Green Rice With Garlic, Parsley And Mussels Recipe – Rick Stein’s Simple Suppers

Cheap to make, but full of shellfish flavour, we think you’re going to really like green rice with garlic, parsley and mussels – as featured in Rick’s new book, Rick Stein’s Simple Suppers. About this particular recipe, he says:

I love these Spanish paella-type dishes. There’s a similar, but slightly more complicated and expensive, version of this recipe in my book Long Weekends. I remember filming it at a restaurant on the beach in Cádiz. I chose the arroz verde, but the crew went for seafood paella coloured with the extremely bright yellow of fake saffron. The camera pulled away from my demure green and white bowl to reveal everybody else wearing sunglasses while eating.

Ingredients for Rick’s green rice with mussels recipe

SERVES 4-5

– 60ml olive oil
– 60g shallots, finely chopped
– 12 garlic cloves, finely chopped
– 1 litre chicken stock
– 100g flatleaf parsley, leaves chopped
– 1½ tsp salt
– 400g short-grain paella rice
– 500g raw mussels, scrubbed
– Juice of ½ lemon

To serve
– A good spoonful of your favourite aioli

How to make Rick’s green rice with garlic and mussels

1) Heat the olive oil in a shallow flameproof casserole dish over a medium heat. Add the shallots and garlic, then fry gently for 5 minutes until soft. Stir in the stock, parsley and salt and bring to the boil.

2) Sprinkle in the rice, stir once, then leave to simmer vigorously over a medium-high heat for 6 minutes. Put the mussels on top and shake the pan briefly so that they sink into the rice slightly. Lower the heat and leave to simmer gently for another 12 minutes.

3) At the end of this time, almost all the liquid should be absorbed, the mussels opened and the rice will be pitted with small holes. Squeeze over the lemon juice and serve with aioli.

Happy cooking

Green rice recipe taken from Rick Stein’s Simple Suppers, BBC BOOKS, 2023. Food photography by James Murphy.