Uzbek pilaf is not necessary to cook according to a traditional recipe. This is a dish with which you can experiment: take different varieties of rice instead of the usual devzira, replace lamb with pork, turkey or even chicken. Yes, if you do not have lamb or beef and a cast-iron cauldron, you can completely cook pilaf with chicken in a pan according to the step-by-step recipe below, and it will turn out no worse than traditional Uzbek.
Cooks Secrets
What is the secret of a good dish? Of course, the taste most depends not even on the type of meat, but on the kind of rice that you will use for cooking. Be sure to choose rice of hard varieties, and this is Devzira, Alanga or laser. You can use any rice based on personal preferences, but still usually recommend crumbly steamed, since it will not stick to lumps when cooking. Kruglozerny leave better for milk porridge. Although some culinary experts use brown rice, bulgur, and even barley as an experiment.
Before cooking, soak the rice in slightly salted water for about forty minutes. There are several more points, considering which, you will get an unsurpassed result.
1. Be sure to rinse the rice well. When the water is absolutely clear, without signs of turbidity, the cereal will be ready for use. Such a thorough washing will subsequently prevent the grains from sticking to each other.
2. Dry the cereal on a towel, and then fry a little. This will make it even more crumbly and tasty.
How to choose chicken and in which pan to cook?
Take fresh, not frozen chicken, because after freezing its meat becomes drier and fibrous. Broiler fillet is ideal for this dish. It cooks quickly and remains juicy and tasty.
Another important nuance in this step-by-step recipe for pilaf with chicken in a pan: do not forget that it is worth taking dishes with thick walls, and even better - made of cast iron. In a thin-walled pan, pilaf burns quickly, and it keeps the heat worse.
Pilaf prepares pretty quickly, so you won’t have to bother with it for a long time.
Step-by-step recipe for pilaf with chicken in a pan
So, you will need the following products:
- One and a half cups of hard rice.
- Chicken fillet - 500 grams.
- Two large red carrots (ideally, of course, it is better to take yellow, as in real pilaf, but it is not easy to find it in markets and shops).
- Two large onion heads.
- Three cloves of garlic.
- Special ready-made seasoning for pilaf (you can take zira, turmeric and barberry separately, or you can do without it at all, especially if you cook for children).
- Vegetable oil for frying onions, carrots and chicken - about three tablespoons.
Cooking!
So, now you will learn how to cook pilaf with chicken in a pan.
Cut onions into large squares, but not very finely, as its taste should be felt quite well in the finished dish. Wash carrots, peel and rub on a coarse grater or cut into small cubes. Now we wash the chicken, remove the skin from it, cut it into large pieces, as you like, and dry it a little with a clean towel. If you put insufficiently dry meat in the hot oil, the oil will begin to hiss and spatter in all directions. In a pan, heat the vegetable oil and fry the onion to a translucent state. Important: watch the onion so that it does not burn. A burnt onion can be safely thrown away, because it will ruin the dish, giving it a bitter aftertaste.
Now you need to add chopped chicken to it and fry them together for about five minutes until a golden crust appears on the meat. Further to the onion and meat, we send the carrots, close tightly with a lid and simmer for five minutes until the carrot is soft enough.
Spices and rice
At this point, you need to introduce spices. Please note that in ready-made ready-made mixtures often there is already salt, so be sure to look at the composition of the seasoning. If salt is present as one of the components, then you can still not add salt, because rice perfectly absorbs it and you can spoil the taste of the dish by salting it. Now fill the contents of the pan with water so that it covers the meat. If you fried the meat poorly, then when water is added it will start to produce foam, which will negatively affect the appearance of the finished dish. We extinguish everything under a tightly closed lid over a not very high fire for about twenty to thirty minutes.
Now proceed to the rice. It must be washed to the point that the water into which it is washed is completely transparent. If it is cloudy, then you need to rinse until it becomes clean. We send the washed rice to the pan, where we stew the meat with vegetables, and do not mix. If you mix, then the rice will be below, and the pilaf will burn. There should be enough water to cover rice about one and a half centimeters. Cover the dish with a lid and leave to stew. After about fifteen minutes, open the lid and squeeze the pre-peeled cloves of garlic into the rice at different ends of the pan. Cover again and cook for about ten minutes.
Bring to readiness
How to determine if the dish is ready? Rice should absorb all the water into itself and become soft. If there is still water, you can open the lid and extinguish for several minutes and bring to readiness. But experienced housewives do a little differently: they do not cook pilaf until the water has completely boiled over the fire, but they are removed from the stove and wrapped in a towel. Pilaf is infused, rice absorbs all the water and becomes even tastier. In addition, this technique will prevent the burning of dishes.
It took only forty minutes to prepare this dish, and it turned out to be very satisfying, tasty and aromatic. Use this step-by-step recipe for pilaf with chicken in a pan to please your loved ones.