This bright flavorful turmeric yellow rice recipe is quick and easy to make as a side dish. A great accomplishment for a chicken shawarma bowl, curries, seafood, or any grilled meat dish. Add color to your meal and brighten your weeknight dinner with flavorful rice.
Rice side dishes are tasty, inexpensive, and versatile. No matter what you are planning for dinner, there’s a simple, humble rice dish that’ll help shine the meal, like rice pilaf, seasoned rice, cilantro lime rice, or Spanish rice.
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Why yellow rice recipe works
- Turmeric is a miraculous spice! Apart from its anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant properties turmeric helps in skin rejuvenation, boosts brain function, fights heart disease, arthritis, irritable bowel, and more. Including small quantities in your everyday meals will boost your health.
- Turmeric adds peppery warm flavors to rice.
- You’ll need simple pantry ingredients
- It’s quick and easy to make.
- A great side dish that can be served with curries, roast chicken, seafood, and grilled meat.
Ingredients
Here’s what you’ll need-
Ingredients additions & substitutions
Depending on the cuisine you are trying to approach you can add additional spices to get the flavors of the particular country.
Some of the ingredients that can be included in the recipe are:
- Substitute turmeric with saffron
- Ground cumin
- Ground coriander
- Few golden raisins (for added texture and sweetness) – for Cuban touch
- Sliced jalapeno – to get to Mexican touch
- Curry powder – Indian style
- Cayenne pepper and smoked paprika – to add heat and extra kick to the rice
- Fresh or frozen peas, carrots or corn can be added
- You can add chicken.
- Feel free to add canned beans(drained) to the dish.
What is yellow rice?
It’s a traditional rice dish in cuisines like Indian, Spanish, Cuban, Indonesian, South African, and other cuisine. Generally long grain white rice is cooked with spice like turmeric or saffron, a popular side dish with mild flavors. Turmeric gives out somewhat peppery, warm, and slightly bitter flavors to the rice making it not only delicious but also with many healing properties.
What kind of rice is best to use?
You need rice that has less starch, so you get non-sticky rice once cooked. Long-grain rice is the best choice. Any long-grain rice like –
- basmati rice,
- long grain brown rice,
- extra-long grain white rice
- Jasmine white rice
- or brown rice are the ones you should be picking.
Step-by-step instructions
Step 1: Heat olive oil in a deep bottom pan on medium heat. Add rinsed rice to oil and give a quick stir.
Step 2: Add onion powder, garlic powder and ginger powder. Sauté it for 30 seconds.
It’s important to sauté spice powders in oil to help in bloom and enhance the taste. Adding dry spice powders over rice instead of adding it to hot oil helps the spices bloom without getting burnt.
Step 3: Now add turmeric powder, salt, and pepper to taste.
Step 4: Keep stirring for 30 seconds.
Step 5: Reduce heat to low. Pour in stock or water. Stir well.
Step 6: Cover the pot with a lid and let it cook for 15 minutes. Note cooking time mentioned here is for long-grain white rice. If you switch to long-grain brown rice you have to increase the liquid and time to cook.
Step 7: Remove from stove, and stand 10 minutes with lid on.
Step 8: After 10 minutes, open the lid. Add butter to rice. Butter is optional, but it helps in keeping rice soft and adds a rich taste to the dish. Using a silicon spatula fluff rice stirring butter into it.
Garnish with cilantro or parsley.
Serve as a side dish with curries, seafood, or any grilled meat.
Variations
Depending on the cuisine you are trying to approach you can add additional spices to get the flavors of the particular country.
Some of the ingredients that can be included in a yellow turmeric rice recipe are:
- Substitute turmeric with saffron.
- Ground cumin.
- Ground coriander.
- A few golden raisins (for added texture and sweetness) – for a Cuban touch.
- Sliced jalapeno – to get to Mexican touch.
- Curry powder – Indian style.
- Cayenne pepper and smoked paprika – to add heat and extra kick to the rice.
- Fresh or frozen peas, carrots or corn can be added.
- Add chicken to rice.
- Feel free to add canned beans(drained) to the dish.
Tips for best turmeric rice
- Have trust and rinse the rice. It helps in removing excess starch, prevent rice from sticking to each other, cooks rice perfectly with every grain separated.
- Sauté rinsed rice and spice powders. Sautéing spice powders helps it bloom making the dish tasty.
- Use stock for more flavorful rice. Chicken or vegetable stock can be used.
- Once cooking is done, Remove from the stove, and stand for 10 minutes with the lid on. This will ensure the cooking process of rice is complete. If you try to stir the rice as soon as it’s cooked, you’ll find the surface of the grain wet and the inside undercooked.
- Butter is optional but highly recommended for rich buttery rice.
Storage
Leftover rice can be stored in a container covered tightly with a lid in the refrigerator for 3-4 days.
For longer storage, store turmeric rice in freezer-safe containers and freeze for up to 3 months.
Reheat rice in the microwave or stovetop. If needed add 1 to 2 teaspoon water while reheating to revive rice.
Recipe FAQs
Yes, you can. Long-grain brown rice will need extra liquids and a longer cooking time than long-grain white rice. Use a 1:2 ratio of long-grain brown rice to liquid ratio. Also, cooking long-grain brown rice will take 23 to 25 minutes depending on its quality.
