I tried my hand at a new dish, and though I made some major changes to the original recipe, it turned out really good. And yes, I know I am a king at plate presentations.
6 chicken drumsticks
1 large onion
2 potatoes
3 carrots
(1 red and 1 green bell pepper, but only if you have room in your pot, which I did not)
1 and 1/2 cups basmati or long grain rice
3 cups water
14 oz can diced or chopped or whatever Tomatoes
3 Tbsp Canola oil (or really any type of cooking oil is fine)
chopped Cilantro
1 jar Patak's Biryani curry paste. (the most difficult but most essential ingredient)
You will want to use the largest pot you have a top for, or cut the portions down. I started by chopping up all the veggies into similar size pieces. I put the oil in the pot and tossed in all the veggies and the chicken drumsticks setting the burner on high. I let these cook for a bit while stirring it down. I also added some salt to help it cook down. After about 10 mins, I added the can of tomatoes, rice, water and the whole jar or Biryani paste. I mixed that up and turned the heat down to medium. I put the top on and and let it do it's thing. I still opened it and stirred it every once and a while, once every 5-10 minutes so the rice on the bottom didn't burn. Once it all got real hot and bubbly, I turned down the heat. Essentially it is like making a jambalaya. It seems pretty wet at first but the rice ends up absorbing it all and it thickens up. This all cooked for about 30-45 more minutes. Now at this point it was probably done, but I had to go do some other stuff. To keep it hot and just to make sure the chicken was cooked all the way through, I turned on the oven, let it heat up, then turned it off and put the pot, with the top on into the oven. I left it here for about an hour and a half. When I took it out it was really hot still. Actually after it sat out for another hour, the rice was still steaming when I dug through it with the spoon. Who'da thunk rice with all it's starch held onto heat all that well. The final step is to add some chopped cilantro to the top.
So I don't really know if the last 2 hours of being in the warm oven did much, but it turned out really good. The rice was nice and sticky, the veggies were all soft, and the chicken was tender and moist. I would probably do things different next time however. I would decrease the portion size, by a lot. I might increase the veggie ratio to get more of that flavor, specifically on the onion. And finally, the chicken, while having perfect texture didn't really have a lot of flavor. I might try grilling it up first, or maybe marinating it in plain yogurt and tandoori paste.
I made this once before, back around the superbowl time. I took notes on how made it (as I was making it earlier this evening). So here's how I made it.
- I preheated the oven to 425 degrees
- Placed the tater tots in a cake pan(still frozen)
- Once the oven was finished preheating, I placed the tater tots in the oven
- While waiting for them to finish heating up I did the following:
- I heated up the chicken in the microwave.(I don't know exactly how much time. I just used the frozen food setting.)
- I grated some cheese.(doesn't matter what kind, but I used a combination of colby & pepperjack)
- And I made up a buffalo sauce for it.(All I did was mix some buffalo chicken wing sauce with ranch dressing. Just go until you've got an amount you're satisfied with, and a spice level you're content with, as well.)
- It shouldn't take more than 20 minutes for the tater tots to well-heated
- Once they're done, I did the following:
- Poured the sauce over the top of the tots & mixed until they soaked up the sauce.
- Put cheese over the top, and then let it sit in the oven(while it still had warmth to it) until it was nice and melted.
- After that, spread the chicken on over the top.
