Baked Rice w/ Chicken & Chorizo
I found this recipe on Jamie Oliver's website and decided to give it a go.
It's a relatively simple and straight-forward dish. Easy to make and easy to clean up!
It's also quite a healthy dish because i only used a tbsp of oil to fry the onions and only a pinch of salt when frying the onions and to the sauce at the end. I also trimmed the chicken thighs really well and removed most of the fats.
Ingredients
1 onion
4 cloves of garlic (just because i love garlic)
1 pepper (i chose yellow)
50g Chorizo
1 tbsp smoked paprika
250g basmati rice, washed
4-8 boneless chicken thighs
500ml passata
300ml chicken stock
1 juicy lemon
Directions
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
Roughly chop your onion, garlic, pepper and chorizo.
In your casserole dish with a little olive oil, fry the chorizo and onions together.
After the onions have softened and red oil from the chorizo has seeped out to colour the onions.
Add the pepper and fry till softened.
Then add the washed basmati rice and stir to coat all the rice grains with the oil.
Pour in the chicken stock and the passata - make sure to scrape the bottom of the pot to get all the flavourful bits into the sauce.
Zest a lemon and squeeze its juice into the sauce.
Add salt and pepper to taste.
After trimming the fats and any bone chips from the chicken thighs, place them into the sauce. The quantity of chicken thighs is up to you. I found that 4 thighs would feed about 2-3 ppl.
Submerge the chicken into the sauce, bring to the boil then reduce it to a simmer.
Taking a piece of greaseproof paper, wet it and scrunge it up. Open it and place it on top of the dish. I think this helps to prevent the dish from bubbling over.
Cover with the lid and place into the oven for 45 mins (the rice is a tiny bit mushy, though ok. Adjust the timing to your preference)
Check the doneness of the rice and chicken.
I also squeezed some lemon juice over the dish to brighten it up.
It was delicious with some shredded mozzarella cheese!
It's a simple base - in the future, i will try adding olives and mushrooms to give it more depth and variety in flavour.
YUM!!