As you may have noticed, we’re big fans of chicken and rice here at Poor Couple’s Food Guide.  For the less enlightened, you may think that it gets boring eating a lot of chicken and rice.  But this is not the case!  There are so many delicious ways to prepare it, each one tasting different from the last.  Today I’m here to share one such recipe that I came up with.  After months of heavy winter foods I wanted to come up with something light and springy, now that the weather is finally warming up.  And something with green in it to reflect the green finally growing outside.

The cooking time for this dish rules it out for a last minute dinner idea, but it’s still easy to make, and it looks really impressive, so it’s good to make if you’re having company over, or if you just want to make dinner a bit fancy looking that night.

Springtime Baked Chicken and Rice:

For the chicken:

• 4 skinless boneless chicken breasts
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1 tsp. rosemary
• 1 tsp. thyme
• 1 tsp. parsley
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Oil for sautéing

For the rice:

• 2/3 cups white or brown rice
• 1 cup frozen peas (or peas and carrot mix)
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 cup chicken or vegetable broth
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1-2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 1/2 tbsp onion flakes
• 1/2 tsp. ground ginger
• 1 tbsp. chives
• 1/2 tsp. ground black pepper
• 1/4 tsp. salt

All the things (okay, most of the things)

Add the flour, herbs, salt and pepper to a gallon size Ziploc bag.

It’s not going to look like enough, but it’ll be enough.

Add chicken to the bag and shake until all the pieces are thoroughly coated.  Shake off any excess flour mixture (though be careful not to knock off too many of the herbs).  Heat oil in a large pan and then brown the chicken on both sides.  This will take about 10 minutes.

Nice and brown

Remove chicken from pan and set aside on a plate.  In the same pan add the rest of the ingredients.  You don’t need to rinse the pan, just take out any gross blobs of fat that may be in there.  Once all the ingredients are in, stir and bring to a boil. Let it boil for a minute or two, then pour the rice mixture into a rectangular baking dish, and place the chicken pieces on top.  Pour any drippings from the plate over the chicken and rice.

For the record, you won’t/shouldn’t have this many peas. I measured out a cup, then tossed in the rest of the bag because it wasn’t enough left to save and I didn’t want to waste.

Cook, covered, in a 350 degree oven for 50-60 minutes or until chicken is cooked through and rice is tender.  If you use brown rice it will take a bit longer than if you use white rice.

All done! Yummy yummy.

Tips:

• Try to make your chicken breasts about the same size so cooking times are similar.  I  started off with 4 breasts, but had to cut one down to make them a good size, so it looks like I really have 6.
• If you want to make more rice to go with it, make sure to increase the amount of broth (or you could add water) in proportion.
• If after baking your rice is tender, but still a little wet, cook uncovered for a couple of minutes to help get rid of the extra moisture.
• I really like getting these small individual things of broth. Each little box is a little over a cup, which makes it easy to use in recipes. If you use chicken broth a lot the big boxes are fine, but if you don’t use it that often, but want to have it on hand these are the perfect solution since you don’t have to worry as much about them going bad once opened, since you’ll likely only open and use one at a time.