The debate whether to rinse rice or not; never seems to settle.
If you are my regular reader, you know I advocate rinsing rice first before cooking in almost all my rice recipes like steamed rice, and cilantro lime rice.
There are two reasons to rinse –
To remove excess surface starch from rice hence it isn’t too sticky once cooked.
Sometimes when I buy rice from packets, I notice debris in the rice. Rinsing helps to get rid of it.
Having said that, I do sometimes cook rice without rinsing and I get nicely cooked fluffy rice. It all depends on the rice-to-liquid ratio and adjusting that to cook fluffier rice.
I leave it up to you to decide if you want to rinse rice or not before cooking.
If you decide to rinse, place rice in a fine mesh strainer or a bowl and rinse it several times. Rinse by scrubbing rice gently with your fingertips.
Yes, it is.
Turmeric is an ancient wonderful healing spice. Apart from its anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant properties turmeric is used for skin rejuvenation. It also aids in depression, boosts brain function, fights heart disease, arthritis, irritable bowel, and more. It’s truly a miraculous spice! Including small quantities in your everyday meals will boost your health.
Store-bought yellow rice mix is loaded with MSG and artificial flavoring agents. Why go for chemical-loaded rice when you can easily make at home with a few basic pantry ingredients? Try it once; you’ll never want to buy boxed stuff anymore!
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📋 Yellow Rice Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 cup long grain rice white or brown
- 1 ¾ cup stock vegetable stock or chicken stock
- 2 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 tablespoon butter optional
- 1 ½ teaspoon onion powder can use white onion, minced
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder can use fresh minced garlic
- 1 teaspoon ginger powder can use fresh minced ginger
- 1 teaspoon ground turmeric
- Salt & pepper to taste
- Cilantro or parsley
Instructions
- Rinse rice. Place rice in fine mesh strainer or a bowl and rinse it for several times. Rinse by scrubbing rice gently with finger tips.
- Heat olive oil in deep bottom pan on medium heat. Add rinsed rice to oil and give a quick stir.
- It’s important to saute spice powders in oil to help in bloom. Sauteing spice powders also enhances the taste of the dish. I do not saute spice powders in hot oil directly, but rather add it along with rice or other ingredients like onion, garlic. That way spices won’t get burnt but bloom.
- Add onion powder, ginger powder, garlic powder to rice. Saute it for 30 seconds.
- Later add turmeric powder, salt and pepper to taste. Saute for 30 seconds more.
- Reduce heat to low. Pour in stock or water. Stir well.
- Cover the pot with a lid and let it cook for 15 minutes. Note cooking time mentioned here is for long-grain white rice. If you switch to long-grain brown rice you have to increase the liquid and time to cook.
- Remove from stove, stand 10 minutes with lid on.
- After 10 minutes, open lid. Add butter to rice. Butter is optional, but it helps in keeping rice soft and adds rich taste to the dish.
- Using silicon spatula fluff rice stirring butter into it.
- Garnish with cilantro or parsley.
- Serve as side dish with curries, seafood or any grilled meat.
Video
Notes
- Have trust and rinse the rice. It helps in removing excess starch, prevents rice from sticking to each other, and cooks rice perfectly with every grain separated.
- Sauté rinsed rice and spice powders. Sautéing spice powders help it bloom making the dish tasty.
- Use stock for more flavorful rice. Chicken or vegetable stock can be used.
- Once cooking is done, Remove from the stove, and stand for 10 minutes with the lid on. This will ensure the cooking process of rice is complete. If you try to stir the rice as soon as it’s cooked, you’ll find the surface of the grain wet and inside undercooked.
- Butter is optional but highly recommended for rich buttery rice.
Nutrition
Created by Jyothi Rajesh
Thank you for stopping by.
I’m Jyothi Rajesh (Jo for short) and i’m the founder of the food blog, Curry Trail where I share my culinary Adventures. I live in Bangalore, India. I’m a mom of two beautiful kids. My passion is creating and sharing delicious and easy recipes for the home cook. I have been blogging since 2007 and many of my recipes have appeared in both online and print publications over the years. Learn more about Jyothi Rajesh.
Comments & Reviews
Ashley says
The rice turned out fine but I did want to let you know that your instructions were confusing because on the #7 instruction it says to let it cool instead of cook. Otherwise everything went smoothly.
Jyothi Rajesh says
Sorry for the confusion with the typo Ashley. Corrected it now, thank you for pointing out the typo.
Monique Bortey says
I’ve made this recipe twice and I love it. First time I used fresh ginger. Second time I used powdered ginger. Both times the rice came out delicious and I used the bitter at the end as well. Easy to make and flavorful.
Jyothi Rajesh says
So glad you loved the recipe Monique. Thank you so much for sharing your feedback.
Sarah says
Can this rice be frozen?
Jyothi Rajesh says
Yes you can
Ada G. says
This recipe was excellent!
I will admit I forgot to rinse my rice. After momentary panic and realizing I didn’t have enough to start over, I very lightly toasted the rice in the oil, adding the spices once the rice was just barely starting to show some golden edges. (Think of those packaged mixes). The rest went according to recipe, though I used the amount of water indicated by my package of rice rather than the larger amount called for here. It was delicious, the rice was fluffy, that extra butter was perfect and I will make this again for sure. My only change going forward will be to cut back a touch on the ginger, personal preference.