Sunday, December 16, 2007

Coconut Curry Rice With Shrimp

Last week, I wrote a post on my family site about food preparation places like Let's Dish, at which you prepare and freeze 4, 8 or 12 meals. My husband and I had fun, and so far, we have eaten two of the meals we prepared. The food is tasty, so I decided to try and deconstruct the recipes so our readers can try them at home.

Prep To Freeze: 10 minutes
Prep/Total Time To Cook: 25 minutes
Yield: 6 servings

one pound peeled and deveined shrimp
one cup instant brown rice
one cup canned garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained
1 cup baby peas
1 cup baby corn
2-3 tablespoons vegetable base
1 cinnamon stick
3 TBSP dried chilies
1TBSP curry powder
1/2-1 cup shredded coconut
1/4 stick butter or margarine

In a gallon size freezer bag, combine all ingredients. Seal bag and turn to coat. Be sure to squeeze all the air out of the bag. Label with the date and contents, then place bag into another freezer bag. Freeze flat for easier storage.

To Cook: Place contents of bag into a skillet and add 1 1/2 cups water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes, or until shrimp is cooked through and rice is tender.

Tips and Tricks
The amount of curry powder and chilies will depend on how spicy you like your food. Add more or less to customize the dish to suit your family's tastes. Vegetable base is usually found with the bouillon in major grocery stores, but you can try making your own with vegetable bouillon, dried parsley and cornstarch. If you don't have whole cinnamon sticks, add a dash of ground cinnamon. The instructions said to leave the dish frozen, but it was a huge, hard block, so I left it on the countertop for about half an hour to soften up. This dish makes a lot once the rice cooks up, so use either a very large skillet or a wok. Place the contents of the bag in the skillet, then add the water to the empty bag, so you use all the spices.
Make It Healthier
Use low sodium base or bouillon.
How Kids Can Help
Kids can add the rice mixture to the skillet and measure the water.

Nutrition Facts
One serving equals:
Calories 358
Fat Cal. 127
Total Fat 14g
Sat. Fat 4.9g
Trans Fat 0g
Cholest. 72mg
Sodium 404mg
Total Carb 29.3g
Dietary Fiber 1.5g
Protein 28.4g

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wonderful recipe! My friends and I have a meal swap group. We no longer wanted to struggle alone with the age old question "What's for Dinner?". We just started a blog for our freezer meal group. To see our recipes go to http://freezersupperswappers.wordpress.com/ . Hope this helpful to you.