Chicken & Rice, However the Heck You Want | Off-Script with Sohla

i got i got splatters everywhere hey vito get out of there hello it's sola a whaley here and today we're going to go off scripts with me sola i just said my name twice [Laughter] today we're going to go off script with some chicken and rice and i'm not gonna just show you one kind of chicken and rice or two kinds of chicken and rice but i'm gonna show you how to open up the world of chicken and rice you can make whatever kind of chicken and rice you your heart desires it's like it's like mad libs this recipe is like mad libs you know you got you got your you got your your paragraph and then you throw in some different nouns magic tips and it's a whole new dish but it's really the same story and if you want to see more of me going off script and riffing recipes be sure to like and subscribe because there's a lot more to [Music] come chicken and rice is one of those things that i feel like every culture has everyone's mom makes it because it's like it's really easy and it's really wholesome and it's like a one-pot meal so who doesn't like that so it always gets me feeling super nostalgic i like every version of it so first thing we're going to do to start is we're going to dry brine our chicken and soak our rice so these are two things that you can do a little bit in advance if you have time but like if you don't have time just letting the chicken sit with the seasoning while you prep everything else is pretty great so dry brining is basically a fancy word for saying that you're gonna cover something in seasoning and let it hang out that's it that's all we're doing so we're gonna mix it up right here i have a teaspoon and a half of smoked paprika uh three and a quarter teaspoons of black pepper and i'm going to add one and a half teaspoons of kosher salt and this is going to be our dry brine mixing it up like this just helps it distribute a little bit more evenly spices kind of get clumpy so the kosher salt since it's nice and coarse is going to help it sprinkle on really well now whenever you want like a crispy seared piece of meat whether it's chicken fish steak it's really important to pat it off pat it dry if you've had trouble with meat sticking to a skillet that's probably what's going on you want to make sure you take some time pat it dry this is a good use of paper towels and i'm just going to evenly sprinkle the seasoning mix all over this is going to not only season the chicken all the way to the bone but it will also help dry out the skin even more as the chicken hangs out with this dry brine on it the skin is going to get really dry it's going to actually start to break down a little bit if you let it hang out for like 24 hours the fat in the underneath the skin is going to start to break down from the salt and it will render out more easily and you'll have this really nice glassy crisp chicken skin which is really like the best part of having thighs this recipe in particular is inspired by spanish paella but it is definitely not paella must be made in a paella pan this is not on a paella pan it's not over a wooden flame we don't have a saffron in it we're not using cauliflower rice so it's not paella for sure i don't want the spanish to come after me look at that awesome okay so i'm gonna just let this sit while i prepare everything else and just that little bit of time it's gonna make a huge difference but 24 hours that's that's the money if you have time for that i have one and a quarter cups of i'm using basmati rice i developed this to work with any medium or long grain so basmati works great jasmine works great and i'm going to rinse this a few times until the water runs clear and then i'm going to let it soak in cool tap water while we prep everything else i always like to rinse my rice in a bowl like this rather than just directly in a colander so you can gently agitate the grains with your hands like swish swish swish what we're doing is we want to rinse off all of the exterior starches that kind of build up as the rice just like sits in the bag and rubs up against each other so i've rinsed the rice until it's mostly clear it's not totally clear all the recipes tell you to rinse your rice until it's like clear what they mean is you want to be able to see through it but it'll never be completely not cloudy and i'm just going to let it hang out covered in water um what this does is help the rice cook more evenly most rice can benefit from a soak but basmati rice especially i feel like it almost demands it if you want it to grow to like its full length and not break soaking it is really helpful um 15 minutes to two hours i'm gonna set this aside [Music] you're gonna start by preparing we are we're gonna do this you're not doing this alone we're doing this together okay so i'm going to start preparing our aromatic base so for this i'm going for classic paella vibes so i'm using a sofrito kind of mix so i've got a red bell pepper medium white onion and garlic everything's just like roughly chopped because we're going to blend it up so we want this to become a smooth puree that's going to cook down and really like add a lot of richness to the water that we're going to cook the rice in so there's no need for you won't need any stock there's gonna be so much flavor and richness in this it'll be totally delicious without it um i'm gonna blend this up with i'm gonna try and see if i can blend it without any water if you need water just add a splash at a time to like get it going but um you know you want to you want to add as little water as possible because we have to cook it all out so it's just going to make it take a little bit longer but if your blender needs it give it to it it'll be fine you just just means you have to cook your paste up for a little bit longer [Music] you can see i just have it's basically a smoothie it's gonna we're starting off our rice with a smoothie you can make a smoothie you can make this blend it up really nice and smooth if you have a little small food processor if you don't have a blender you can use that and if you don't have a blender or food processor you can chop it up really really fine but it's going to take a long time [Music] i'm gonna start it in a relatively like cool pan so i've got a quarter cup of olive oil and i'm preheating my skillet to about medium but we don't have to wait for it to totally heat up we can go ahead and add the chicken skin side down as the pan heats up the fats going to render out of the skin and get like really nice and schmaltzy really flavorful base and we're going to get our skin really nice and crisp it's okay if it's all touching