Uncle Ben's Express Rice : Vegetable Pilau Rice product reviews

I reckon by the end of trying all these delicious rice products i'll have to go to a rice addicts anonymous meeting, as the more of these I try the more I get hooked on rice.

I was looking for a nice quick and easy meal for lunch and so I nuked this and dug in, it was extremely tasty and not gluggy like many nuke and eat rices tend to be.

Now i'm not a huge fan of spinach, in fact I try and avoid it as much as possible, however I couldn't taste the spinach in this blend at all, so this is another one that goes into the must have list (which is getting rather large by now.)

When it comes to rice and spice, I usually leave the flavourings for the sauce... especially when it comes to Indian spices. Plain rice, hot curry... sounds great... but to put the spices in the rice adds a really nice dimension to food for those you just can't seem to get the meat sauce right...

To give this a fair test, I made up two meat sauces, one a rather plain fried mince with a can of unflavoured chopped tomatoes, and the other one of my personal favourite 'savoury mince' recipes... this way I could see how well it stood on it's own vs complimented other flavours.

When topped by the plain meat sauce, the rice really gave it's best, with flavour and spice scents wafting up and through the meat... it really does well as the primary flavour of a meal. When topped by my savoury mince (which carried quite a hot/sweet taste punch) the rice dutifully took it's place as the secondary flavour, and complimented the mince well, adding a hint of herby zing but without fighting for dominance.

With the bit of rice left over after these two taste tests, I tried it as a side dish to a pan-fried skinned chicken fillet and some carrots and beans drizzled with a garlic butter sauce, and it held it's own very well, complimenting both the meaty goodness of the chicken and the garlic -schwing- of the carrots and beans. Most excellent.

overall, a great all-rounder... if you like Indian spices. They are a definite flavour and won't be hidden by anything but the strongest tasting foods... they will sit up and beg for attention, but also lie down and play in the background, but they will not entirely go away.