Fire Roasted Corn & Rice with Chimichurri

I promise in due time we will have some great recipes coming forth. However, every once in a while you prepare something so simple and seemingly innocuous, that it shocks you when you realize how something simple can be made to taste amazing. Last night was one of those moments.

As a side dish to some excellent seafood cakes my wife had prepared, I decided to create a simple rice dish, composed of brown rice and fire roasted corn. I would love to go into detail about how I roasted the corn in their respective husk right on top of my Gaucho Grill, infusing it with smoke from burning mesquite. (It’s been done before and it’s great.) But I cannot tell a lie. I did not. Time was not on my side. It was late and I was hungry. I used Trader Joe’s frozen Brown Rice and Trader Joe’s frozen Roasted Corn. That’s right, I said it…frozen!

Once the TJ’s combo was popping and sizzling in my saute pan, I did what every wanne-be chef does, and decided it was time to spice things up. Keeping it simple and quick, I turned to our go to sauce of choice, Che Amigo Argentine Chimichurri. A couple of ladled tablespoons later and I had just discovered that something amazing can be created in about 5 minutes.

The blend of the garlic and spices in the chimichurri, combined with the tang in the vinegar, gave much needed flavor to the brown rice and blended harmoniously with the sweet smokiness of the roasted corn cooked to perfection on a parrilla grill. It was really an amazing side dish and will now be a standby in our kitchen. And next time, if time permits, the corn roasting, will come from my grill. (No offense to Trader Joe’s. Their corn is pretty tasty.)

Check out the other articles on our blog to learn more about asado cooking techniques and traditional Latin recipes, including several other Argentinean vegetable dishes and sides for your next asado meal.