Often in the pursuit of cooking “healthy,” flavor is the first thing to take a backseat. Rice is a great side dish for eating lighter as there are at least 467 dishes we can think of that would taste incredible paired with rice. Seriously. It has that range. And because rice is such a beautiful neutral, not only does it give a cook a ton of versatility in terms of what dishes you can serve it with, but it can also be adaptive to the tastes and flavor you and your family enjoy built into the rice itself!

Instead of boiling with just plain water, swapping broth or stock when making rice is a great way to infuse flavor into the body of the rice without doing any extra steps, which is a fun tip that you can apply to any rice recipe (such as biryani). If you wanted to do a twist on this recipe, you could easily swap out the lemon peel and fresh lemon juice for lime peel and fresh lime juice. The cook time of this recipe will be dependent a bit on the type of rice you’re using (Basmati rice is the resident favorite of the Spices, Inc. World Headquarters) but you should be mindful of the cooking time prescribed on whatever rice you’re using as you may need to make adjustments- the same goes for your liquid measurements.

Chef Jeff kept our Lemon Rice intentionally simple as it was paired with the amazingly flavorful and dynamic Za’atar Crusted Baked Chicken, but you can dial up the flavor in a few ways here. If you’d like something a little more savory you could use more garlic, or choose to throw in some herbs such as mint or thyme to create something with a few more notes. If you’re feeling lazy, either Hoppy Citrus Sucker Punch or Citrus Seasoning could also be used in place of the straight forward lemon peel to add something a little more complex in terms of flavor.