Country Tedd’s Old Fashioned Crunchy Rice Soup

I’ve written before about my complete lack of culinary skills. The pandemic pushed them to the highs (I was even putting spice on my chicken). But recently I hit a brand new low.

It all started at Aldi. I was shopping and I saw a store display of “quick-cook, minute rice.”

Y’all…this was a dream come true for me. If there’s anything I don’t like spending time on it’s cooking. And cooking rice is the worst of the worst. (It takes like 25 minutes! What am I? Made of time?)

People think that I eat chicken and rice a lot because I’m super healthy, but really it’s because I’m extremely lazy. I was just lucky enough to find something where the Ven diagram of lazy and healthy overlaps quite a bit.

So, I bought the minute rice and was like “This is great. I’ll have a full rice serving in a minute and then use those other 24 minutes I’m saving to do something that’s a total waste of time. Instagram Reels, here I come!”

I got home and the next day excitedly pulled out the box, followed the directions (to a point…), and cooked up a cup of rice.

When I pulled the rice out of the microwave, though, it resembled a kind of…sad, rice soup. The rice was slightly fluffy, but there was still a half cup of water at the bottom.

On this first attempt, I was like “Okay, whatever” and dumped out the remaining water and then ate myself some (super crunchy) rice (whilst watching Instagram Reels, obvi).

The next day, I took some more time to re-read the instructions and saw that I had been correct! Like always, I was 100% right!

  • 1 - Cup of Rice

  • 1 - Cup of Water

  • 7 - ???

See the 7 threw me off because it was such a high number. Like 7 what? That’s dumb. This cup of rice is not going to feed 7 people! Shut up, 7, I need to make my rice and utilize the next 24 minutes watching people dance to Adele. I got minute rice so I could save all these minutes!

I proceeded to make rice the same way and was shocked that I had the exact same outcome: crunchy rice soup.

After this failure, my joy about the minute rice waned pretty dramatically. Like who wants crunchy rice soup? That’s not delicious. It may be worth the extra 24 minutes to cook rice and not hear myself crunch on grains for 3 minutes (the time it takes me to eat crunchy rice soup).

At that point, there was a nice, 6-month intermission while I ignored the boxes of rice soup and ate other things for lunch (read: sandwiches).

After a good chunk of time, I rediscovered the rice boxes and thought, “I need to give this maybe-lazy meal another go. Imagine what I could do with crunchy rice soup and tuna! Without reheating chicken, I could have 27 minutes to watch astrology videos!”

So, I get out the rice soup and then do what I always do: 1 cup of rice, 1 cup of water, 1 minute in the microwave.

“You know,” I thought, “if this minute rice thing actually worked, it would be pretty fantastic.”

The outcome was the same: I emptied half a cup of water from the soup, poured on some tuna, and called it a day.

BUT! It was that day that I was sitting (and watching a montage of cats wearing hats) that I had a thought.

“You know…what if that 7 meant something on the box?”

So I put down the tuna rice sludge and go to the cupboard and look at the box with new eyes.

  • 1 - Cup of Rice

  • 1 - Cup of Water

  • 7 - Minute Cook Time

Oh.

Oh…

OOOOOHHHHHHHHH.

My first emotion was rage. WHY CALL IT MINUTE RICE IF IT TAKES SEVEN MINUTES. ISN’T IT, BY DEFAULT, MINUTESSSSS RICE?!

The second was humiliation. Like..I’d straight up been eating raw rice for multiple days.

Third was a bit of relief. Aldi had never done me dirty before, so now I didn’t need to question the quality of their crunchy rice soup mix.

The next day I followed the directions and ate a fluffy rice pilaf. Which, I must say, is a bit more appetizing than crunchy rice soup.

The downside, of course, was that I only had 14 minutes to watch clips from 80s cartoons, but you know maybe that’s okay? Maybe the precious time I was saving to waste time could have been better utilized to avoid destroying my teeth and spending other time at the dentist?

It’s possible.

As with all my posts, there is probably some kind of lesson in here, but it’s best to just skip that and give you what you want. The recipe for Crunchy Rice Soup ala Tedd!

Crunchy Rice Soup ala Tedd

 Ingredients

  • 1 box Aldi “minute” rice

  • 1 cup water

  • 1 packet of single-serve tuna (don’t you dare think of using a can of tuna…what are you going to do? Waste 1 minute opening it??)

Instructions

  1. Add 1 cup of alleged-minute rice into a bowl. Add 1 cup of water. Put it in the microwave for 1 minute.

  2. As rice cooks for its box-mandated-minute-cook-time, open the bag of tuna.

  3. Remove rice from microwave and dump out excess water.

  4. Dump on tuna.

  5. Crunch!

  6. Watch Instagram Reels (TikTok if you’re cooler than me)

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