One-pan garlic butter chicken and rice
Chicken thighs and rice cooked in one pan, in about 45 minutes, most of it hands-off. The weeknight recipe that earns its place in the rotation.
This is the recipe we cook most often, and it exists because of a specific weeknight problem: you want roast chicken flavour and you have 45 minutes, most of which you'd like to spend not cooking.
One pan. The rice cooks in the chicken fat and the stock while the skin crisps above it. Ten minutes of actual work at the start, then it looks after itself.
Why it works
The rice cooks in the drippings. Everything that renders out of the thighs goes into the rice instead of down the sink. This is the entire reason to cook them together rather than separately.
The skin stays above the liquid. Chicken sitting on the rice rather than in it means the skin stays crisp while the meat underneath steams gently. Push the thighs down into the stock and you'll get pale, soft skin — perfectly edible, much less good.
Rinsing the rice matters. Rinsing washes off surface starch, which is the difference between distinct grains and a sticky mass. It takes 30 seconds and it's the step people most often skip.
Getting it right
The most common failure is stirring. Rice needs to be left alone to steam; stirring releases starch and breaks the grains up. Put the lid on and walk away.
The second is cooking it too hot. If it's bubbling hard, the bottom scorches before the top is done. You want a lazy simmer you can only just hear.
Make it yours
Everything below the parsley is negotiable. Peas or spinach stirred through at the end. A chopped preserved lemon instead of the fresh one. A teaspoon of turmeric with the paprika. Chorizo in with the onion, in which case use less butter.
Cook it once as written, then write your changes down — that's how a recipe becomes yours rather than something you look up each time.
Cooking this hands-free
If you want the steps read out to you while you're handling raw chicken — which, for a recipe involving raw chicken, is genuinely the point — save this into CookinBuddy and use cooking mode. One step at a time, in text you can read from across the counter, with the 18-minute timer built into the step that needs it.
Add it to your week and it merges into one aisle-sorted shopping list with whatever else you're cooking. Free on iPhone.
- Prep
- 10 min
- Cook
- 35 min
- Total
- 45 min
- Serves
- 4 servings
Ingredients
- 8 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs (about 1.2 kg)
- 300 g long-grain rice, rinsed until the water runs clear
- 600 ml chicken stock, hot
- 1 onion, finely chopped
- 6 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
- 60 g butter
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tsp smoked paprika
- 1 lemon, zest and juice
- Small bunch flat-leaf parsley, chopped
- Salt and black pepper
Method
- 1Pat the chicken thighs completely dry and season the skin generously with salt and the smoked paprika. Dry skin is the whole secret to crisp skin — don't rush this.
- 2Heat the olive oil in a wide, oven-safe pan over medium-high heat. Lay the thighs in skin-side down and leave them alone for 8 minutes, until the skin is deep golden and releases from the pan by itself. Turn, cook 2 minutes more, then lift out onto a plate.
- 3Pour off all but about 2 tablespoons of the fat. Add the butter, onion and a pinch of salt, and cook over medium heat for 5 minutes until soft. Add the garlic and cook 1 minute more, until it smells like dinner.
- 4Stir in the rinsed rice and turn it through the butter for a minute so every grain is coated. Pour in the hot stock, add the lemon zest, and season.
- 5Sit the chicken back on top, skin-side up, without pushing it into the liquid — you want the skin above the water line so it stays crisp.
- 6Cover and cook over low heat for 18 minutes, or transfer to a 190°C oven, uncovered, for 22 minutes. Don't stir the rice while it cooks.
- 7Rest off the heat for 5 minutes with the lid on. Finish with lemon juice and parsley, and scrape up the browned rice at the bottom — that's the best part.
Notes
- Boneless thighs work and cut the cooking time to about 14 minutes, but you lose some of the flavour the bones give the rice.
- Swap the parsley for dill and add a spoonful of yoghurt on the side for a completely different dinner.
- Leftovers reheat well with a splash of water, covered, over low heat.