Rainbow Rice Recipe

The other day I bought some dried apricots to eat as a snack instead of reaching for chocolate or biscuits but even though I loved the sweetness of them I didn't really like that they were so chewy. I had never tried them before so I didn't know what to expect.

I'm trying out new foods and trying to be more healthy.
SO............... I didn't want the apricots to go to waste and looked up some recipes that I thought I might like to use them up and I found this one that seemed perfect.

It's called "Rainbow Rice".
I love rice salad dishes but I generally buy them ready made from the supermarket, I know, I'm fierce lazy but I honestly didn't know how to go about making them myself.
I'm so happy with how this turned out. It's SOOOOOOOO gorgeous and super easy to make!


SO let's get started

First of all let me apologise for the pics. I took them with my phone and some of them didn't come out too good. (Next time I do any cooking I'll take proper pics, I promise)

First of all here's a list of what you need:

Rice
1 Red Pepper
1 Carrot
1/4 Cucumber
8 Dried Apricots
Sunflower Seeds
Juice from 1/2 an Orange
Olive Oil

That's it.

As I said it's so supereasy to make that I probably don't need to do a step by step but here's goes anyway.

Ok so first boil your rice. I used boil in the bag rice because that's what I had. The original recipe tells you all the different rices you can use but as I had this in the press I said I'd try it out. I left the rice cool down and then put it into the plastic tub that I was going to be storing it in (because I hate lots of washing up :-})


Next chop up your red pepper into really small pieces and add it to the tub with the rice.


Grate your carrot.

Add to the tub with the rice and red pepper and mix.

Chop up your cucumber into small pieces (I used 1/4 of a cucumber. The recipe said 1/2 but I found 1/4 was enough for me. It's up to yourself)

Again add to the tub and mix.

Finely chop 8 dried apricots (the recipe says 6 but obviously the reason I was making this was to use up the apricots so I said I'd use 8) and then add them to the tub and mix.

Then get 2 tablespoons of sunflowers seeds (the recipe says you can use pumpkin seeds instead if you have those) and you need to toast them, so what I did was put them on a plate and added a little bit of olive oil and put them in the microwave until they went brown. Next time I make this I'm gonna use more than 2 tablespoonfuls because you wouldn't really notice the 2 tablespoonfuls.


Next you need to add the sunflower seeds to the tub with everything else and add in the juice of half an orange and about 1 tablespoonful of olive oil (the recipe says 2 tablespoons but I don't really like the taste of olive oil so I just put in 1 :-)).

Mix everything together in the tub and that's it.

Didn't I tell you it was really simple?

I had it with some fish and lots of salad and some sweet chili sauce (my fave).
Sorry the picture is crap!

Good thing about this is that it holds in the fridge too and is even nicer the day after making it because the orange juice makes the apricots plump up and they are yummy in it.
I still have more apricots so I'll definitely be making the recipe again and I think I might even add more than 8 to it the next time.

If you want to follow the original recipe I got it at GoodFood.com