👨🏾‍🏭 ⚛️ 🕷️ Brown rice pilaf with chicken: ingredients, cooking options, recipes ❣️ ♉️ 🧐

Pilaf from brown rice with chicken is a simple and tasty dish that is equally appropriate on the festive table and in the diet of an active athlete or a person who wants to lose extra pounds. There are at least three reasons to prepare such a variation of pilaf.

Originality

With all this, the variety of pilaf recipes most often prepare the classic version with pork or lamb and white rice. Pilaf from brown rice with chicken will help surprise home and guests, delight them with new taste sensations. Brown rice combines wonderfully with chicken, gives the dish a nutty flavor and unusual color.

Friability

White rice is a very capricious cereal that requires special preparation and control. If you do not observe the correct proportion of water and rice, it is bad to wash the grains or overexposure it on fire, then instead of crumbly pilaf we get sticky rice porridge with vegetables and meat, which has a dubious appearance and taste. Brown rice, due to its structure, does not stick together, even for beginners, pilaf with it always turns out to be friable.

Utility

Brown rice contains significantly more vitamins, fiber and trace elements than its white counterpart. It's all about processing. During the cleaning of grain from the outer shell and steaming, white rice loses many useful substances. In addition, brown rice has more slow carbohydrates, so it saturates the body better and provides a feeling of satiety for a long time, which is very important for people who follow diets. Chicken meat refers to dietary products, it is less high-calorie and fatty than pork and lamb.

Tableware

Regardless of the selected recipe, brown rice pilaf with chicken (as well as any other) must be cooked in the right dish. It should be sufficiently voluminous and ensure uniform heating of the products. Therefore, pots and pans with low sides and thin walls will not work, pilaf does not fit into them and often burns. Not the best choice is dishes with a thick bottom, but thin walls.

The best option is a quality cauldron. It was created to make the perfect pilaf. A semicircular bottom, thick walls, a dense lid provide the same heating throughout the volume. If there is no cauldron, then you can use a deep stewpan, ducklings, cast-iron pot or slow cooker, which also provides uniform heat transfer.

Ingredients

Pilaf from brown rice with chicken includes a number of essential products, each of which plays an important role in the final taste of the dish. Therefore, you need to responsibly approach their purchase. There are still optional additives, but they can add piquancy to pilaf and enrich its taste.

Brown rice. Its quality can be determined by the appearance of the grain. It should be light brown in color, approximately the same size and whole. Too dark or very light color is a sign of a fake product. In addition, brown rice spoils quickly during long or improper storage, so you should look at expiration dates in the store and use or store in the refrigerator immediately at home.

Meat. Pilaf from brown rice with chicken can be prepared from chicken legs, thighs, drumsticks, breast or fillet - it does not really matter. If the meat has bones, then the dish becomes more rich. Boneless meat is drier, but more convenient to eat. The main thing is to buy fresh chicken, and during cooking to remove oily and harmful skin from it.

Vegetables. Carrots, garlic, onions - a classic vegetable triumvirate for pilaf. They are responsible for the aroma, color and taste of the dish. Therefore, do not save and buy Chinese garlic or dry carrots. It is better to pay for juicy and aromatic vegetables, the costs will pay off with a magnificent pilaf.

Butter. There is a controversial opinion that real pilaf is cooked purely in cottonseed oil. But it is difficult to find in Russia, in addition, practice shows that pilaf turns out to be tasty and in ordinary vegetable oil. It is desirable that it be refined, that is, it does not have a pronounced smell of seeds.

Seasonings. For brown rice pilaf with chicken, the same seasonings are used as for classic. These are barberry, coriander, necessarily zira, paprika, turmeric, saffron, black and hot red peppers. There is a huge field for culinary experiments. However, you need to be careful with seasonings, because they are able to drown out all the other tastes or make the dish too spicy.

Additional ingredients. To complicate the taste bouquet of pilaf and give it a special originality, you can add Bulgarian pepper, raisins, chili peppers, green peas, tomatoes, chickpeas, dried fruits, quince, fresh dogwood, cranberries.

