Tadig (rice with crispy potatoes on the bottom)

One of my former bosses was Iranian, and when she would invite me to dinner, she would always have this really tasty rice dish as the side. Crispy potatoes were on the bottom of the rice, and it was a special treat to get the potatoes. It turns out the dish is called Tadig, but all the recipes online called for cooking basmati rice.

Well, I decided to give it a try on my own. I don't have fancy basmati rice; I'm more of a Minute rice type of cook. However, I decided not to let that stop me.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

I got an 8x8 inch Pyrex baking dish. I poured only enough olive oil into the dish to cover the bottom. You don't want the bottom to be dripping in oil, but you need the oil for the crisp.

I peeled a small potato and cut it in thin slices to cover the bottom of the dish. You can sprinkle a bit of salt on the slices of potato.

As I said, I use Minute rice. Not only do I use Minute rice, but I use the kind that cooks in five minutes!  Undaunted, I boiled 1 1/2 cups of water with 2 tablespoons of butter, some salt, and some pepper. When the water came to a boil, I stirred in 1 1/2 cups of rice. Then I poured the mixture on top of the potatoes in the Pyrex dish.

Cover the dish with aluminum foil and put it in the oven. Bake for around 90 minutes. It takes that long for the potatoes to crisp, and surprisingly, the Minute rice also turned out just fine!

Since I didn't use a lot of rice, the whole dish had a good crispy texture. You can add more rice if you want.

As you can see by the picture here, it all turned out just great. Even with instant rice, you too can make a very tasty dish of Tadig.