together like this that's totally fine you just want to make sure that the skin of each thigh is making contact with the pan as the pan heats up the skin's going to render out and it's going to get really nice and crisp and brown so we're basically just searing the chicken right now a lot of times when you hear the word sear people think like really high intense heat but searing is more about getting nice direct heat my chicken has been sizzling away and now you can see it is super brown and crisp all the fat has rendered out look at that glassy crunchy chicken it's not cooked through and that's totally fine it's going to finish cooking through with our rice now this fat this base even before we've added our aromatics is already super super flavorful from all of that chicken fat and all the spices that have kind of toasted in there so next we're going to add our aromatic base so this is going to look like a lot and it's going to cook down to nothing you're going to see we want to cook it until it's like the texture of a tomato paste it's going to get really jammy caramelized and concentrated okay and vito is also very interested i'm gonna switch to a full-size spatula now okay into here we're gonna add a little bit more smoked paprika and it's going to bloom so so right now this is just like super liquidy there's not there's not a lot of flavor here it just smells like raw onions if you don't take the time to cook this out it's going to be really bitter as it cooks out you're going to see it's going to get sweet and very aromatic and the flavors really change and and the the once all the water cooks out of it it's going to start sizzling in fat and the paprika is going to like bloom and fry in that fat a little bit so it's going to be really tasty this first part's a little messy i got i got splatters everywhere it's okay it'll be worth it we're going to clean it up after the dogs are getting the floor splatter it's great i'm cooking this right now in a 10 inch cast iron skillet because it's my favorite skillet but use whatever your favorite skillet is you want to use something with high size that's the main thing so that um you know all that so the dog was trying really hard to get over here and he just fell but he's okay [Music] he's okay he this is how he's gonna learn he needs to fall and realize there's consequences to his actions anyways i'm using a cast iron skillet just because it's my favorite but use whatever high sided skillet you have i know that there's a concern about cooking like things like tomato based stuff in a cast iron skillet but because of the acid it can sometimes give you like a metallic tinny taste but this skillet is very well seasoned and it's not that much tomato and it's not cooking for that long so i'm not worried about that if your cast-iron skillet is well seasoned you can do anything to it it's getting thicker it's leaving a trail behind this is exactly what you want but we're not there yet you're not there until you see the fat pull out of it so you can see it's gotten deeper in color it's starting to almost stick to the pan and you can really see the fat has totally you see what i mean it's like it's broken out of it it's sizzling so it's kind of frying now it went from like cooking down and steaming and now it's frying and the flavors are gonna get really nice and rich and deep from that so now i'm gonna drain my rice i will return so before we add the water i like to add the rice to this paste so it can kind of toast up in that fat as well [Music] you want to get every grain of rice right very important [Music] and i'm also going to add some green beans i just trimmed these and cut them into one inch lengths and we're going to stir it around in this um our cooked down sofrito mixture so this is why i really like to puree it rather than do a chop because the aromatics totally just like meld into it you don't have little bites of onion and pepper so it's just like a nice textural experience you know you just have those you're not distracted by these little chunks and you can just enjoy the rice so now everything is like nicely mixed up oh i forgot the tomatoes we'll add it now the tomatoes are supposed to go in before the rice but we'll pretend i did it it's okay see it's this recipe's so forgiving it's fine but uh you're gonna put the tomatoes in before you put your rice in whoops it's cool so now we're gonna add our water two cups of water now this is the point where we do where you do your main seasoning so we're going to add you need you need quite quite a lot of salt more salt than you think you're going to need season it up stir it in give it a chance to dissolve and then i'm going to give it a taste i want this liquid at this point to taste exactly as seasoned as i want my final dish it's going to be what's you know flavoring the rice and the green beans and everything we don't have to worry about our chicken it's already nicely seasoned but this is the point to season it if you season it after the rice has cooked it's just never gonna it's never gonna taste like it's seasoned on the inside you don't want it to be like nicely seasoned stuff around your rice you want your rice to be nicely seasoned so i'm just giving it a moment to dissolve stir in before i give it a taste so this i turned down the heat a little bit just to give myself a moment to like really really taste this you really can't go back and season it again later make sure you give your kosher salt a chance to dissolve into the water give yourself like a second when you're working on this part like the seasoning is you know we've developed a lot of flavor we've taken a lot of time and been really patient browning the chicken cooking off our aromatics adding the tomatoes at the right time you don't want to mess it up now by not seasoning it enough so that tastes good to me i feel good about that all right we're going to add our chicken back in just just kind of tuck it in you want the skin to remain above the surface of the liquid so it doesn't get soggy but um just nestle it into that broth we're going to really come to the upper limits of our pan here but don't worry all of that water is going to be absorbed by the rice we're nicely seasoned our chicken is nestled in now we're going to get our heat just right so you want to see we're going to bring it up to a boil first and bring it down to a gentle simmer so what happens is if if your bubbles are too big and too active it's gonna simmer away too quickly before your rice is cooked through but if you're what if your bubbles are too slow you're gonna have you're still gonna have undercooked rice what's gonna happen is if