Michelle Obama’s Recipe For Red Rice

Michelle Obama shares her family’s cherished recipe for red rice, a dish rooted in her South Carolina heritage. Reflecting on how she was influenced by all the things that she saw and experienced in that little old kitchen, she says, “The conversations around my household about fairness and honesty and how to be a person in this world, how to treat others, the compassion that all happened around the table, either by spoken word or story or just watching my father pay the bills every week at that table. The humor that I have, my ability to tell stories and laugh at myself and laugh at the world, it happened at that table, those stories happen there in that little bitty kitchen.”

Ingredients:

1 cup of long grain white rice

1 chopped white onion

1 ½ cup of tomato juice

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 teaspoon pepper

1 dash of tabasco

1 cup crumbled bacon

¼ tablespoon bacon drippings

500 gm chopped shrimp

500 gm sausage roll

Method:

Cook the bacon until crispy, then set it aside and save the drippings.

Cook the shrimp separately, either by steaming or sautéing, and set them aside.

Crumble and crisp up the sausage, drain the grease, and set it aside as well.

Sauté the chopped onion in the reserved bacon drippings until golden brown, then set it aside.

In a large saucepan, combine the uncooked rice, tomato juice, salt, pepper, and Tabasco sauce according to package instructions.

Once the rice is cooked, mix in the cooked shrimp, crumbled bacon, and sausage.

Stir everything together well and enjoy your delicious dish!

(From Audible Original podcast ‘Your Mama’s Kitchen.’)