Recipes / Sides
Geelrys (yellow rice with raisins, heritage recipe)
Sweet Cape yellow rice with turmeric, cinnamon, butter and plump raisins, cooked in a pot on the braai or stove, adapted from an 1891 Cape cookbook.
- Prep
- 10 min
- On the fire
- 25 min
- Plan ahead
- 10 minutes resting
- Serves
- 6 to 8
Ingredients
Method
Cooking on gas?
- A potjie works well on gas, and the heat is easier to hold steady than coals.
- Use a gas ring, your grill's side burner, or stand the pot on the grates over one burner with the grill lid open. Check that it can take the weight of a full pot.
- Where the recipe says hot or medium coals for browning, use a medium-high flame. Where it says low coals or a few coals under the pot, turn it down to the lowest flame that keeps a gentle bubble. You will not need to add fresh coals.
- Rinse the rice in a sieve under cold water until the water runs almost clear. Drain well.
- Put the rice, water, turmeric, cinnamon stick, sugar, salt and half the butter in a heavy pot or flat-bottomed potjie. Stir once.
- Set it over a gas burner or on the grid over low to medium coals and bring to the boil.
- Cover with a tight lid and cook on low heat for 15 minutes. On the braai, rake the coals thin under the pot so it only just simmers.
- Scatter the raisins over the top without stirring. Cover and cook for 3 to 5 minutes more, until the water is absorbed.
- Take the pot off the heat and leave it covered for 10 minutes.
- Remove the cinnamon stick, add the rest of the butter and fluff the rice with a fork.
Done when: the rice is tender and evenly yellow, the water is fully absorbed and the raisins are soft and plump.
Tips
- Duckitt used far more sugar. Start with 3 tablespoons and add a teaspoon at a time at the end if you want it sweeter.
- Keep cooked rice warm, above 60°C (140°F), or cool it within an hour and refrigerate. Reheat until steaming hot.
- Turmeric stains. Use a metal or enamel pot rather than one with a pale wooden handle you care about.
Geelrys is the yellow rice served at Cape tables with bobotie, bredie and Sunday roasts. Hildagonda Duckitt printed it in 1891 as a Malay recipe and noted it was a great favourite with Cape children, cooked with turmeric, butter, a lot of sugar and sultanas or currants. This version uses less sugar, adds a cinnamon stick as most Cape cooks now do, and cooks the rice by absorption. Serve it with bobotie potjie.
Source
Adapted from Hilda's "Where is it?" of Recipes by Hildagonda J. Duckitt (1891), public domain.