My Mom's Rice Pilaf

After being home for Christmas where we had a lot of traditional recipes got me thinking of the recipes that I use from my mom and grandma. My mom learned how to cook from my dad's mom (mostly). I am not sure where my mom got this rice pilaf recipe from, but she made it for us when we were kids and I still make it often today. The nice thing about it is I always have the ingredients on hand, it's not something you have to go out and buy anything special for. When I make it for a special dinner or where I am going to take it to someones house I use my Corelle dish that I can use on the stove top and finish in the oven. If it is just for the family I make it in a pan stove top.

When my mom made it the recipe calls for minute rice (Of course I never used instant rice) it works well with regular rice.
When my mom made this recipe she used vermicelli from the Italian store that came in little "nests". It was such a mess when you broke it up to put in the rice. I find it here in our stores already in little pieces...easy peasy!

I have a lot of Rosemary plants and I often cut it and dry it, so I can use both fresh and dried Rosemary! Dried rosemary works really well in this dish.

With this casserole dish you can use in on the stoves burner to melt the butter and saute the rice, vermicelli and almonds.

Ingredients:

1 cup rice

1/2 cup vermicelli (broken)

1/4 cup sliced almonds

2 T butter

1/2 tsp dried rosemary

2 1/4 cups broth

Directions:

Melt butter in a casserole dish that can be used stove top as well as in the oven. Add rice, vermicelli, rosemary and almonds. Slowly brown vermicelli, and almonds, the rice will turn white. Add warm chicken broth. Cover and bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes until the rice is tender and liquid is absorbed.

This pilaf has a nice delicate flavor that goes well with chicken, and many other dishes. It's certainly an old standby recipe for me! I love it!

My mom and her mom, my grandma. Probably around the time she started to make this, but I really couldn't tell you for sure!

Me and my mom back in the days when I had my days assigned to me when I had to do the dishes. My older sis and I each had 3 days a week and little sis had one! Hmmm...how is that fair? But I'm not bitter about it...look how much fun my mom and I had posing for photos!!! Thanks for going with me down memory lane!!!