This is my absolute favorite recipe on rice. It is simple but extremely tasty. Sometimes I want to eat only this rice and nothing extra, it is so satisfying. It is basically rice with chopped carrots, but with a twist. The rice tastes quite sweet from the caramelized carrots (no added sugar), so all children love it. Even very picky small children love this dish. Quite often the meal ends with the picky child refusing to eat anything else except this rice.

We served this rice at a vegan dinner together with shredded mushrooms in BBQ sauce, and some amazing beans with dito salad. We will later post the full recipe. One of our dinner guests came from Iran. In Iran they cook amazing rice and other very tasty dishes, and as rice experts they are rightfully very picky about rice. At our dinner, the only child liked the rice very much of course, and when our Iranian guest took a 2nd plate of food, she filled her plate with only this rice and nothing else. That must be considered as a high compliment.

This is a traditional rice dish that is eaten in several countries in Central Asia, for instance Kazakhstan. And now I want to share this recipe with you, so you can serve it to your picky children.

The base recipe with only carrots, is for very picky children, it has a very clean sweet taste which children prefer. This version is the one I grew up with.

If you have teenagers or adults for dinner, you can try the version with a more complex flavor, which is the one I prefer today. 🙂

You can cook this rice with only onions instead. Just do the Soffritto with only onions. The onion rice version has a very sweet yummy taste too. Try both versions? But in my experience, children don’t like the onion version, they prefer the sweeter carrot rice version.

As earlier, the secret to this dish is the Soffritto, which must be cooked according to my recipe. Or you will fail this dish.

[recipe title=”The best vegan carrot rice that children love” servings=”10″ preptime=”30 min” cooktime=”1h 30m” difficulty=”Easy” rating=”★★★★★” description=”The best vegan carrot rice that children love”]

[recipe-ingredients]
Vegan carrot rice that picky children love
– 1 kg carrots
– 6 dl basmati (or jasmine) rice
– 9 dl water
– 1 dl olive oil
Optional enhancements for adults
– 1 kg onions
– salt or 0.5 dl fish sauce
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[recipe-directions]
1. Use the carrots to make the Soffritto according to this recipe.
1.5. Optional enhanced adult version: In addition to the carrots, add onions + salt (or fish sauce) to make the Soffritto.
2. To cook the rice, I use the rice cooking instructions found at the bottom of this link named “Quick and simple Basmati rice”.
IMPORTANT: When you add the rice and lightly stir, the water should turn golden and almost look like you added saffron. If the water did not turn golden, you failed with the soffritto.

[/recipe-directions]
[/recipe]