Bulgur Pilaf

Pilaf is a side dish that goes with a lot of things. I can serve it with beef, lamb, chicken or seafood! Western Armenians make a version of pilaf by toasting vermicelli in butter before toasting the bulgur or rice and cooking it in chicken broth. This gives the pilaf both a buttery and nutty flavor. Bulgur pilaf is a great quick and easy side dish when I want a little change up from rice.

Although, bulgur is a fast cooking dried and crushed, cracked wheat grain, it is not well known. I buy it in three different varieties. #1 is  fine, #2 is medium and #3 is coarse. I prefer the coarse (#3) for bulgur pilaf but the medium (#2) works too. Buy bulgur at ethnic grocery stores or in the natural section of most supermarkets. If they only sell the fine variety, the coarser varieties can be found online. Of course, when I lived in Texas, I would visit my mother in Boston and stuff my suitcase with bags of dirt cheap Armenian ingredients like bulgur. Then, I would have to take things out and rearrange at the airport. I usually managed to avoid paying the over limit bag fee. I am probably still on some sort of TSA watch list.

Vermicelli is a dried thin pasta. Depending where I was living in the country, I have used whatever variety was readily available. When I’m in the Northeast, I use the bird’s nest vermicelli that I can find in Armenian and Greek stores. I crush the bird’s nest in one hand and whatever lengths the pieces end up are fine for pilaf. When I’m in Texas I use the precut vermicelli called fideo that is in in the supermarkets or Hispanic stores. I have even used the long, box version from the pasta section at the grocery store. Every variety works well. Being flexible on the type of vermicelli has made it so I can cook and enjoy pilaf no matter where I have lived in the country.

Print Recipe

Bulgur Pilaf

An easy and delicious fast cooking pilaf!

Prep Time2 minutes mins

Cook Time28 minutes mins

Course: Side Dish

Cuisine: Armenian

Keyword: bulger, pilaf

Servings: 4

Equipment

• Stovetop
• 2-3 quart Saucepan with Lid

Ingredients

• 4 Tablespoons Butter clarified if you can manage it
• 1/3 cup Vermicelli broken into roughly 2 inch pieces
• 1 cup Coarse Bulgur (#3) medium (#2) will work too
• 2 cups Chicken Broth preferably hot
• Salt and Freshly Ground Black Pepper to taste

Instructions

• In a 2 or 3 qt.or saucepan, over medium low heat, melt the butter. Add the vermicelli stirring often to get the vermicelli golden brown. Be careful! It goes from golden to burnt really quickly
  
• Stir in bulgur until it's all evenly distributed
• Add chicken broth. Bring to a simmer. Reduce heat to low. Cover and cook for 15 minutes until the water is all gone. Turn off heat. Stir with a fork. Season with salt and pepper.
  

Modifications

Modifications:

There wasn’t much I could do to make this easier except NOT BE COOKING TWO OTHER THINGS AT THE SAME TIME. I can’t do it anymore. My vermicelli was dark brown on the bottom but under cooked on the top because I would stir, go do something else and forget to come back quickly enough. The lesson here is to stay right by it during the vermicelli browning part. Also, I can”t clarify the butter anymore so I just use regular salted butter. Butter with the milk solids still in it is more likely to burn which is why I need to keep a very close eye on it. I think I would like to buy a jar of ghee and try that at some point.

A major handicapped cooking tip take away from this is that sometimes things don’t go the way you want them to, but it still might still be ok. I made a quick judgement that the dark bits were not actually burnt and the light parts were not all that under done. It wasn’t going to ruin the taste or kill anyone so I just pretended it was perfect and continued on.

Also, pulling the vermicelli off of the heat to look at it a little before you think it’s ready is a good idea for because it is hard to tell with the butter bubbling up over it.