Baked Rice with Peas - Vintage 1972 Recipe

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Sometimes I need to be more careful when looking at the ingredient amounts. I was feeling a little tired this time around, and not very adventurous. Being a 'sides'  week, I thought it would be a good chance to try out this easy looking recipe I found in the Southern Living Party Cookbook from 1972. Probably should have paid more attention to the 'party' part of that book's title. You'll see what I mean in a bit.


Ingredients: 

1 1/2 c. long grain rice
3 T. butter or margarine
1 tsp salt
1 3/4 c. water
1 (10oz) can chicken bouillon
1 (10oz) pkg, frozen peas, thawed

:Ingredient notes:
And once again I'm noticing how ingredients are slightly different, in both names and package sizes, from a few decades ago. Not sure if they're the same thing, but I used chicken broth, since I've never seen- nor could find anywhere- canned chicken bouillon. Also, couldn't find any 10oz packages of frozen peas. I'll just take a bit out when I get to that step.

To start, preheat the oven to 350°.

Now, we combine all of the ingredients, except for the peas, in a 1 1/2 quart casserole dish.

(The rice is somewhere in there, promise)

Next we cover the rice and stick it in the oven to bake for an hour, or until the rice is done.

Oh... wow...

That's a lot of rice. 






Erm... okay, so ten minutes before serving we stir in the thawed peas so that they're still crisp when the meal's ready.

And... where am I putting these peas? Cause I don't think they're gonna fit in there.

Have a feeling I'm gonna have a lot of leftovers with this one.

My thoughts:
Definitely not bad for a side. The flavor was light, almost on the bland side, but at least it wasn't overly salted like some recipes I've ran into. Unfortunately, like most of the rice recipes I've had that were cooked in broth, the rice is a little on the starchy side. I don't know if rinsing ahead of time would have helped much either, since I've done that with similar recipes and it didn't have an effect. Either way the texture could have been better. The peas were nice though. They were heated through by the time that everything was ready and retained a better bite than they do at times when they're cooked.

Appearance- 4
Odor/scent- 4
Texture- 3
Taste- 3

 Overall - 4/5 - Still a good recipe, though it might could use something to help pick up the flavor a bit.