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This recipe for hearty One Pot Puerto Rican Rice is easy to make in the oven, on the stove, with a rice cooker, or in an Instant Pot. Fluffy yellow rice, pork sausage, and pepperoncinis make it delicious but not too spicy.
In this non-traditional, inauthentic recipe, yellow rice is loaded up with sausage, spices, pepperoncini, corn, and fresh cilantro. It’s unbelievably good, and like all great recipes, really versatile.
Recipe ingredients:
Ingredient notes:
- Goya Sazon Cilantro-Achiote Seasoning. 4 whole packets, for the recipe. This seasoning blend is bright orange and extremely tasty (as MSG so often is).
- Green Giant brand canned Mexicorn. This is a blend of whole-kernel corn with some peppers added. Del Monte calls it Southwestern Corn. If you can’t find it, regular corn is fine.
Step-by-step instructions:
- First, adjust an oven rack to the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Next, dig out a heavy, oven-safe pot or Dutch oven. Cook the pork and the onion over medium-high heat until the onion has softened and the sausage has almost cooked through, about 5 minutes.
- Then remove the onion and pork from the pot with a slotted spoon and transfer it into a bowl. Keep the fat in the pot; you’ll need it.
- Next, add the rice to the pork fat, stirring frequently until the rice is golden and glossy, about 10 minutes. This coats each grain of rice in grease, which will keep the rice fluffy.
- After that, return the pork and onions to the pot, followed by the water, pepperoncini, pepperoncini juice, Goya seasoning, and corn. Bring the mixture to a boil.
- Cover the pot and bake in the oven at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, until all the liquid has been absorbed. Â Stir the rice halfway through the cooking time.
- Remove the rice from the oven and fluff with a fork. Then stir in the chopped cilantro and serve.
Recipe tips and notes:
- Rinsing the rice: This removes extra starch on the outside of the grain and prevents the rice from sticking together. You can either swish it around in a bowl with your hand, or place it in a sieve under running water.
- Cooking for a crowd: The recipe makes at least 2 quarts of rice, so at least eight servings of 1 cup of rice per serving. If you’re feeding 25 adults, use an 8-quart stock pot, triple the ingredients, and add 10 minutes to the baking time (40 minutes total).
Recipe variations and substitutions:
- Gandules. A can of pigeon peas makes it more authentic.
- Sofritos. This flavorful pepper, garlic, and onion combo is essential to Latin cuisine. Feel free to add some garlic and extra peppers to the mix, when you cook the onions.
- Frozen corn and peppers. A frozen mix is just as good as canned.
- Sour cream. A last-minute dollop of sour cream tastes so good on this rice. Have it waiting in the wings for anyone who thinks it’s too spicy.
- Green olives. Pimentos and all. Give them a rough chop and stir them in.
Did you enjoy this recipe? Please leave a rating and a comment below!
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One Pot Puerto Rican Rice
This recipe for hearty One Pot Puerto Rican Rice is easy to make in the oven, on the stove, with a rice cooker, or in an Instant Pot. Fluffy yellow rice, pork sausage, and pepperoncinis make it zippy and delicious, but not too spicy.
Ingredients
- 1 pound ground pork sausage
- 1 medium onion diced
- 1 cup long-grain white rice rinsed
- 2 cups water
- 1/4 cup sliced pepperoncini peppers
- 1/4 cup pepperoncini juice from jar
- 4 packets Goya Sazon Cilantro-Achiote Seasoning
- 1 (11 ounce) can Green Giant Mexicorn drained
- 1 cup fresh cilantro minced
Instructions
- Adjust an oven rack to the center position and preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- In a Dutch oven or large oven-safe stock pot, cook sausage and onion until the sausage is mostly cooked through and the onion is softened, about 5 minutes. Transfer to a bowl, reserving the fat in the pot.
- To the reserved fat, add rice and sauté, stirring frequently, until light golden in color, about 10 minutes.
- Stir in cooked pork and onion, water, pepperoncini, pepperoncini juice, Goya seasoning, and corn. Bring to a boil.
- Cover, transfer to oven, and bake until rice is tender and all liquid is absorbed, about 30 minutes, stirring after 15 minutes.
- Remove from oven and fluff with a fork. Fold in cilantro and serve.