Algorithm and basic principles of preparation

There are many options for cooking pilaf from brown rice and chicken. It can be cooked on a fire, on a stove or in a slow cooker, from fillet or from shins and thighs, use a minimum of required products or flavor the dish with unusual ingredients. However, any good pilaf is prepared according to approximately the same algorithm and in compliance with a number of established principles:

Product Ratios. Each person has their own preferences: someone puts more meat in the pilaf, someone does not really like carrots and reduces its amount. But many experienced chefs advise using a simple formula: take an equal mass of carrots, dry rice and meat.
Preparation of products. First you need to thoroughly rinse brown rice and soak it. It boils longer than white, so it needs to be soaked for longer: about three to four hours, but it is better to leave it in the water for the whole night. Onions practically dissolve in pilaf, therefore, the method of slicing it is not critical. Carrots need to be chopped with large straws, so it will retain more juices. Chicken is placed in portions or cut into smaller pieces.
Bookmark meat and vegetables. First, chicken is placed in the dishes. The oil must be heated very well so that the meat in it is immediately fried to a crust and does not give up its juices. When the chicken is browned, onions are added to it and fried until golden brown. Carrots fall asleep, which is brought to softness. Then comes the turn of salt, heads of garlic and seasonings. They need a couple of minutes, stirring, to soak, so that they reveal their aromas.
Bookmark Rice. Usually, when cooking pilaf, a mixture of vegetables and meat is poured with water and a special sauce called zirvak is cooked for half an hour. But the chicken cooks quickly, so you can immediately put rice.
Principle of layers. While pilaf is on fire, it is not customary to mix it. The bottom layer is made up of meat and vegetables, on top of it lies rice, which, having absorbed water, comes to steaming.
The proportions of water and rice. It is usually advised to take two parts of water for one part of rice. But brown rice is tougher and boils longer than white. Therefore, it is better to increase the amount of water to a ratio of 3 to 1. You can do it in another way: level the rice layer in a cauldron and fill it with water so that the water covers it by about 2-3 centimeters.
After boiling water, the fire under the dishes is reduced to almost a minimum. Readiness of pilaf is determined by the readiness of rice. If all the principles and proportions are met, then after half an hour there is no water in the cauldron, and brown rice becomes soft, although it still retains its characteristic light stiffness.

Subtleties

There are a number of culinary subtleties that help to avoid mistakes typical for beginners and make pilaf made from brown rice and chicken especially tasty:

The taste of pilaf depends on the taste of water. Many overlook this critical factor when using tap water to soak rice. Grains absorb the taste and smell of the liquid in which they are located. Therefore, you can wash the rice in plain water, but you need to soak in filtered, and even better in the key or well.

Onions are responsible for flavoring the oil and the color of the rice. The stronger it is fried, the yellower and brighter the pilaf turns out.
In addition to the main seasonings, a pinch of sugar should be added to the pilaf. It improves the taste of the dish.
Rice in a cauldron should be poured with boiling water so that the stewing of the products does not stop, and the water boils faster.
Pilaf should be allowed to ripen: turn off the fire, wrap the cauldron in a blanket or just leave it alone under the lid for half an hour or an hour, and only after that serve pilaf to the table.

Pilaf with chicken and brown rice in a cauldron

Ingredients:

Chicken fillet or drumsticks and thighs - 500 grams.
Brown rice - 500 grams.
Peeled carrots - 500 grams.
Onion - 2 onions.
One head of garlic.
Seasonings, sugar, salt - to taste.

Cooking:

Fry the meat in hot oil.
Add finely chopped onions to it, after a few minutes carrots, chopped with straws.
Bring the carrots to softness, then add salt, seasonings and garlic to the cauldron and vigorously mix the contents of the cauldron for a couple of minutes.
Pour pre-soaked rice onto a layer of meat and vegetables and carefully level it. Pour hot water on top so that it covers the groats for 2-3 centimeters.
Allow the water to boil, reduce the heat and cook the pilaf until rice is ready.

Brown rice pilaf with chicken in a slow cooker