How to Make Homemade Rice-A-Roni

Learn how to make homemade Rice-A-Roni, which is a delicious rice and pasta pilaf side dish. This tasty treat goes with almost any meal, but it is especially flavorful served alongside a chicken dish. (Rice-A-Roni® is a registered trademark of Golden Grain Company.)

My mom wasn’t much for buying prepackaged products, so I grew up eating homemade Rice-A-Roni. Nicknamed the “San Francisco Treat,” this recipe is one of my all-time favorite comfort foods. And I’m confident this homemade recipe will become one of your favorites too.

Why Make Rice-A-Roni Homemade?

It’s certainly easy to buy boxed foods at the grocery store, but the drawback is that those convenience foods often contain preservatives or chemicals that we don’t want in our traditional foods kitchens.

When you make food homemade, you can choose the ingredients you want to use. You can even change the quantity to add more or less of an ingredient, as well as include additional ingredients. For example, you can add black pepper to complement the turmeric in your homemade Rice-A-Roni.

Benefits of Adding Turmeric to Homemade Rice-A-Roni

Did you know that Rice-A-Roni contains turmeric? In addition to adding color to your dish, this spice contains curcumin, which is high in antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties. It’s perfect for this recipe and your traditional foods kitchen.

Black pepper boosts our body’s ability to increase turmeric’s anti-inflammatory benefits, so we definitely want to include black pepper in our homemade Rice-a-Roni.

If you want to add more turmeric into your diet, try turmeric tea and turmeric golden milk. They are both easy to make and tasty ways to enjoy this fragrant spice.

Which Cooking Fat to use?

When making homemade Rice-A-Roni, you have a number of options when it comes to choosing the fat you want to use when you brown the pasta and rice. I used ghee in my video recipe, but you can also use olive oil or a combination of butter and olive oil.

However, if you have some rendered chicken fat (also known as schmaltz), you are in business! Schmaltz is delicious and adds the perfect flavor component to this side dish.

Homemade Rice-A-Roni Flavor Options

When making homemade Rice-A-Roni, you have a lot of options for flavor. In my recipe video, I use chicken bone broth to give my dish a chicken flavor, which is also one of the flavor options for the store-bought Rice-A-Roni.

You can change this recipe to use beef broth or beef bone broth to give your dish a beef flavor. You can also use a vegetable broth along with olive oil as your fat to turn this dish into a vegetarian treat!

If you want to make homemade chicken or beef bone broth, I show you how in the following tutorial videos.

Looking for Spaghetti Already Broken Up?

When I was shopping at Aldi, I found a fabulous packaged pasta product that contained thin spaghetti already broken up for you! It’s cut Fideo from their Pagasa brand, and it’s made with 100% semolina flour, which is always an ingredient of good pasta.

It’s easy to make homemade Rice-A-Roni by breaking up thin spaghetti. However, being able to use packages of already cut thin spaghetti that’s ready to toss into your frying pan as is, you will literally have your dish ready in minutes!

You can learn more about Fideo and the other foods I found during my shopping trip in my Top 10 Foods You Need to Buy Now at Aldi video.

Cuisinart Cooktop

Whenever I make a video using my Cuisinart Countertop Burner, I get so many questions about it. Yes, I love this cooktop! It’s so handy, especially when I need to use my main stovetop for other projects. And it is great to use when I am home canning using my water bath canner.

More Easy Meals

In addition to making homemade Rice-A-Roni, try making the following easy meal recipes to help stretch your food budget and use wholesome ingredients. If you make homemade sloppy joes, be sure to make homemade hamburger buns to go with them. They’re easy to make, and again, you control the ingredients, unlike the store-bought bread sold in plastic.

How to Make a Chicken Dinner

Homemade Rice-A-Roni is the perfect side dish for chicken dinner, and if you’re looking for a chicken recipe, here are a few you can choose from. I love making roast chickens, but for a fall-off-the-bone chicken recipe where you can make chicken broth at the same time, give Praised Chicken a try.

Start Your Traditional Foods Journey

Part of my passion for keeping traditional cooking skills alive—in addition to my online cooking school on YouTube—is writing cookbooks. My first book, The Modern Pioneer Cookbook published by Penguin Random House (PRH), is full of my traditional foods recipes that show you how to create a traditional foods kitchen.

Be sure to order your copy of my bestselling book, The Modern Pioneer Cookbook, to start your traditional foods journey. And stay tuned for my next cookbook that will be published by PRH in 2025!

Download Your Free 36-Page Pantry List

As you create your traditional foods kitchen, I am here to help you! For an extensive list of the traditional foods you can make and purchase to stock your pantry, be sure to download my free 36-page Traditional Foods Pantry List. This comprehensive eBook is full of links to recipe videos, helpful articles, and more!

Join the Traditional Foods Kitchen Academy

Are you looking for more traditional foods videos? If so, I invite you to join the Traditional Foods Kitchen Academy. Members of this optional paid YouTube community get access to exclusive videos, live streams, and other members-only perks. Plus, your YouTube comments include a special members-only badge.

In the following members-only video, I talk about Digging for Victory: Land Girls and Food Shortages in WWII.

Stay in Touch with Mary’s Nest

1. Subscribe to My YouTube Channel for Traditional Foods Videos (Free) - When you subscribe, be sure to click on the notification bell that will let you know each time I upload a new video.
2. Subscribe to Mary’s Traditional Foods Newsletter (Free) - Get a free 36-page eBook for signing up: How to Stock Your Essential Traditional Foods Four-Corners Pantry.
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4. Order The Modern Pioneer Cookbook (Optional Paid) - Get a printed book of Mary's nourishing recipes from a Traditional Foods Kitchen. This bestselling cookbook is published by Penguin Random House with their DK imprint.

I look forward to having you join me in my Texas Hill Country Kitchen!

Shop for items used in this blog post or video

Favorite Rice-A-Roni Making Supplies

• Hand Grater
• Microplane Grater
• 10-Piece Glass Bowl Set
• Scanpan

Favorite Kitchen Supplies

• Favorite Aprons
• Spice Grinder
• Countertop Burner (On my kitchen island in many recipe videos.)
• Handheld Vacuum Sealing System
• Vacuum Lids
• Whisk
• Silica Gel Packets (Helps keep moisture from building up in your mix)
• Cast Iron Dutch Oven
• 8-Quart Slow-Cooker
• Fat Separator (Clever kitchen device to help you decant bone broth)
• Flour Sack Towels
• pH Strips (Helps you check on the acidity of your vinegar)

Amazon Shop and Shopping Guide

• Visit Mary’s Nest Amazon Shop
• Visit my Shopping Guide page
  Get up to 15% off for stocking your Traditional Foods Pantry and equipping your Modern Pioneer Kitchen, including discounts from US Wellness Meats, Farmhouse Teas, Lehman's, Masontops, Cultures for Health, Survival Garden Seeds, Redmond Real Salt, Plan to Eat, and More!

Recommended Reading

• The Modern Pioneer Cookbook
• Nourishing Traditions
• Food Storage 101 Where do I begin? (Cookin’ With Home Storage)