Notes
Stove-top method:
- Instead of moving the pot to the oven in step 5 of the recipe, just cover the rice, turn the heat down to low, and simmer until the rice is tender and all the liquid has been absorbed by the rice, about 20 minutes.
- Remove the rice from the oven and fluff with a fork. Then stir in the chopped cilantro and serve.
- Follow the recipe instructions up to step 4 using a pot on the stove. After bringing the rice to a boil, move everything into a rice cooker.
- Using the manufacturer's instructions, cook the rice, or press the "white rice" button, which should automatically gauge the amount of time the rice needs to cook.
- When the rice cooker beeps, fluff the rice with a fork and mix in the fresh cilantro.
- On the sauté function, cook the pork and the onion, stirring frequently, until the onion has softened and the sausage has almost cooked through, about 5 minutes.
- Next, stir in the rice, and keep stirring for several minutes, until the rice is coated with fat and starting to turn slightly golden.
- Then add the water, pepperoncini, pepperoncini juice, Goya seasoning, and corn. Close the lid, set the steam release to "seal".
- Depending on the type of machine you have, manually set the cooking time to HIGH for 8 minutes. If your machine has a "Rice" smart program, you can use that. Turn any "keep warm" function off.
- Do a natural release to depressurize your pressure cooker. When the float valve drops, open the pot, fluff the rice with a fork, and mix in the fresh cilantro.
Nutrition
Serving: 1cupCalories: 264kcalCarbohydrates: 20gProtein: 10gFat: 15gSaturated Fat: 5gCholesterol: 41mgSodium: 412mgPotassium: 208mgFiber: 1gSugar: 1gVitamin A: 191IUVitamin C: 5mgCalcium: 18mgIron: 1mg
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Meggan Hill is a classically-trained chef and professional writer. Her meticulously-tested recipes and detailed tutorials bring confidence and success to home cooks everywhere. Meggan has been featured on NPR, HuffPost, FoxNews, LA Times, and more.
I put vegan recipes in your search box and got recipes w/ground beef in them. What’ vegan about that? I’ll skip all recipes from you site from now on as you’ve let me down.
I’m so sorry about that. We just launched our new site on Wednesday and I’m still trying to figure out what problems might be happening. I’m guessing the recipes with ground beef had the word “vegan” appearing in the post text somewhere which is NOT helpful to you. I will do the search myself and make sure none of those show up anymore. We do have a vegan category, but I won’t leave a link because I know you won’t be back. I’m really sorry about that. We actually have tons of vegan recipes because there are many vegans on my email list. Take care. -Meggan
Yes, chicken can be used. I cook in the kven with the chicken. A favorite of mine is to use Spam. As Spam is salty, and olives are salty, use no salt.
Hi
This sounds amazing. Could I substitute brown rice for white?
Hi Cheryl, yes! You can. I am sure you can. I haven’t made it with brown rice myself (yet) so I don’t know the exact baking time. I am sure it will take a little longer. I would add 10 to 15 minutes to the baking time (40 to 45 minutes total) and check it at that point. It may need a little more time. It should not, however, need more liquid… I don’t think. But I haven’t made it. I HAVE made my Mexican Rice with brown rice and that didn’t need additional liquid, just another 10-15 minutes of baking time. Good luck! I’ll test this when I can, with brown rice. Thanks. -Meggan
THIS IS AWESOME!
We made this last night… hadn’t had it in a few months. It is so good, and surprisingly pretty easy. We will probably make it a lot this summer since we are growing cilantro in our garden. This is my go-to recipe.
Would love to Pin this recipe but can’t find the icon to do so.  Can you help, please?
Hi Colleen, first off, I’m sorry for the delay in my response! Second of all, I’m sorry that you weren’t able to pin this recipe the way you should be able to. The program that we use for the pin buttons isn’t working right now, so until there is a fix, I added this recipe under “more recipes you’ll love.” It is the first one listed, and you should be able to click on the red P in the upper left corner of the image to pin it. Let me know if you have any other questions! -Meggan
Loved this! used it as the main dish and turned out great. What do you think about using chicken as an alternative to the pork? Not sure how much it’d change the taste
Greetings,
We don’t eat pork. Is there another sausage the would provide the “same” result?