Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Chicken and Rice (Arroz con pollo) (p. 435)

I learned a lesson while making Chicken and Rice (Arroz con pollo) (p. 435) but I'll get to that at the end of the post.

The first step of the recipe was to brown some chicken thighs and remove them from the pot but since that's essentially the first step of every TJOC chicken recipe, I didn't think I needed to take pictures of it for the 40th time. Next step--I sauteed a ton of onions and some ham in some olive oil.



I added two cups of long-grain white rice and coated it with fat:



To the mixture I added garlic, paprika, salt, and pepper and cooked it for another minute. I then added chicken stock, oregano, and saffron (which was optional).

Saffron always amazes me. It's sooo expensive. It's expensive because it takes about 150 flowers to yield one ounce of saffron. ONE OUNCE! That's amazing.



And it looked like this:



I added the chicken and simmered it for about twenty minutes before adding peas and green olives:



It was cooked a while longer (the recipe says 10 more minutes but the chicken as nowhere near done [use your meat thermometer! Food poisoning sucks!] at that point). And it was done!



How was it? This is one of those recipes that I can't judge well. First off, I'm not totally on-board with TJOC's love of leaving the chicken on the bone in recipes like this. I find it really annoying to have to shred the meat when it's in the midst of all that rice--it's messy and annoying. Second, I now know that I hate saffron. Really hate it. Like, I had a couple bites and couldn't force any more of it down. I hope to limit my saffron consumption, which shouldn't be a problem, considering how expensive it is. Josh wasn't in love with the recipe either, so we had a lot of wasted food. The recipe wasn't difficult, though, and if you like saffron, it would probably be a hit in your household.

So I can add saffron to cinnamon in my hated spice category. What is on your list?

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2 comments:

  1. i totally don't like saffron either.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is my favorite recipe for family dinners, delicious and easy!

    ReplyDelete

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