Cheesy Beans and Rice
Budget-friendly, quick and easy. Made in just 15 min! You can also add leftover chicken or carnitas. The possibilities are endless!
Beans and rice.
This is the ultimate, and I mean ULTIMATE, budget-friendly and affordable meal, made in like 15 minutes using leftovers from the night before. BOOM.
Just take the leftover rice, stir in your favorite kind of salsa (store-bought or homemade), and top with beans and cheese.
Done.
You’ll get that ooey gooey cheesy crust right on top.
And you can even add in other variety of beans to taste. It’s up to you!
Leftover carnitas or roasted chicken would also be an amazing addition.
Not to mention a possible guacamole and sour cream drizzle on top. See, the possibilities are endless.
Cheesy Beans and Rice
Ingredients
- 1 cup uncooked rice
- 1 cup salsa, store-bought or homemade
- Juice of 1 lime
- 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro leaves
- 1 15-ounce can black beans, drained and rinsed
- ¾ cup shredded cheddar cheese
- ¾ cup shredded mozzarella cheese
Instructions
- Preheat oven to broil. Lightly oil an 8×8 or 2 quart baking dish or coat with nonstick spray.
- In a large saucepan of 2 cups water, cook rice according to package instructions. Stir in salsa, lime juice and cilantro
- Spread rice mixture into the prepared baking dish. Top with beans and cheeses. Place into oven and bake until bubbly and cheeses have melted, about 5 minutes.
- Serve immediately, garnished with cilantro, if desired.
Did you make this recipe?
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We’ve made this for years now! I ate it when I was pregnant, and it’s why we nicknamed our unborn daughter “Beansy” and was part of the inspiration for her middle name – Bea. I love to cook it & see my husband’s face light up along with our now-4 year old. It’s nothing fancy but it’s tasty & has so many memories attached to it!
I made this recipe today for lunch. It is so simple and very delicious! Not only that, but it looks very nice with the browned cheese on the top from broiling it! I’m going to make this for my friend who is a vegetarian. It is a perfect meatless meal. I will definitely make this again and again! Thank you for sharing this recipe!
My daughter and I made this recipe last night for the second time. It’s great. Super easy. Went off piste a bit with the recipe this time which really added to the flavour. You can really add anything you want to this (we added ground soy, sautéed peppers and corn). However, I will suggest doubling the cheese amount and mixing all of the ingredients together instead of the suggested two layers- saving a little cheese for the top. That truly gave us the gooey cheesy mess we were looking for. We also left it in the oven for 25 minutes to make sure everything was piping hot as we used left over cold rice. Something that sped up the prep but delayed actual time. Which is fine. Set the table and did the prep dishes while we waited. Today the leftovers are going in a burrito a Jessica suggested!
So good! Made it last week. Tonight I’m going to roll it into burritos. Thank you for another delicious recipe.
I was just wondering if anyone has tried this recipe with brown rice and or quinoa? Thank you!
I made this with leftover rice…i didnt have salsa so I had to make it, but it was easy enough using a good processor and said ingredients. I did add cumin to both the salsa and rice. And I spruced up (2) cans of beans by adding oil, onion, garlic powder, cumin powder, paprika, fried onions, and a coupon spoons of the salsa and cooking it for 3 minutes. Layered it all, added cheese, and baked it off.
Served with sour cream, chips, guacamole, and leftover salsa. A satisfying meal that took about 20 minutes from start to end.
Do you know the nutritional information on this! 🙂
Nutritional information is provided only for select and new recipes at this time. However, if it is not available for a specific recipe, I recommend using free online resources at your discretion (you can Google “nutritional calculator”) to obtain such information.
Wow, I love simple meals like this, and I could live off beans and cheese!
This looks delicious! I love the rice and beans combo!
I love beans and rice recipes for both their nutritional content and their budget friendliness. Are those individual sized serving/baking dishes? They are beautiful. Where did you find them.
It’s the Le Creuset Mini Cocottes. You can purchase them from Amazon.com.
Thanks for the info.
What kind of rice are you using that cooks in less than 20 minutes? Only if the rice was instant white rice, pre-cooked, or left over cooked rice in the ingredients list would you be able to assemble & cook this in anywhere near 15 minutes.
That aside, this sounds so yummie!
Jan, as mentioned in the post, this can be made in 15 min (or less) if leftover rice is used.
Use an electric rice cooker folks. That’s how. It cooks rice much faster. Those of us who use rice nearly daily have them and always use them for making rice. And whiners usually do not cook anyway, and most cooks do not spend much time focused on the clock, as their point is how does it taste.
So it takes 10 minutes to measure out the rice and water, cook it, then place all the other ingredients into the pan and into the oven? I think you need to be a little more realistic about how long that takes. I am tired of seeing blog posts like this that exaggerate the amount of time a dish takes to make.
Amy, the time listed is simply an estimation – some people need more time and some please need less. There’s nothing more to it. 🙂
Amy it literally takes 2 seconds to pour water and rice into a pot and another 2 seconds to open a can of beans…while the rice is cooking (for the entire 5 mins it takes to make rice) you can easily have all the other ingredients waiting and ready. It probably took you longer to write your response than it does to make this dish, and that’s not an exaggeration. Love your recipes Chungah, your blog is awesome!
Unfortunately, I do partial agree with Amy. Last night I purchased rice, not realizing instant rice would have been easier and I got home to read the recipe. (My bad for not reading it before hand) I realized I need to cook the rice for 45 minutes! Ahhh, lucky I had some frozen rice and I used that. The recipe was delicious and so filling. thank you for posting and I look forward to trying more of you recipes.
That is so rude. You do have the option to go elsewhere if you want to be spoon-fed the recipe. Sarcasm like this is not nice especially on a site like this.
Amy. Made it today. I trully understand your statement.
Could this bean and rice recipe be used as a dip with tortilla chips?
Absolutely!
Are we cooking 1 cup of rice in 3 cups of water??
1 cup of rice in 2 cups of water.
Thank you! I see recipe has been corrected. LOVE your style of cooking. I’ve made many of your recipes. Simple and damn delicious.
🙂
Yes! Thank you for bringing this to my attention.