Chickpea Vegetable Rice Pilaf | Slimming Eats Recipes (2024)

Chickpea Vegetable Rice Pilaf - A perfect simple side dish for when you fancy something a bit more flavourful than plain steamed rice.

Simple Rice Pilaf

Have I mentioned how much I love rice? It's probably one of my go-to sides because it's super easy to cook and really filling too when combined with other foods. A great side for saucy dishes like curries and chilli etc.

Rice Pilaf just has a lot more flavour to regular rice, because it's usually cooked in a stock or broth and with some vegetables. It's actually so yummy I could eat a bowl of this own it's own.

Chickpea Rice Pilaf

Adding some chickpeas to the rice adds some fibre and protein, and as I always have a can of chickpeas on hand in my pantry cupboard, it's was a great item to add into this pilaf.

I love the texture they add also. Probably one of my favourite legumes

SUBSTITUTE FOR CHICKPEAS

But what if you don't like chickpeas or don't have any on hand? No worries, you can either leave those out and just stick with the vegetables.

Or some great substitutes for chickpeas are:

• Green or Brown Lentils (cooked/canned) – I don’t recommend red lentils as they will go mushy whereas green and brown hold their shape.

Any beans of choice such as:

• Great Northern Beans or Cannelini
• Butter Beans/Lima Beans
• Kidney
• Pinto Beans

so many different varieties to choose from.

Vegetables for Rice Pilaf

For this Chickpea Vegetable Rice Pilaf, the vegetables I added were:

• garlic
• onion
• red pepper
• zucchini (courgette)

some other great suggestions are:

• different coloured peppers
• carrot
• little cubes of butternut squash
• different herbs
• finely diced tomato
• mushrooms

or use whatever you fancy.

Main Dishes to serve with Chickpea Vegetable Rice Pilaf

One of my favourite recipes to serve with this Rice Pilaf is this delicious Oven Baked Salmon with Tomatoes, it just pairs amazingly well with the sauce and fish.

But it is a great side for a variety of dishes, especially those containing Fish, Shrimp (Prawns) or Chicken.

More Rice Side Dishes

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Recipe Card

CHICKPEA VEGETABLE RICE PILAF

Yield: SERVES 4

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 40 minutes

Chickpea Vegetable Rice Pilaf - A perfect simple side dish for when you fancy something a bit more flavourful than plain steamed rice.

Ingredients

• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
• half small red onion, finely chopped
• 1 cup (180g) of long grain rice
• 2.25 cups (540ml) of chicken or vegetable stock
• zest and juice of a lemon
• ½ red pepper, finely chopped
• 1 small zucchini, finely chopped
• 1 cup (240ml) of canned chickpeas, drained
• salt and black pepper to season
• cooking oil spray (I used avocado)
• chopped fresh cilantro (coriander)

See Also

Red Lentil Dahl Soup Recipe - Vegan in the Freezer

Instructions

1. Spray a deep frying pan with spray oil, add the garlic and onion and fry for a couple of minutes till lightly golden
2. Add the rice, red pepper, zucchini and chickpeas and lemon zest, lemon juice and spray with a little more spray oil and fry for about 1 more minute.
3. Add the stock, bring to a boil, then reduce heat, cover and simmer till stock is absorbed.
4. When the liquid is all absorbed, turn off heat but leave covered for 10-12 minutes, the steam trapped underneath will continue to cook the rice.
5. Once the 10-12 minutes is up, you can stir and season with salt and black pepper, and stir through some chopped cilantro (coriander).
6. Serve with your choice of main dish and enjoy!!

Notes

Please see below for full nutritional info and additional details about recipe:

• Calories - scroll down to nutritional info box
• WW Points and other Slimming or Weight Loss programs - due to plans regularly changing and updating, we recommend calculating with the official tools you get as a member to those plans to ensure accuracy of values.

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Nutrition Information

Yield 4Serving Size 1 SERVING
Amount Per ServingCalories 249Total Fat 1.4gSaturated Fat 0.1gCarbohydrates 51.8gFiber 4.5gSugar 3.3gProtein 7.2g

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