Mom’s Clean Eating Sweet Carrot Rice

This is a decadent, super simple, but yet so wonderful recipe to pay tribute to my mom’s legacy recipe! People have and will rave about how good this sweet carrot rice is. And I cleaned it up, just a little, so you can feel better about your food choices!

Sweet Carrot Rice

This recipe for my mom’s sweet carrot rice was an absolute favorite growing up! It is decadent and delicious and an absolutely perfect side dish for a special occasion or holiday dinner. And it is still so clean and very easy to make with just four ingredients!

So when she originally made the dish she cooked refined sugar in butter. Then added grated carrots and cooked them until they caramelized. Next adding rice and water.

We are making almost the exact same thing but instead we are using slightly cleaner ingredients like avocado oil, Wholesome organic cane sugar and organic carrots.

There are only a few ingredients for this sweet carrot rice that can be easily substituted:

• replace the avocado oil with ghee or vegan butter
• replace the organic cane sugar with another organic sugar like raw cane sugar, brown sugar or coconut sugar (some may affect the color of the rice)
• replace the Basmati rice with some other variation of rice (brown rice will take longer to cook, Jasmine rice will have a stickier quality)

Since mom used sugar in this recipe, we didn’t have it very often although we all LOVED it! But we did have it at Easter because it pairs really well with a baked ham.  And then at Christmas time. And for special occasions.

What to Serve with Sweet Rice?

I actually like to make this slightly cleaner version a few times year. And Brett LOVES it!

Since it is a sweet side dish it goes really well with a salty or spicy main dish.  So it’s perfect with an Easter or Christmas ham. But it also goes really well with some type of spicy protein.

We found these chicken chorizo verde sausages at Wheatsville and they were the perfect spice to the sweet rice. Made with jalapeños, poblanos, spinach powder and cilantro. Doesn’t that sound delicious? They were so good.

And I love to serve it with Crispy Parmesan Brussels Sprouts! Anyway, let me know if you try out the recipe! Hope you love it as much as we do.

Looking for More Rice Recipes?

• Cilantro Lime Rice
• Cajun Bison Dirty Rice
• Asian Fried Rice
• Mexican Rice
• Restaurant Style Tex-Mex Rice
• Smoked Gouda Goat Cheese and Broccoli Rice

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My Mom’s Sweet Carrot Rice | Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free

This is a decadent and super simple for my mom’s recipe for sweet carrot rice! It’s a little cleaner than the original and naturally gluten-free and dairy-free.

Course Side Dish

Cuisine American, Mediterranean

Keyword carrots, rice, sweet carrot rice

Prep Time 5 minutes

Cook Time 28 minutes

Rest 5 minutes

Total Time 33 minutes

Servings 6

Author Deana Larkin Evans

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp avocado oil
• 1 cup peeled and grated organic carrot
• 1/4 cup organic cane sugar
• 1 cup basmati rice
• 2 1/2 cups cold filtered water
• Pinch Himalayan pink salt

Instructions

1. In a small saucepan, heat avocado oil and sugar over medium heat for a few minutes.

2. Add grated carrots and cook over medium heat for 5-7 minutes so that it starts to caramelize.
3. Add the uncooked rice (do not rinse) to the carrot mixture and stir constantly for 1 minute to coat the rice.
4. Add the water and a pinch of salt. Raise the heat to bring to a boil then cover, reduce heat to low and cook untouched for 20 minutes.
5. Remove from heat and fluff with a fork. Let rice sit with the lid on for 5-10 minutes before serving.