Vegan Baked Rice Recipe

Baked rice with vegetables is a typical meal of the gastronomy of the Valencian Community and consists of cooking baked rice in broth with chickpeas, chorizo, black pudding and other meat products, potatoes, tomato and other vegetables. This recipe is a vegan version of this traditional dish and in its preparation we are going to replace the meat with seitan, a source of healthy vegetable protein without cholesterol. This vegan baked rice is a very tasty dish and, if you are a rice lover, you are going to love this different way of cooking it that I share.

Ingredients to make Vegan Baked Rice:

1. 240 grams of rice
2. 500 milliliters of vegetable broth
3. 200 grams of seitan
4. 100 grams of cooked chickpeas
5. 1 large potato
6. 1 tomato
7. 2 cloves of garlic
8. 2 bay leaves
9. 1 teaspoon rosemary
10. 1 teaspoon of thyme
11. 2 tablespoons of olive oil
12. 1 teaspoon salt
13. 1 carrot
14. ½ red bell pepper

How to make Vegan Baked Rice:

• Peel the potato and cut it into slices. Heat a frying pan with oil or a griddle and brown the potato slices on both sides.
• Cut the carrot into slices, the pepper into strips, the seitan or vegetable meat into cubes and the garlic into slices.
• Preheat the oven to 250ºC and heat the vegetable broth in a pot.
• In a frying pan or paella pan, heat a splash of oil and lightly fry all the vegetables and the seitan.
• Then add the rice, chickpeas, bay leaf, rosemary, thyme and salt. Stir well and let cook for 5 minutes. If you use a frying pan, transfer the rice to a clay pot or oven tray. If you use a paella pan you can also use it to bake the vegan Valencian baked rice.
• Place the potato and tomato slices on top of the rice, or you can cut the tomato like a flower and place it in the center. If you wish, you can also place a head of garlic in the center as is traditionally done.
• Pour the hot broth into the tray and add the vegetable baked rice. Let it cook for 20 minutes, remove the tray from the oven, cover it with aluminum foil and let the rice rest and finish cooking.
• Divide the vegan baked rice into portions and serve.