the bubbles are too slow they don't they don't really hit the top of the rice very well so you end up with a layer of undercooked rice on top and then mushy rice at the bottom it's somehow the worst of both worlds so you want to go for lots of little active bubbles nothing too vigorous but nothing too slow and this can take a little bit a little bit of trial and error to figure out exactly what it looks like on your stove and in your pan but once you get it you're going to do this forever this is one of those dishes you're going to like really get to know your rice and your pan and everything so let's see that's too active too active less activity the bubbles are like they're active they're hyper they're bouncy it's like a party in here but they're not going crazy you know what i mean it's not wild it's not bubbling out of the skillet and that's great but it's also not slow and lazy so this is exactly what you want this is what you're looking for and now you just kind of let it go leave her alone 25 to 30 minutes it's just gonna cook so you know that your rice is done when first of all we'll taste it it's going to taste done but i also like to listen to auditory cues my favorite things listening in the kitchen is really really important right now it's like really gurgly it's bubbling away that bubbling is going to really start to get quiet and it's going to turn into a sizzling you're going to hear the when the when the water is fully absorbed and the rice is cooked you're going to hear the bottom of the skillet the rice at the bottom is going to kind of just start sizzling in that fat and that's how you know you're done and and sometimes if you're lucky this this is like one of those things that kind of just takes practice and a little bit of luck but if you're lucky you're going to get a really nice brown crispy bottom sometimes that doesn't happen and don't worry about it if it doesn't but you know that you're heading towards crispy glory when you hear the little sizzling instead of the gurgling and um yeah it's kind of just take it from here you've done all the hard work now we wait [Music] my skillet chicken has been simmering away and you can see now that it looks like it looks like all the water has um cooked into the rice and i'm gonna just i'm just gonna get in there with a fork and make sure it's cooked through so i just like to dig in there lift up a piece of chicken see how the rice is looking the rice is perfectly tender but not mushy still intact chicken is nice and tender we're there you can see that it's like it really tells you when it's done it's totally quiet all the simmering is gone all the liquid is gone and we just have rice and chicken left let me lift up a piece of chicken so you can get a peek at this rice but see it is the rice is just cooked through tender fluffy not mushy there's no liquid left in there and our chicken is nice and tender but we still have because we didn't cover it we still have nice crispy skin i like to finish with a little bit more olive oil and serve it with lemon wedges alongside because we're inspired by paella for this rice and a lot of paella aioli on the side so we get that same richness and lemon flavor with just lemon and olive oil but you know if you've got aioli around why the hell not you know i'm not going to stop you little drizzle get everything looking the just a little bit of final fresh olive oil just adds a really nice flavor to everything and now this is totally optional but if you want a little color and freshness we're going to finish with a little bit of parsley you can totally leave this out but if you've got it it's a nice place for it to go some lemon you know you could serve it alongside or just throw it on there and then have everyone dive into the skillet why not honestly on a week night we just eat out of pans pretty often around here okay should i plate some up whoa wow amazing a little lemon why not why not a little extra olive oil drizzle you know wow it's really hard to look through a camera and try and do stuff so the great thing about using bone in thighs for this is that it's super super forgiving i don't even worry about how long they're cooking for i feel like it's very hard to overcook a thigh so it's the perfect thing for this and actually you know taking your thighs a little bit higher temp like 175 or 185 it's really nice because all of the you know connective tissue breaks down so we have nice tender chicken nicely rendered skin fluffy rice everything is seasoned and flavorful because we took our time and seasoned that cooking liquid and um i hope that you i hope you try this try this one time try the recipe once just so you can really like get to know these steps but then after that really like go off script do whatever the hell you want you really can't mess this up i mean i forgot to put in the tomatoes and it turned out just fine [Music] so you watched me cook through my paella inspired chicken and rice this is my mom's chicken biryani inspired chicken and rice we basically did the same thing the steps were all the same i just changed up a few things so for my spices instead of smoked paprika i've got garam masala adds a lot of nice warm notes for the aromatic base instead of using a sofrito we've got garlic ginger onion and a little bit of yogurt because that's what my mom puts in her marinade for chicken biryani and then there's some potatoes that we browned a little bit instead of olive oil there's some key and finished it with a touch of saffron so by making a few tweaks i have a completely different dish but the techniques are all the same you have like all the tools in your toolkit to make both of these dishes and countless others because it's all it's all it's just you just follow the outline oh right right okay let me know if you want me to take other things off scripts let us know in the comments below like subscribe and let us know what other like uh recipe journeys we can go on together see you next time on off script with sola what's the name right [Music] this is like this is almost there and i can tell because it's not really bubbling anymore and i'm just kind of hearing like it's really really quieted down it's just like the faintest bit of moisture that i can hear bubbling so that's how you know it's like moments away and if you just stand here with your ear next to the skillet for long enough it's going to change into sizzling you could make this blind just with auditory sounds leading you on your chicken rice journey we're so close it's like it's still sounding a little bit wet a little bit like and it's going to get more shh and that's how you know you're there

