Dirty Rice Recipe - Serious Eats

Why It Works

• Cooking the rice separately in salted water before combining with the remaining ingredients ensures each grain remains distinct and fluffy, contributing to a contrasting texture with the rich meat components.
• Incorporating both ground meat and puréed chicken giblets ensures a rich depth of savory flavor and a hearty texture.
• The final step of combining and heating the rice and the meat mixture ensures even flavor distribution while enhancing the dish's texture and consistency.

Dirty rice, which sometimes goes by “rice dressing” or “Cajun rice,” is a rice dish typically made with the “Holy Trinity” of onions, bell peppers, and celery, a hefty amount of ground meat and chicken giblets, and a heavy sprinkling of Creole seasonings, like cayenne, sage, and paprika. While it’s now enjoyed all across the country, it’s celebrated in the South, particularly Louisiana, and its odd name is less an insult than a term of endearment: it describes the recognizably brownish-gray coloring from the browned meat and puréed giblets, which are prized by cooks, chefs, and good eaters alike. Some people may be turned off by eating these bits of the bird—the gizzards, the livers, the hearts—but they’re nutrient-rich and delicious, and dirty rice is a great way to eat them, especially for people who might be intimidated by the way a whole gizzard, liver, or heart might look.

I like serving my dirty rice as a side with fried or baked fish, with red beans and sausage, or with smothered okra and barbecued, baked, or fried chicken or pork chops. Or, sometimes, I like to serve it in a big bowl on its own, with a garnish of green onion or chopped parsley. This recipe is a bit more mild in terms of chile heat than many of the dirty rice dishes I’ve had, so feel free to adjust the quantities to suit your own taste and level of spice tolerance. Using ground beef or chicken, adding small picked-over pieces of meat from a leftover roast, and cooking the rice in the puréed giblets rather than separately are all alternative ways to also explore making this dirty rice recipe your own.

June 2021