in I’m going to toast the spices that I’m going to use and I’m using coriander and cumin seeds.

Now most people when they do this type of dish its called a pea loaf style for the rice where the rice gets toasted before you steep it. It gives it a little bit of a nutty flavor.

We’re also going to toast these seasonings and most people when they do this will do it with oil but you don’t need to, with oil it’s more of a , a roasting so the oil coats these seasonings and the rice and its get roasted or what we’re doing right now is toasting it with no oil so its dry.

So you get the seed into the pot once its hot and you’re gonna smell this really beautiful aroma coming out. So I’ve got a little handful of cumin seeds and coriander seeds and what you wanna do is let them toast until you start to hear them pop. And it helps if you stir them around otherwise they might burn.

Ok! I’m not sure if your gonna be hearing this on the camera but these have just started to pop a little bit and they’re getting fairly brown so what I’m gonna do next is put the rice in here and stir that around with those spices.

Now, if you’re using ground spices you use oil when you do this so that the oil carries the flavor of the spices but when you’re using the whole spices, they’re nice and beautiful.

If you coat them with oil, their flavor is not gonna develop as much as if you toast them dry because when you toast them it brings out the natural oil in the spice and yes they do have oils in them and if you have them already coated in oil that flavor is not gonna develop as nicely.

So if you dry toast them those oils come out and the same thing with the rice if the rice is coated in oil and roasted it develops the flavor of the oil rather than letting the flavor of the rice come out.

So not only are we not using oil in this dish but we’re actually getting some really nice natural flavors here. So your gonna keep this rice stirring again don’t leave it sitting on the bottom of the pot because they can burn. I’ve got this on medium heat so just keep stirring until the rice is just slightly brown and then we’ll add the water.

Alright I know that this is done because some of my rice is actually popping like popcorn. Oh yeah! That was the hot one. Ok! So you add your water and it’s 2 parts water to one part rice. Give it a little stir, it’s gonna heat up that’s good. You wanna bring it to a boil and then we’re gonna turn it down to simmer just like normal rice.

Now I’ve got the whole spices in there I’m also gonna add some other flavorings and ginger, excellent! I just got a slice of ginger here and I’m gonna toss that in the water it’s just going to release its ginger flavor into the rice and then we’ll pick it out at the end.

Same thing with lemon grass, now lemon grass is a grass and you only eat the very bottom white part sometimes it’s tough so chopped that off and then usually the outer section I take off and I’m actually gonna slice this lengthwise so that the flavor seeps out into the rice and then again I’m just gonna put these whole pieces in the pot.

Last but not least, lime. I’m going to add the zest and the juice of half of this lime, the other half I’m gonna slice up and serve along with the rice so you can squeeze it over fresh. Ok? So if you just get a strainer over your pot, I’m gonna zest it first.

So zester just take off the very outside of the skin. This stuff is pack with flavor, if you don’t have a zester you can use a grater just be careful not to go into the white part of the skin that’s where it’s bitter.

And you wanna zest before you juice otherwise its gonna be difficult to zest a cut open piece of lime. So now I’ll get the strainer over the pot and what I do to juice it is I just take the lime with my zester and poke it. Poke it with anything you like a fork works well and since I’m already using my zester its already dirty that’s what I’m gonna do.

Oh! And sometimes you get a little shots of lime juice all over the place but that’s part of the fun of cooking is to getting things to fly around the kitchen. So once you get it squeeze in here you’re going to cover this pot, let it come to a boil then turn it down and let it simmer until the rice is soft.

Now for brown rice this is gonna take about 45 minutes, I now that’s kind of a long time but you can just let it cook and you don’t have to stand in the kitchen and watch it.

And salt last thing to go in the pot, the salt is not for the flavor it helps the rice cook. It also going to help bring all of those flavors that we just put it there together so covered it up, let it simmer, bring it to a boil first then let it simmer.

Now lemon grass is available usually in Asian grocery stores or if you have a Chinatown you can usually find it. If you happen to not be able to find a lemon grass that’s ok, you should be fine with just the lime zest.

You could add lemon zest if you like as well. Lemon zest is not quite the same flavor as lemon grass but it does the job.

So what you do is just take out those whole spices so the lemon grass, the chunk of ginger, that’s lime zest floating up there as well. Ok! So I’ve made quite a bit here and my pot is very full.

This is actually two cups of rice, not one cup that I gave directions for. I’m taking this later tonight to a friend who has unfortunately broken her hip and that’s not to keen to cooking at the moment so another one of our friends had the brilliant idea that a few of us each will cook a meal for her so that she doesn’t have to worry about it.

So being this full I might have trouble with the next step which is stirring in some fresh herbs and for Thai flavors cilantro is the way to go however I’m not the biggest fan of cilantro so I often use parsley. I’m making this for someone else so I’m using cilantro tonight.

So get that stirred through and then you’re ready to go. Like I said this is lovely serve on a bed of greens or under some green vegetables. It has a lot of flavors on its own so it comes to be use as a side dish to some beans or whatever you like. It’s a great dish, another nice thing would be if you wanted to stir a little bit of coconut milk through here at this point make it a little bit creamier.

But anyway you serve it, it’s gonna be healthy, it’s gonna be delicious. So I hope you enjoy, you can find the recipe at HealthyVeganRecipes.net. I’m Heather and this is Freshly Served.