This Easy Side Dish Is My Fast Fallback on Busy Weeknights

This dish is absolutely one of my favorite recipes—so much so that it inspired the one-pot rice dish section of the What Goes With What. The combination of onion, garlic, spices, spinach, and chickpeas is just so comforting. I like to serve this as a side dish, especially with a batch of Braised Spiced Lamb Meatballs from my cookbook. And it’s also great on its own as a main dish. Don’t forget the feta and dill at the end. They bring a lot of freshness and pop to the rice.

Cook the onions:

Place the oil in a large heavy pot (such as a Dutch oven) over medium-high heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring now and then, until it begins to soften, about 5 minutes.

Cook the remaining ingredients:

Add the garlic, oregano, coriander, and rice and stir just to coat the rice with the spices and oil. Add the spinach, chickpeas, and broth, turn the heat to high, and bring the mixture to a boil, then immediately lower the heat so that the mixture simmers. Season the cooking liquid to taste with salt (the exact amount will depend on how salty your broth is).

Cover the pot and cook until the rice is tender, about 25 minutes. Remove the pot from the heat and let the rice sit, covered, for 10 minutes.

Serve:

Uncover the pot, give everything a good stir, and season to taste one final time with salt. Serve immediately, topped with feta and dill.

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