5 Star Chicken and Rice

Many years ago I saw on TV an unremembered French chef prepare this dish. Since then I have made it many times, but never perfectly.

It is however, just plain great! I reserve the overused word awesome for few things. This is awesome! It is five star and will impress should you choose to perform it.

It has always been very challenging for me to cook. It requires timing, organization and heat control skills that I, being the occasional cook that I am, always struggle with. The chef I watched was a true master of his craft, his tools and his kitchen. If you can put this on the table in 50 minutes consider yourself a star!

Ingredients:

1 Chicken cut up, with most all fat and extra bits of skin removed
All removed skin and fat chopped finely
1 Onion diced fine
3 Bay leaves
2 Tablespoons of Butter
8 ounces of Whipping Cream
1/3 Cup Cream Sherry
1 1/2 Cup long grain rice
2 1/4 cup water
Salt and Pepper

Equipment:

2 heavy frying pans with lids. One lid should be pretty tight because you will be steaming rice in it. Tin foil could get you around this. A good sized serving platter.
A good kitchen timer.
Mad Skillz

Procedure:

The following is for electric.

Set the racks in your oven so the top one will allow the pan with the tightest lid to fit below the top element, and the lower rack to allow the other pan and lid to fit under the top rack.

Preheat oven to 400F.

Put the frying pan with the looser lid on medium high heat.

Without wasted time, process chicken and fat and skin, and set the skin and fat to rendering before the pan over heats. You are rendering this at a fairly high temp so you need to stir it often during the next few steps.

Put the other pan on a little more than medium heat.

Dice the onion fine. Melt the butter and start the onion and the bay leaves. Sweat the onions but do not allow them to brown. This will require your attention often too.

Prepare a place to drain the cracklins. Paper plate with a paper towel on it, maybe.

Measure the other ingredients.

Salt and pepper the chicken pieces.

Remove the cracklins from the pan and reserve them, sprinkling them with fine salt.

Bearing in mind you're cooking in chicken fat, turn up the heat to medium high or a little more under the cracklin pan and put the chicken pieces in skin side down. Set a timer for 12 minutes. Adjusting the heat downward along the way, brown the chicken on all sides.

Meanwhile, turn up the heat a little under the now sweated onions and add the rice, salt and pepper. Stir it all well to coat the rice with the butter. The goal is to "pop" the rice, meaning to partially cook it without browning it or the onions. You will hear the rice and it requires almost constant stirring.

When the rice is popped add the water, stir well and over high heat bring to a boil then cover tightly. 

Just as you put the lid on the rice the 12 minute timer went off, didn't it?

Gaze droolingly at the chickens wonderfully perfect brownness as you slap a lid over it. Burner off.

Place both covered pans in the hot oven at the same time. Chicken on the bottom and rice at the top.

Reset the timer for 15 minutes.

Time for some clean up and plating prep as you wait the 15 minutes for the chicken to finish.

As the timer gets close to 15 minutes turn on a burner to high.

After the 15 minutes is done reset the timer for another 3 minutes and remove the chicken from the oven.

Place the chicken aside and boil off the remaining liquid in the pan. There probably isn't much.

After the liquid is just gone, pour off any extra chicken grease (save it?) and while off the heat add the Sherry and deglaze the pan.

Somewhere around here the timer for the rice will go off and you need to remove it from the oven, stir it, remove the bay leaves, check spices and pile the rice neatly on your serving platter.

Meanwhile, the reducing sherry is back on the high heat and is being reduced to what is called Glace, where it has reduced to a syrupy and sort of dark liquid. Unburnt of course.

After the glace is formed, add the cream and reduce again to a nice sauce. A little thinner than you might guess as it thickens after plating. Go with the "coat the back of a spoon" rule.

Meanwhile, as the sauce reduces arrange the chicken pieces around the pile of rice on the platter. Sprinkle the cracklins neatly over the rice only.

When the sauce is ready, check it for spices and spoon it carefully over only the chicken.

A nice white wine and you and your friends will truly be stylin'!

If you can pull this off, Hats off to ya!

And my apologies for not having pictures. I don't have a camera. I hope this isn't a requirement to post here.

