Making Thai Food At Home? Make Rice That’s So Much More Than An Afterthought.
We love to make Asian food—especially Thai-inspired dishes—at home, and we’re always trying to get just a little bit closer to mimicking our favorite Thai restaurant dishes. Recently we realized that one of the barriers to being as blissed out when eating our homemade Thai food was the quality of the rice we were making. Plain white rice is just not that exciting. In the same amount of time it takes to make plain rice, we realized we could whip up a batch of coconut rice! Major, major lightbulb moment. Our coconut rice recipe yields a steamy potful of slightly creamy, delicately sweet rice that’s just ideal for serving with the big Asian flavors—think fiery curry spice, and savory fish sauce—that we love so much. And for even more delicious rice recipes, check out our lemon rice, cilantro-lime rice and our jeweled rice.
What’s In Coconut Rice?
We play up the natural milky sweetness of canned coconut milk by adding just a pinch of sugar to the mix, because that ever-so-slight hint of cool sweetness is just the greatest thing on earth when paired with spicy, super savory Asian flavors. But with just a few ingredients, we’ve managed to keep things pretty darn simple. Here’s everything you’ll need to make this easy coconut rice recipe:
- Canned coconut milk.
- Sugar.
- Salt.
- Long-grain white rice.
How To Make Coconut Rice
Coconut rice only takes about 20 minutes from start to finish, so you can usually plan to cook up whatever you’d like to serve it with while it simmers on the stove. Here’s how to make coconut rice!
- Rinse the rice. Don’t skip this quick, easy step—rinsing the rice before you cook it washes away some of the starch that’s on the surface of the rice, which is a good thing in this case. It’ll help ensure that your coconut rice is nice and fluffy, instead of mushy or gummy.
- Make your simmering liquid. Combine the canned coconut milk, sugar, salt and water in a pot and bring it to a boil
- Add the rice! Stir to combine and then let the liquid return to a boil.
- Lid on! Crank the heat down to low and simmer the rice gently in the covered pot for 18 minutes.
- Done! Give the rice a fluff and let it sit for a few minutes. Then it’s ready to eat.
Tools You’ll Need:
- Fine Mesh Strainer.
- Can opener.
- Small pot with a lid.
- Fork for fluffing.
Our Favorite Thai-Inspired Recipes to Serve With Coconut Rice
We serve this fluffy, flavorful rice with SO many things—when we’re really feeling virtuous we love it with this healthy, colorful salmon bowl—but these four Thai recipes might just be our very favorite.
A Major Upgrade, Right?
Coconut rice really takes our takeout-at-home efforts to new heights, and we hope you love it as much as we do! If you give it a try, let us know! Snap a photo and show us what you served your coconut rice with! Then tag us on Instagram using @themodernproper and #themodernproper so we can see. Happy eating!