Channel: Food52

Views: 790,731

Rating: 4.9522696 out of 5

Keywords: Food52, food, cooking, recipe, chef, foodie, cook, home cooking videos, sohla el-waylly, sohla, sohla food52, sohla el-waylly recipes, off-script with sohla, chicken with rice recipe, chicken with rice one pot, crispy chicken thighs, dry brining, perfect rice, one-pan recipe, cast iron skillet, sohla new show, chicken biryani, chicken with rice

Id: 1PsJilIaFio

Length: 21min 56sec (1316 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 12 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/serialragequitter]

I love how she is captioned as "Food 52's Resident Sohla"

[u/lonelyseagull]

I always learn so much when watching Sohla videos. She explains everything so well, explains everything so succinctly with cues and so much focus on technique.

[u/kehrol]

oh i love this video! it's really sohla in her element, feels exactly like the videos at home she did for BA as well. good editing :)

[u/jessie_monster]

Vito for President.

[u/semanticantics]

The pop-up graphics and music is giving me early 2000s women’s lifestyle network vibes

[u/giantspeck]

I love how she explains where a recipe might go wrong and what will happen if it does go wrong. That whole bit about what kind of boil you're looking for after putting the chicken back in the pan is amazing.

[u/gogreengirlgo]

I just ate dinner, but this video still made me so hungry! I gotta figure out how to add some not-paella in my life this week.

[u/themuse10]

Man I hope she does one of these for a tofu dish. I always have so much trouble getting the taste/texture right when i go off the cuff with tofu.

[u/IonizedRadiation32]

This was excellent! And the "ding, ding, BZZZ" bit with the tomatoes gave me strong BA editing (i.e. Hunzi) vibes, which I haven't realized how much I've missed.