Sure, you can make flavorful rice with a base of slowly sweated onions and peppers or garlic bloomed in oil, but there’s another method that’s quicker, brighter and yields an entirely different result: blitzing aromatics into a paste.

When you toss onions, bell pepper, garlic, cilantro, tomato paste and spices into a food processor, you’re not just saving prep time; you’re changing how the ingredients behave. The blade ruptures cell walls in seconds—work that would otherwise happen gradually through sweating—and releases moisture all at once. All those juices that would take about 15 minutes to coax out on the stovetop are already exposed. When the paste hits hot oil, it sizzles and reduces in minutes, creating something more concentrated and intense.

There’s another advantage: The finer you break down aromatics, the more surface area you create. That means more contact with the hot oil, which helps fat-soluble flavor compounds—like those in garlic and spices—dissolve and distribute more evenly. It’s less about vegetable texture and more about seasoning power that coats each grain of rice.

For our version of arroz con gandules (Puerto Rico’s rice with pigeon peas and pork), this method delivers. After browning the ham, you add the paste to the hot pan, cooking it until it’s concentrated and thick. Then you add the peas and rice, letting everything get acquainted for a few minutes before pouring in the liquid. The spices bloom evenly in the oil, and the rice drinks up the seasoning as it cooks.

It’s a small shift in technique, but it makes a real difference: bold, bright, evenly seasoned rice in every scoop

Ari Smolin

Ari Smolin writes and edits for Milk Street’s magazine and cookbooks. Before joining the team, she baked her way from Brooklyn to Los Angeles—laminating croissants before dawn, shepherding sourdough loaves by the hundreds, and discovering that stone-milled flour plus seasonal fruit is her happy place. She writes about whole-grain baking as well, most recently co-authoring “Morning Baker: Recipes and Rituals for Breakfast and Beyond.” You can find her fruit-and-grain escapades on Instagram @Ari.Smolin. Want to talk flour? Drop her a line at ari.smolin@gmail.com.