viral cripsy rice salad with black beans, sweet potato and coconut
Viral Crispy Rice Salad, which everyone, the two revising teenagers, the tween and myself thought was completely delicious! I’ve seen many versions of this (it is viral after all!), but our take has sweet potatoes, black beans and coconut, the combination of texture and different tastes, sweet, sharp, herby with the toasted nutty rice was incredible.
The strangest of school holidays, feels like a marathon of revision for my eldest daughter, some revision for my middle daughter which has meant my youngest daughter Dot has spent quite a bit of the week in the kitchen cooking with me. A good thing.
This lunch was so good. Dot said it is now one of her “top 5” so this is very high praise indeed.
INGREDIENTS
Cooked basmati rice, we had about 300g
3 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and diced small
300g black beans, drained
4 tbsp neutral oil, we used cold pressed rapeseed
1 tbsp sesame oil
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp (or more to taste) crispy chilli oil
2 tbsp desiccated coconut
4 spring onions, washed and thinly sliced
Big bunch of mint, roughly chopped
Big bunch of coriander, roughly chopped
2 limes, juiced
Fresh green chilli, thinly sliced, to taste
Hot sauce, to taste
METHOD
Have your rice already cooked, warm or cold, it doesn’t matter, ours was still warm.
In a large baking tray, mix the rice with the 3 tbsp oil, sesame oil, chilli oil and soy sauce, coat well and season with an extra pinch of salt. Bake this in a very hot oven (mine was at 200C and is not fan) for as long as it takes to get some good colour and for some of the rice grains to turn crispy, this takes longer than you think, our rice was in the oven for around 40 mins, and I stirred over it half way through the cook time. Basically, cook the rice until is is very crispy, see reel!
In a separate baking dish, roast the sweet potatoes with 1tbsp oil and a big pinch of salt until tender and nicely caramelised, around 20 minutes, depending on how small you dice your sweet potatoes.
5 minutes before your rice is finished crisping / cooking, add the desiccated coconut to the rice and toast for the final 5 mins along with the crispy rice.
Remove the rice and coconut from the oven, add the cooked sweet potatoes, black beans, all the herbs, finely sliced spring onions, squeeze over with the lime juice, add the chopped green chilli to taste, with extra hot sauce for those in need. Stir well to coat and eat!