It’s been AGES since we had rice-a-roni in our house.  Mostly because of the unhealthy and processed things in the box mix like MSG etc.  It’s been sounding good lately, but I just couldn’t bring myself to buy some.  So I wanted to try and make it myself! And it was a huge success!! It really was just as easy as doing it from the box, but I knew exactly what was in it and I think it even tastes better.
I was able to score some cut spaghetti at Smiths on sale for $1/box! (actually with coupons I’m going back to get more and they’ll be less than 50 cents a box now!)
Here’s what I did- keep in mind I was making a LARGE batch, it made enough for all of my family to have for lunch, and enough leftovers to make my rice-a-roni chicken salad the next day.

In a pan melt 1 cube of butter
Once it was melted I added the entire box of cut spaghetti and 2 cups of white rice.
(you could do brown rice)
Then I cooked the noodles and rice until they were golden- just like you do for the box mix.

After the rice and pasta had browned up a bit I added 4c of chicken stock (I mixed 2 T of chicken bullion with 4 c. water) and then 2 more cups of water, and 1 T garlic powder. (the kind I had is from Costco and has parsley with it)

Doesn’t it look just like the box mix?!?!?  Now this is the part that takes a little tweaking…… bring it to a boil, then cover it and lower the burner to a med-low.  You’ll want to test it when the water gets absorbed to make sure your rice is cooked all the way.  I didn’t have a lid big enough for this pan so my rice ended up being a little more chewy then I prefer, if that’s the case just add a little more water and cook a little longer until the rice is cooked the way you like it.

This was amazing! And cheap to make!! To make as much as I did if you were buying/making it from the box would probably have cost 10 times as much!