Exotic Chicken and Rice Casserole - Food Wishes

[Music] hello this is chef john from food wishes.com with exotic chicken and rice casserole that's right have you ever been eating chicken and rice and thought to yourself this is good but i really wish it was more exotic well then you're gonna love this and while i usually share specific recipes from specific places this time what you're seeing was inspired by many different recipes from many different places which is why i went with a very generic but i think incredibly appropriate name exotic chicken and rice casserole and to get started we're going to need to mix up our exotic marinade which we'll begin with some plain yogurt and if you're keeping score at home i'm using sheep's milk but i believe any plain full fat yogurt will do and then to that we will add the zest of one lime plus the juice of the very same lime and as i did my research i saw that some recipes included dry lime powder which i definitely don't have or have ever seen so i just decided to go with the lime in these two forms followed by some salt and all our favorite exotic spices including paprika cumin coriander some cayenne some white pepper and if you don't have that you can use freshly ground black pepper some cardamom some cinnamon and then last but not least some allspice which apparently someone somewhere thought tasted like all the spices and then what we'll do once all that's in there is take a whisk and give this a thorough mix at which point we'll set it aside and grab our chicken and for this any kind of chicken parts on the bone will work and i happen to have one whole chicken on hand which i cut in eight pieces and while i never rinse off a chicken since it's totally unnecessary and a waste of time if i do cut the breast pieces in half like i did here i do like to rinse off that edge to make sure there's no bone fragment still attached and then speaking of cutting as you might know when i marinate chicken i like to make a few slashes into the dark meat okay one cut into the thick part of the leg down to the bone as well as a couple slashes on the skin side of the thigh again all the way down to the bone and not only will that help our dark meat cook a little quicker it's also going to help our marinade penetrate even deeper plus i just think it looks cooler once it's roasted and then what we'll do is transfer our chicken into our yogurt marinade and we will toss that around until it's very thoroughly coated okay we're talking every nook and every cranny so please take your time and toss those parts around until you're sure you have 100 coverage and then toss it another half minute and then finally we can stop and cover this with plastic because what we'll do is pop this in the fridge to let it marinate for anywhere between four and eight hours and you could probably go a little bit longer but i always get a little nervous over marinating things in yogurt since if left too long you can end up with sort of a weird texture and then what we'll do while we're waiting for that is make our very exotic basmati rice which i'm going to start with a pinch of this optional but extremely exotic ingredient saffron which is so precious i don't even want to waste one thread and what we'll do is give that a quick grind in our mortar before adding a quarter cup of our chicken broth and then stirring it together with a freakishly small wooden spoon and while you can buy powdered saffron i don't really think you should because who knows what it really is and by powdering the threads yourself you're going to know what you're getting and it's going to be much fresher and more flavorful and that's it once that's set we can head to the stove where in a saucepan we'll combine some unsalted butter with some salt and then we will pour in our chicken broth along with our chicken broth with benefits that we just made and we will bring everything up to a boil on high heat at which point we can add our basmati rice or probably any other long grain white rice and we'll give that a very quick stir at which point we'll reduce our heat to low cover it tightly and let it simmer gently for exactly 15 minutes and during that time we do not want to mess with it all right don't uncover it don't stir it i mean i'm not even sure i want you looking at it all we'll do is wait for that timer to ring and hopefully after exactly 50 minutes it will look something like this at which point we will immediately turn off the heat and we will let it sit there undisturbed for exactly 10 minutes during which time it will finish cooking and once that 10 minute wait is up we'll go ahead and transfer this into a casserole dish that i've greased with some olive oil and once we have that transferred in what we'll do is switch to a fork and we will do two things we will fluff and separate the grains while at the same time spreading this out into a nice even layer without pressing and compacting the rice oh and i should mention you can do this step well in advance and that's it once our exotic rice has been casseroled assuming our chicken's marinated long enough we'll go ahead and pull it out and we'll arrange that skin side up on top of the rice and please note i have a very symmetrical way of laying this out with my legs and thighs in the corners and then those breast sections filling in the gaps and if you're not using a whole chicken like i am i would probably go with four nice big leg and thigh sections which should fit a baking dish this size just about perfectly but anyway once our chicken's been laid over the top we will finish up with a generous drizzling of olive oil for color flavor and richness and then before this goes in the oven i like to sprinkle a little more salt over the skin yes for a little bit of extra seasoning but also i think it's going to help that skin crisp up even better and that's it our exotic chicken and rice casserole is now ready to transfer into the center of a 450 degree oven for about 45 minutes or until the chicken's cooked to your liking and looks like hold on a second while our chicken is roasting if we want we can mix up an optional yogurt sauce which for me is just some plain yogurts plus some finely minced garlic as well as some thinly sliced green onions some freshly chopped mint and freshly chopped cilantro and we'll finish up with a big pinch of salt plus maybe a small splash of water to adjust the texture of the sauce to exactly how we want it and that's it we'll give this a stir and our sauce is done and if you're thinking instead of water could i use lemon juice or lime juice well of course you could but i wouldn't okay i think the tanginess of the yogurt is more than enough acidity for this and i think by adding the citrus it might actually get too acidic and overpower the exotic spices of our chicken so we'll give that a mix and set it aside until our chicken and rice are ready and if everything goes according to plan it should look something like this and of course you can use a thermometer but i find when we can easily pierce the leg and thigh with the tip of a knife our chickens probably cook long enough and that's it i think we're ready to serve up and of course in real life you would just serve some chicken and rice on a plate and then spoon over some of that beautiful cooling herbaceous garlic and yogurt sauce since i'm contractually obligated to take some pictures i decided to apply some of that to the top of my chicken while was still in the baking dish followed by a few shakes of aleppo pepper flakes which not only are gorgeous and have a beautiful somewhat spicy flavor but they're also 100 seed free oh yeah i'm looking at you italian chili flakes but anyway i tried to make it pretty and then i took some pictures and then finally grabbed a fork and knife and went in for a taste and as usual i'd like to test what i think will be the worst bite which is going to be that pointy tip on the end of the breast piece all right if any part of this is going to be dry and overcooked that's going to be it but i'm very happy to report it wasn't it was fantastic and then what was equally amazing was that rice underneath which absorbs all those beautiful chicken drippings as this cooks so i could not have been happier with how this came out so this definitely passed the first impression test and i proceeded to plate it up and eat some like a normal person and by the way i've seen versions of this recipe were the chickens actually grilled after it's marinated and then pulled off the bone and then added to the rice which i'm sure is good but seems like a lot of extra work but anyway i just thought i would throw it out there in case you wanted this recipe to be more complicated i mean you are after all the joe exotic of making this recipe more quixotic oh and if you're worried about baking rice for 45 minutes after it's already been boiled and cooked well in this format don't be okay that rice definitely does get softer but it's also because of our nice hot oven drying out a little bit plus the rice on the surface and around the edges of the pan gets beautifully browned and caramelized and crisp and the combination of those two different textures of rice along with the chicken i think it's one of my favorite things about this dish but anyway that's it what i'm calling exotic chicken and rice casserole if you tend to enjoy chicken recipes from the middle east or north africa or the mediterranean or some of the coolest neighborhoods in america's biggest cities then you're gonna love this which is why i really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 243,194

Rating: 4.9674611 out of 5

Keywords: Chicken, Rice, recipe, Casserole, exotic, baked, middle eastern, Indian, Greek, Moroccan, chef, john, food, wishes, cooking

Id: Dlbfp8l1_9E

Length: 9min 20sec (560 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 23 2021