Fridge clean-out dinner winner

This week…

I messed up my Spanish rice.

I was attempting to pre-make Spanish rice for my family birthday dinner, and I decided to try rice in the InstaPot for the first time.

It did not go well, presumably because I didn’t follow the venting instructions after the fact.

The rice ended up mushy and overcooked.

So when dinner was thrown off that night because of scheduling changes, I decided to try to use the rice fail in a fridge clean-out experiment.

The Ingredients

Here’s what I needed to use up from my refrigerator:

The fail Spanish rice
Zucchini (we still have this coming out of our ears)
Leftover mushrooms marinated in soy sauce from the previous night’s ramen
Some vegan cheese
Bacon fat (that I save on the rare occasion I make bacon and use randomly in other dishes)

My overcooked Spanish rice. You can see the texture is gummy.

I have made little fried rice patties in the past to use up extra rice, and usually they use rice, egg, and some kind of flour to bind.

I didn’t have any eggs, but these miscellaneous ingredients were speaking “rice patties” to me. So I stirred together about a tablespoon of ground flaxmeal with the leftover soy marinade from the mushrooms to create a “flax egg.”

So, I chopped the zucchini and the leftover mushrooms, combined them with the rice, and diced vegan cheese, and then added the flax egg and some gluten-free flour that I had handy until it seemed to come together into a moldable “patty” consistency.

I heated the bacon fat in a large nonstick skillet until it melted and covered the bottom of the pan.

Then, I used a large ice cream scooper to form the patties. I dropped the patties into the pan and used a spatula to press them flat.

I flipped the patties after one side was golden brown and then cooked the other side until golden as well. I drained the patties on a paper towel-lined plate and then hoped for the best.

On the side, I offered sour cream and ketchup, two condiments that are pretty well-proven to save questionable dishes and get my kids to enjoy them.

Shockingly, my boys really loved the dinner I simply called an “experiment” and there were only three patties leftover for lunch the next day!