10-Minute Cilantro Lime Brown Rice Recipe - The Kitchen Girl (2024)

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Copycat Cilantro Lime Brown Rice is the 10-minute homemade version of the famous Chipotle brown rice. It's so easy and goes with all things Mexican!

If you love Chipotle Cilantro Lime Brown Rice, this recipe lets you make it right at home with minimal effort! In 10-minutes, you can turn brown rice into a citrusy, festive side dish for your Mexican-inspired eats.

You'll love the simplicity of heating up cooked brown rice and adding fresh cilantro and fresh limes. Not only is it crazy easy and bursting with flavor, but it's naturally vegan and gluten free!

Cilantro lime brown rice is super versatile too! We love it with burritos, steak nachos, taco meat, healthy taco bowls, vegetarian skillet enchiladas, burrito bowls, refried black beans, and of course, restaurant style salsa. Whether it's game day, family dinner, or Taco Tuesday, copycat Chipotle brown rice fits right in with all the Mexican recipes.

Key ingredients

• avocado oil - or preferred cooking oil
• cooked brown rice - use stove-cooked, rice cooker, or Instant Pot brown rice. Also you can use brown rice in the form of basmati. long grain, or jasmine rice.
• fresh limes - always zest and juice the limes to get the full flavor
• fresh cilantro - you can never use too much fresh cilantro in cilantro lime brown rice
• salt and pepper - to taste

How to make Chipotle brown rice

Heat oil in a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat.
Add cooked brown rice and saute until warmed through, stirring as needed.
Stir in fresh cilantro, lime juice, and lime zest. Add salt and pepper, to taste.

Remove from heat and serve warm, garnished with fresh limes and chopped cilantro.

Rice tips and variations

You can substitute white rice for brown rice in this recipe. Of course you'll lose the nutritional value of the brown rice, but it'll be just as delicious.

I recommend using long grain brown rice for its fluffy texture and nutty flavor.
You can certainly use short grain brown rice but it tends to be stickier.

Use any method to cook the rice for this recipe. My go-to is pressure cooked brown rice, but rice cooked on the stove or in a rice cooker works beautifully too.

When cooking rice for this recipe, I recommend adding a bay leaf to the cooking liquid if you want to model the official Chipotle® Cilantro Lime Rice.

If your brown rice was cooked with salt, I recommend adding salt to this recipe in very small amounts, if at all. You may not need it.

More recipes we love

• Black Bean Corn Salsa
• Avocado Ranch Dressing
• Homemade Pico de Gallo
• Taco Pasta

📖 Recipe