Rainbow Rice

I have seen rainbow rice in a few places in blogland lately and just HAD to make some for the kids!  Easy to make and they LOVE it!

Supplies Needed:

• 5 lb bag of rice
• glass or metal bowl (plastic will get stained)
• vinegar or rubbing alcohol
• 2 cookie sheets covered with foil or parchment paper
• food colouring, liquid or gel

I started with mixing the rice and the food colouring in jars, but that involved waaaaay too much shaking and I found it MUCH easier to just mix it up in a bowl.  I used both the liquid food colouring and the gel kind.   If using the gel, it's a good idea to mix just the gel and the vinegar together first.  I did not do this at first and found that I still had little globs of gel in the rice which would not dry properly.  It would have ended up making a big mess when the kids were playing with it.

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees.
2. In a bowl add 1 1/2 cups of rice, 2 tbsp vinegar and a few drops of food colouring.
3. Mix well until all of the rice is evenly coated.
4. Put the rice onto the cookie sheet.
5. Rinse out the bowl and repeat with as many colours as you want to make.
6. Place cookie sheets in the oven.  Check every 10 to 15 minutes to see if the rice is dry.
7. Once the rice is dry, remove from the oven and let cool.

Yellow rice before it was completely mixed.

And after mixing.

Pretty colours.

Love the purple.

The kids were so excited, they each had to have their own bowl to play with.

They played for TWO hours!

Rainbow Rice!

It is now stored in a rubbermaid bin with a bunch of old measuring cups and spoons.  It does make a mess on the floor with spilling, but it's really quick and easy to clean up.  To make cleanup even easier, lay a sheet down on the floor and have the kids stay on it.  When they are done playing, just pick up the sheet and pour any spilled rice back into the container.