If you were to look at my introducing post you would notice that I am interested in kitchen procedures and management of the processes required to make dishes. This recipe is a perfect example of that type of thing. It has many elements of what I would call advanced kitchen skills. A person could learn a lot by mastering just this one recipe.

Look at all that happens during the process. The heat control, the multitasking, the time and ingredient management, to name a few. Fascinating. To me.

And of course, I heartily encourage those here to prepare this wonderful dish. I admit, I am selfish, and I would seriously like to know if anyone can come up with a way to make this easier to prepare. It's just THAT good!

 

 

I am intrigued by this dish and am going to give it  try.  I'll let you know how it turns out.  Thanks for posting this, Rod!

Sounds to me like drinking beer saved this meal!

Way to go Bubba!

One tip I forgot to mention.  Preparing this dish requires that you dice the chicken fat and skin in order to make the chicken cracklings.  This is more easily accomplished if you remove it from the bird and then place the skin and fat in the freezer until almost frozen, it is then much, much easier to dice.

and, as promised, here's the pic of the finished dish........

I've been away. Forgive me.

It's great to see that someone tried this. (thanks Andy!) That makes me feel good. It is truly a wonderful meal.

Chicken cracklin's are something special! Sometimes they don't make it to the top of the rice and get snatched while the cook is busy!

Like a zombie resurrected and in search of brains, I bring this thread back from the dead to hopefully pick some brains and be commented on by some of this forums newer and more classically knowledgeable members to comment on.

I like this recipe, but as a mentioned right up front it is a real challenge for me to cook. It keeps me real busy from beginning to end. You'll notice also from Andys' picture there aren't any vegetables on that plate. So, what vegetable dish would compliment this and at the same time able to be made?

Also to the pros, please judge the procedure, as harshly as you will so as to inform me on any way to make this easier, or more classically proper, or whatever. Any observations would be appreciated.

I'm thinking that this recipe is very classic french cooking, so if there is terminology associated with what is happening, I would be very interested to know what those terms might be, and of course if my use of terminology is incorrect then please clue me.

For the vegetable side I was thinking sweating a shallot or two in butter with salt and pepper, then sweat down some lettuce or some other leaves in there and finally some frozen peas till warmed through. How I could fit that into the procedure above I don't know. Maybe someone can help with that and possibly a suggestion for a spice or two to add to the lettuce/peas mixture. Or maybe an entirely different vegetable side is more appropriate? 

Well, thanks for looking. I would like to put this deal on the table in less than an hour. And, hey! I would be honored if one of you pros would make it. It isn't my recipe, but I feel real close to it nonetheless.

Rod Franklin wrote: I like this recipe, but as a mentioned right up front it is a real challenge for me to cook. It keeps me real busy from beginning to end. You'll notice also from Andys' picture there aren't any vegetables on that plate. So, what vegetable dish would compliment this and at the same time able to be made?

Hoser, I had to look up haricot verts to find out they were skinny green beans. I might be able to manage them.

Ron, always the nice guy.Thanks for the "fine as mine" comment. I must reiterate that this isn't my recipe. This dish may even have a name and be some "everybody's Mom makes this dish over here" kinda thing for all I know. I just know it's good and I want to cook it fast and right and with a green thing on the side, but the procedure as outlined above just kicks my butt.

Maybe this is just the commercial kitchen procedure. As an example, the rice going into the oven may have more to do with clearing the stove top so something else can be happening there instead of the rice actually needing to be in the oven. Heck, maybe the whole thing can be done on the stove top.

I'm thinking this is all going to come down to becoming faster/better in the kitchen. I mean the guy in the video really did cut up a whole chicken and trim the extra fat and skin and chop that fat and skin into little bits in the time it took to heat a frying pan up on a commercial stove top.

Off to go look at ChrisBelgiums posts.

Meese is absolutely the way to streamline cooking. And, in fact, you can cut down prep time by pre-prepping many items. For example, if you'll be using chopped onions over the next few days, chop them all at once and store what you don't need immediately in the fridge.

>>>That'll probably make it take longer to prepare, as all those little moments that are utilized in the procedure above will now be empty time<<<