What Can I Make with Pea and Rice?
Peas and rice turn up together on four continents, and frozen peas are genuinely the right choice. The strongest match is 20-Min Risi e Bisi with Crispy Pancetta, and Custrd also matched peas and carrot pulao, Spanish seafood paella, Vietnamese fried rice and arroz con pollo. Six tested recipes.
Top recipe20-Min Risi e Bisi with Crispy Pancetta
Venetian spring rice and peas with pancetta, finished with lemon and fresh herbs. A one-pan weeknight dinner that tastes like risotto but cooks in under 20 minutes.
Ingredients
- •pancetta or bacon, diced
- •leek, white and light green parts, sliced thin
- •arborio rice
- •frozen peas
- •chicken broth
- •lemon (zested + juiced)
Steps
- 1Render pancetta in a large skillet over medium heat until crispy edges, ~4 minutes. Remove to a plate.
- 2Add leek to the skillet with pancetta fat and sauté until soft, ~3 minutes.
- 3Stir in rice and toast for 1 minute, stirring constantly until edges look translucent.
- 4Pour in broth, bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low and simmer uncovered for 12 minutes.
- 5Stir in peas and cooked pancetta, simmer 2 minutes more until peas are warm and rice is creamy.
- 6Finish with lemon zest and juice, season with salt and pepper, and serve with lemon slices on the side.
Why this works
Peas and rice is one of those combinations that seems to have been invented independently everywhere — risi e bisi in Venice, pulao in India, paella in Valencia, arroz con pollo across Latin America, fried rice throughout East and Southeast Asia. The reason is partly nutritional: rice is low in the amino acid lysine and peas are high in it, so the two together make a more complete protein than either alone, which mattered a great deal long before anyone knew why.
The cooking reason is texture and sweetness. Rice is soft, uniform and mild. Peas are sweet, and they pop. A bowl of rice with peas through it has variation in every mouthful that plain rice does not, and the small hit of sugar keeps a large plate of starch from becoming monotonous.
The single most useful thing to know here is that frozen peas are usually better than fresh. Peas begin converting their sugar into starch within hours of picking, so most supermarket fresh peas are already noticeably starchy and dull. Frozen peas are blanched and frozen within a few hours of harvest, which locks the sugar in. Unless you are shelling them straight from the garden, frozen is the better ingredient.
Timing follows from that. Frozen peas are already cooked and only need warming, so they go in during the last thirty to sixty seconds. Add them early and they turn grey, wrinkled and mealy, losing both the colour and the pop that were the point of adding them.
Custrd matches the peas and rice you have against tested recipes and shows what else each one needs.
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Open the recipe finder →Frequently asked
Frozen or fresh peas?
Frozen, in almost every case. Peas start turning their sugar into starch within hours of being picked, so supermarket fresh peas are usually starchy and dull by the time you buy them. Frozen peas are blanched within hours of harvest, which locks the sweetness in.
When should peas go into rice?
Right at the end — thirty to sixty seconds is enough. Frozen peas are already cooked and only need heating through. Adding them earlier turns them grey and mealy and destroys the pop and colour that made them worth including in the first place.
Why do peas and rice appear in so many cuisines?
Partly nutrition and partly economics. Rice is low in lysine and peas are high in it, so together they form a more complete protein than either alone — useful when rice is the bulk of a diet. Peas are also cheap, store well dried or frozen, and add sweetness and colour to a plain grain.
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