Friday, June 4, 2010

One pan dinner - Spanish Rice


You may have noticed that most of my recipes have been on the sweet side. But don't worry, I tested a spanish rice dish that I can share. I would not call it paella because the recipe does not use saffron. The taste is light and excellent for those hot days. The red colour is from tomato sauce. The chicken is my twist to the dish.

Spanish Rice with Chicken - serves 4 plus lunches for the next day. Now, that's a real bang for your buck!

4 chicken legs, skin off and cut into 3 pieces
Pinch of Salt and pepper

3 cups of rice
1 medium onion, diced
1 tbsp of chili powder
3 tbsp of olive oil
1/2 can of 796ml tomato sauce
1/3 water
1/2 cup of chopped scallions -- green onion
salt and pepper to taste

Wash and cook rice and set aside -- you can do this the day before.

In a skillet, brown chicken until cooked. Remove chicken from pan. Pour out excess oil and sautee the diced onion until transparent and brown.
Add the cooked rice and stir constantly. Add chili powder to the rice and stir. Add olive oil and stir thoroughly.
Combine water and tomato sauce and stir into the rice. It will look like wet risotto. But keep stirring to prevent sticking. Cook for 20 mins. Then add the scallions, and add salt/pepper to taste.
Return chicken to the pan and cover for another 20 mins. Lower heat to a gentle simmer. This will further cook and heat the entire dish and evaporate some of the liquid to make the rice less wet.

You can serve in the pan or plate it with rice, chicken and a side salad. You can also add some tiger shrimp as well.

My total cooking time was 1 hour. Not your 30 minute meal kind of dish but just as good and healthy.

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