Cooking Handicaps and Green Bean and Rice Casserole

Do you want to know something about me that is really strange?  Maybe not really strange, but it boggles my mind and my husband's too.  I can't cook rice to save my life.  Yes, it's true.  Whether it's regular rice cooked in a pot, instant rice or boil in the bag rice, if I'm involved, it's a disaster.  Either it comes out gummy or it's cooked on the outside and hard in the middle.  The only way I can cook rice is in a rice cooker.

A.J. has told me, "Katherine, you could take an old shoe, make taste good.  I don't understand why you can't cook rice!".  ~Me either, sheesh~.  My mother stood over me one time to see what I was doing wrong.  She said I did everything exactly how she did and even she couldn't understand why I had a gummy mess.

As most mothers do, she figured out a way for her child to overcome this handicap and gave me a rice cooker for Christmas.  Seriously, she really did.  For about 20 years that little rice cooker turned out many perfect pots of  rice.  It drowned like a lot of my small kitchen applicances from Katrina flooding.  A rice cooker was not on the top of the list of necessities that had to be replaced.  Besides, the brand I had was no long made and I was afraid of buying a rice cooker that made suckier rice than I did.

Finally, after two years of  either eating my poor attempt at rice or buying plain white rice from Chinese restaurants, I researched and made "the" purchase.  So now my rice loving family has one less worry on their minds and I have one less stressor in my life.

If you have picky eaters that love rice, here's an evil plot!  Lace their rice with bacon, cheese and vegetables.  The won't be able to resist.

Cook 2 cups of white rice.  Brown four strips of bacon, the real stuff.  Drain, cool, crumble and set aside.  Reserve 1 tablespoon of bacon grease in the skillet and melt 1 tablespoon of butter over medium-high heat.

Brown 1/2 cup of chopped onions, 1 can of drained cut green beans and 1/2 cup of mushrooms.  I used some baby bellas I had in the fridge.  A note about the green beans.  I used the cut beans because you want them to be approximately bite size.  They are also sturdier in the skillet than the French-style green beans.  Season with salt and pepper, remove from heat once the onions start to wilt.

Place the cooked rice in a prepared casserole dish and pour the green beans over the rice.  Gently fold in the green beans into the rice.

Add 1 cup of sour cream, 1 tablespoon of Worcestershire.

1 tablespoon of hot sauce (optional).

1 tablespoon lemon juice.  Fold and evenly combine all ingredients.

Sprinkle the crumbled bacon over the top.

Complete the garnishing with Panko crumbs and Asiago cheese for a salty crunchy top!

Bake at the universal oven temperature of 350 degrees for about 20 minutes.

So tell me, what is your cooking handicap?

Have a fantastic weekend!  Happy Father's Day!