Dutch Oven Chicken and Rice
YouTube: Dutch Oven Chicken and Rice
Preheat your oven to 375° Fahrenheit. In a small bowl or dish, prepare your spice rub.
This recipe works especially well in a large dutch oven. While this dish will fit into a #8 or 5-quart oven, I think the extra space of the #10 size (12-inch) helps to provide more room to properly steam (braise) the chicken, so it isn't cooked to the point where it splits apart.
In your cast iron dutch oven, add 2 cups of rice, 3 and 1/2 cups water, and 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce plus 1/4 cup soy sauce for flavor. Stir a little to evenly distribute the rice in the liquid. It will look as though there is far too much liquid in the pot – the rice will be completely covered in liquid. This is correct: the rice will absorb the liquid as it cooks.
Remove all accessories from the chicken (giblet bag, etc.). Rinse off the chicken, and pat it dry with paper towels. The chicken does not have to be bone-dry; just dry enough so that it doesn't soak your hands when you handle it.
It's not necessary to stuff the chicken, but if you want to do so: cut the potato and onion into halves, and stuff the chicken. If you want to use other chicken stuffing, you can do so. Simply make sure the chicken is only loosely stuffed, not packed tight.
Apply spice rub to entire outside of the chicken. Place the chicken into the pot, on top of the rice. Cover dutch oven with an iron lid. bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 90 minutes. Optionally, you can remove the lid after 75 minutes and let it roast for the final 15 minutes uncovered. This will help brown the chicken and give the rice a crust on top. The chicken will be fall-off-the-bone tender, and the rice will have absorbed the liquid.
(For poultry over 6 pounds, add an additional 15 minutes per pound.)
Here's a hint regarding the rice: when you cook rice in a cast iron pan using this method, a crust of brown, hardened rice will cover the sides and bottom of the pot. This is not burned rice – don't throw this out. Scrape the crust off the bottom of the pot and eat it! This is a tasty treat, and it is very popular in most areas of the world. In Latin America, the hardened rice crust is called pegao, while in Persia it is called tadig.
What's more, you don't need a whole chicken to make this dish. It works fine with chicken pieces.
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A Simple and Tasty Chicken Spice Rub
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon ground coriander
- 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
Dutch Oven Chicken and Rice 2.0
May 27, 2023: Last night I made one of my favorite chicken dishes, dutch oven chicken and rice. This was one of the first recipes I learned when I started cooking in cast iron, and I've lost count of the number of times I've made this dish. For several years, my method was very simple: add rice and water to a cast iron dutch oven, flavor the rice. Coat the chicken with rub, place it in the pot on top of the rice. Cover the pot and bake it at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 90 minutes. This will certainly produce a very tasty chicken, and the rice is to die for. Lately I noticed that while the chicken in the original recipe is quite good, it doesn't have crisp skin and it can be overcooked. Braising a chicken in a closed pot doesn't allow for temperature control. So, I've added an additional step to this recipe:
Prepare the rice with the same ingredients as above: 2 cups of rice, 3 and 1/2 cups water, and 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce plus 1/4 cup soy sauce for flavor. Mix it all together.
Apply spice rub to entire outside of the chicken. Place the chicken into the pot, breast side down, on top of the rice. Cover dutch oven with an iron lid and bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 60 minutes. After 60 minutes, remove the dutch oven from the oven, uncover the pot, and turn the chicken over so the breast side is up. Cooking the chicken in the covered pot has cooked the underside well, and it should register at least 140 degrees Fahrenheit with a thermometer. However, the breast will only be 110 to 120 degrees at this time.
Insert a probe thermometer into the breast, and leave the pot uncovered. Place the pot of chicken and rice back into the oven, and raise the oven temperature to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Roast the chicken uncovered until the temperature of the white meat reaches 158 degrees Fahrenheit. Now you can remove the pot from the oven, remove the chicken -- which will be hot and steaming -- and place it onto a platter. At this point, let the chicken rest for at least ten minutes. Carryover cooking will increase the temperature of the chicken to a safe point between 160 and 165 degrees.
And of course, the rice is also well-done and it has that crust of caramelized rice -- pegao -- that you can only get when you cook it in cast iron!
