The HSN bug, I guess…
Here’s what happened. Our crockpot died. *sigh* Well, I accidentally killed it by breaking the crockery liner. Then, flipped by a Wolfgang Puck segment on HSN while on my way to the Thistory Channel one Saturday. Nothing on HC, so flipped back to see what Puckish cookery was going on.
His rice cooker. Thought, “Oh, why not. I’ll give the thing a try.”
Love the thing. Here’s what I did first thing outa the chute:
Chicken n Rice–just made from stuff I happened to have on hand.
Six of the lil measuring cupsful of white rice (using the measuring scoop that came with the thing, which equals about 4.5 measuring cups of rice at 3/4 cup per scoop), as per the instructions for basic rice.
One 14.5 oz. can of diced tomatoes and green chiles
1/4 cup enchilada sauce (I usally make m6y own, but I had just a scant cuppa sauce left over, so I used that)
water to the 6-cup mark on the cooker liner
1 clove of garlic, minced (actually, I used a garlic press cos I’m lazy)
1 Tbs freshly-ground cumin (with about a quarter teaspoon of chipotle chiles, freshly ground added–I’d have used more, but that’s all I had on hand)
3-large chicken breasts, salted, peppered and fried over medium heat in EVOO, then cubed.
Hit cook and came back 30 mins later to see the device on “warm”. The cooker worked perfectly. Family gave it—and the meal—a thumbs up.
Accompany this with refried beans, chips, salad. If you would have this be the main protein dish (instead of going for complementary proteins), just bump up the chicken content.
BTW, this’ll feed an army… well, a very small one. 🙂
Oh, “salting” the chicken… wash the chicken breasts. Cover them with coarse Kosher salt on both sides and set ’em in the fridge for a half hour. Wash ’em again. (Yeh, yeh, then pepper and from to “just done” before cubing.)
While this is designed for the specific cooker I bought, and worked just dandy, peachy keen in it, if you make this w/o such a cooker, try doing it this way:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees fahrenheit
Pour the rice in a baking dish
cover with liquid equal in amount to 2X the rice by volume. (It’ll take a pretty good-sized backing dish if you use the amount of rice I did!) Your liquid will of course be the can of diced tomatoes/chiles, enchilada sauce and water mixture (with the spices stirred in)
Add the cubed, pre-cooked chicken
cover with aluminum foil and bake for about 35-40 minutes.
You cook? Your wife must love you, hee hee.
Seriously tho, it sounds yummy, next time I buy chicken, I’ll have to try it. I have a crockpot but not a rice cooker, I think I’d actually make the chicken part in the crockpot and then just add the rice already cooked at the end, but I’m lazy ;).
Yeh, Lisa, in fact, I do most of the cooking, cos it’s something I both enjoy and am told (by family and folks at potlucks) that I’m pretty good at. Besides, my schedule is usually a little more flexible than Wonder Woman’s schedule, and she’s bitten off a pretty big chunk with grad school on toppa work, so…
Works for me. And if I don’t like the meals, I have a hard time complaining to the cook, eh?
🙂
Edit:
Yeh, she loves me (still can’t figure out why, though). That’s the real reason she lets me cook: cos she knows I enjoy doing it. She’s a really good cook herself, but she’s “given” me the kitchen for a playground, as it were. It just works out well for her schedule, as it happens.
I like it!!
Ha, puckish chicken….