EEE Cooks: Chicken with Wild Rice (Recipe)

This is a delicious one pot meal. The chicken is browned and then cooked in the same pan that the wild and brown rices are cooked so that the flavors mingle and the clean-up is easy. The problem we had with the dish was that, although the package of brown rice indicated that the cooking time was 20 minutes, it took more like 45 minutes for the brown rice to get tender. Next time, we will either use white rice or anticipate the longer cooking time! The rices are finished with dried cherries and scallions which provide a nice texture and contrast of tastes to the finished dish. The rice part of the meal was inspired by a wild rice stuffing on the epicurious.com website. We intended to try the stuffing at Thanksgiving with turkey, but it nicely complements the chicken.

We start off the meal by heating our Dutch oven over medium heat. We rinse our chicken, pat dry, and place on a dinner plate, skin-side up. We wash our hands well and then sprinkle the skin of the chicken with salt and pepper. Next we pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.

We add the oil to the pan and, when it is hot enough, we add the chicken skin-side down, tilting the pan so as to distribute the oil. We put the chicken plate in the dishwasher and wash up again. With tongs, we turn the chicken pieces when they are brown on the one side, about 7 minutes, and continue to brown on the other side. This takes another 3 or 4 minutes. With clean tongs, we remove the browned chicken to a clean dinner plate.

Using the tongs and paper towels, we remove all but 1 teaspoon of oil from the Dutch oven. We lower the heat to medium-low, add the butter, and then add the onions. We stir well with a wooden spoon, scraping up some of the browned bits on the bottom of the pan. We cook for about 5 minutes. Next, we add the garlic and cook for half a minute, stirring it in.

We deglaze with the wine at this point and allow it to boil for a couple of minutes, stirring often. When it is almost completely reduced, we add the thyme. Next we add 3 cups of the chicken stock and raise the heat to medium.

While the stock is coming to a boil, we pour the wild rice into our fine strainer and set in a large bowl. We place in the sink and rinse the rice, filling up the bowl. We lift the strainer out of the bowl, dump the water out, rinse the bowl, and then fill it with more cold water. We dump the wild rice into the clean water and swish around. We rinse out the strainer and then dump the wild rice back into the strainer. It is now well rinsed. We add the rice to the boiling stock, stir, add the chicken back in one layer, cover, and put in the oven.

We cook the chicken and wild rice for 30 minutes. Then, we carefully take the Dutch oven out with potholders, uncover, and remove the chicken to a clean plate to test for doneness with our thermometer. The chicken is above 180 degrees, we probably should have checked after 20 minutes! We set it aside, covered with aluminum foil.

We stir in the brown rice and remaining chicken stock and cover the Dutch oven. We bake the rices for 30 minutes in the oven. Meanwhile, we rinse and dry our scallions, removing the outermost layer that is a little bruised. We chop most of the white and green parts. yielding about a half a cup of chopped scallions.

Using potholders, we remove the Dutch oven, uncover carefully, and taste the rices. The rices need more time to be tender so we continue to simmer on top of the stove. The whole dish could be done in the oven or on top of the stove, we put it in the oven to cook at first, but it is easier to check the rice if we continue to cook it on top of the stove.

We wind up giving the rices another 15 minutes of simmering. At this time, the liquid is mostly absorbed and the rice is tender. We add the dried cherries, parsley, and scallions to the pan, add some more salt and pepper, and place the chicken back in to reheat. We simmer on medium-low heat for another 5 minutes and then enjoy! We refrigerate the leftover rice mixture and then freeze for a yummy poultry stuffing in the future!

Chicken with Wild Rice

Servings and Times

Tools and Appliances

Ingredients