One of our family’s favorite Grandma recipes is her chicken and rice. My dad ate it as a kid growing up. He and my mom made it for us growing up. And tonight my “picky about everything” 3 year old gobbled it up and loved it. Clearly this recipe needs to enter our rotation. My dad pointed out that the best chickens to use for this recipe are old laying hens……. he said they have the most flavor…… not sure that’s ever going to happen.
Here we go — the recipe.
Purchase a nice big chicken. Pull off the fat before boiling or roasting the chicken. Grandma always boiled the chicken and used the chicken stock later. Yesterday, my parents actually roasted the chicken for the first time, kept the drippings, and added the nice rich drippings to water today to make a stock. After your chicken is fully cooked (boiled or roasted) let it cool enough to handle and pull apart the chicken in nice bite sized chunks.
Next, melt the fat in a big heavy pot on the stovetop.When you render chicken fat you end up with these little brown things called cracklings. They are great with a little salt. You remove the cracklings and just leave the oil.
Rinse 2 cups of rice. Dry the rice on a towel before adding to the oil.
Dice an onion add it to the rice as it’s browning, but toward the very end, otherwise you could burn the onion.
While the rice is cooking, heat up your chicken stock. For 2 cups of rice use 4+ cups of chicken stock. Once the rice and onions are browned, add the chicken and make sure to get everything hot.
Add all of the stock at once.
Cover and simmer for 20 minutes, or until all the liquid is absorbed. Stir once as it gets close to the end of the 20 minutes.
Serve with classic peas and canned cranberry sauce. Clearly.
DeLores & Joe 