How To Make Seafood Rice

Last Updated on 22nd April 2022 by

Seafood rice is a Latin dish that is usually made with stock or broth and then seasoned. You will add fried rice, along with a seafood like shrimp, clams, or scallops. It’s really similar to the Spanish seafood dish seafood paella, kind of like its Western world counterpart.

There are variations of this that are made in a Cajun style, as well as Chinese alternatives, using traditional fried rice and then soy sauce as a main seasoning. However you choose to make it, seafood rice is nutritious, delicious, and packed with flavor.

I’ll show you my method for how to make seafood rice, and you can feel free to make adjustments as necessary to suit your tastes. Or, you may just want to make some changes based on what’s in your cupboard.

When you look up how to cook seafood rice, you see all sorts of different options. A lot of that comes down to what kinds of seafood people want in this dish.

You can use a seafood medley that is already prepackaged, or you can throw in whatever seafoods in your freezer or fridge.

You may just want to make it with a single item, like shrimp. Some recipes even call for a combination of chicken and shrimp to make another variety as well.

How to Make Seafood Fried Rice

Let’s start with a recipe that has a lot of ingredients, but it’s well worth it when you put them all together and make the final dish. It may take a while to put this together at first, but I think after you’ve made it a couple times, you’ll breeze through it and feel confident and comfortable making your own modifications to it.

Ingredients:

1 pound of shrimp
1 pound of frozen crawfish tails
1/2 pound of sausage
4 tablespoons of butter
1 bell pepper, diced
1 onion, diced
1 tablespoon of garlic powder
1 tablespoon of onion powder
3 cups of chicken stock or broth
1 tablespoon of liquid crab and shrimp boil
2 cups of Jasmine rice
1 tablespoon of olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Allow the crawfish tails to thaw and drain out the fatty orange liquid. You can save that liquid to the side and use it later on.
Heat up the oil in Dutch oven, or you can use a stockpot on the stove.
Add your sausage to the pot and sauté it until it starts to brown.
Take the sausage out of the pot and set to the side.
Put the crawfish and shrimp into the pot. Cook until the shrimp has started to change color and turn translucent. Be careful about cooking the crawfish too long.
Take the crawfish and shrimp out of the pot and put them with the sausage to the side.
Add half of your butter (2 tablespoons) to the pot.
After the butter has melted, add in bell pepper and onion. Cook them for about two to three minutes until they start to caramelize.
Add garlic and allow to cook for 30 seconds, then pour in the crawfish fat, as well as the seafood boil and chicken stock.
Let the stock come to a simmer and add in the rest of the butter, salt and pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder.
Bring the mixture to a boil and add in the rice. Then, lower the heat and cover the pot. Allow your food to cook for 15 to 20 minutes, until the rice has cooked through and the water has evaporated.
Then, add your meat back into the pot and stir everything together.

How to Make Seafood Fried Rice

Fried rice is a dish that is pretty easy to make on its own, but you can add seafood to it for an extra layer of complexity and deliciousness.

Start by cooking up your seafood in a little bit of vegetable oil on the stove. You want medium heat under your skillet and cook until the seafood starts to change color.

Then, add your already cooked rice and veggies to the skillet as well as your eggs.

You can use veggies like carrots, onions, peas, and more for this dish.

Stir these around with a spatula as you cook, letting the rice brown in the oil and ensuring the eggs are cooked all the way through. If you want to make this an Asian-style dish, you can cook your food in sesame oil.

How to Make Spanish Seafood Rice

There are a few differences between Latino style seafood rice in Spanish seafood rice. The big difference is in the rice itself. Spanish paella is made with short grain rice, but the Mexican version uses long grain rice, traditionally.

Spanish seafood rice is usually made with saffron to give it a distinctive reddish color, and it has a more potent taste than some of the seasonings used in Mexican seafood rice.

The traditional Spanish dish also tends to use chicken in addition to seafood. That’s more of an optional addition in the Mexican/Cajun version that I gave you up above. You tend to find that Spanish seafood rice has a lot more garlic in it as well.

You can follow the same directions and recipe I gave you above for the Spanish version, simply leaving out the sausage, and then adding in some saffron and boneless skinless chicken.

You also want to remember to change out the rice, opting for short grain rice rather than the long grain Jasmine rice I recommended above.

However you make it, seafood rice is a delightful dish that’s very filling and can be can be served on its own or in addition to a few other foods to fill out your meal. As you make this dish, keep in mind that one of the keys is to ensure that your rice is not overcooked. It should be a little moist, very flavorful, and packed with herbs and spices to give it the right flair.

4/5 - (1 vote)

Pauline

Website | + posts

I'm Pauline, a mother of four grown children, my passion for cooking stemmed from the joy i get cooking for my family. I love to try new dishes, especially when dining out but creating and sharing my own recipes is my favourite thing to do!