At first glance, green rice is a bit jarring. It’s not a natural pigmented rice. It’s not a forgotten recipe. It’s a way we can easily incorporate veggies into our side dishes. It’s amazing how we take an untraditional pesto with a punch of fresh spinach leaves, fresh parsley, olive oil, lemon juice, and salt and mix it into cooked white rice to make it a spectacularly flavorful side dish. You can add crushed nuts on top or feta cheese or even more crunchy vegetables. If you cook, you need this!

Do you get a lot of veggies into your meals? I, for one, get very hard on myself for not eating mindfully enough when it comes to dinner. I always end up with lots of leftover spinach and parsley as a chef, and I figure why not try find a way to repurpose these ingredients in a way that serves me better. It works even better when you have leftover rice to use. This works with ALL leftover rice.

Rice LOVES to be reheated. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried rice cold, but it gets very tough. When you reheat rice you re-tenderize it and it helps to open the rice to all new possibilities. This is where fried rice lives. If we dive deeper into fried rice it’s essentially a salty sauce mixed with cold rice and chopped vegetables to make a new dish. That’s what we’re doing with this. Make a pesto (the salty sauce) and mix it with cold rice to make a new dish. It reminds me of a more delicious rice pilaf.

Do you have leftover white rice from take-out or a dinner you made the day before? This technique needs to be in your toolbelt not only for your belly, but also for your wallet. Rice is particularly cheap to make, but I find it gets wasted a lot at home. Not anymore!

Serve up this rice with grilled meats or braised dishes like lemon chicken where the sauce amplifies the rice even more. I can’t stop thinking of ways to eat and make this, but now it’s your turn to make this your own way. Let me know what you think!