This is a family-friendly weeknight favourite! Chicken Pilau is a one-pot aromatic & gently spiced basmati rice dish. A golden plate of comfort. Soft fragrant fluffy rice studded with tender pieces of boneless chicken. Pile it high on a platter and dive in with a fork!
Chicken Pilau is a cosy rice main that works every time! First, we sauté long grain rice with spice-infused clarified butter. Then, we bake the butter-coated rice in a tomato-ey broth with golden nuggets of chicken. The rice swells with absorbed flavour. The grains are separate, light and fluffy. Never water-logged or 'bitty'.
❓ What’s a pilau?
It's a rice dish made using the absorption method of cooking rice. We combine all the ingredients in a large pot on the stove-top. We bake in the oven and allow to rest for at least 15 minutes for the magic to happen. Most of the liquid (and all its flavour) gets sucked up by the rice. The addition of clarified butter (ghee) creates a wonderful rich mouthfeel without being greasy.
This meal is a great introduction to the wonderful world of curries for kids and sceptics. There’s plenty of spice, but these are aromatic rather than hot. This is a perfect dish to serve at dinner parties where you aren’t sure how much spice your eaters can take. The ingredients list is long, but this chicken pilau comes together after about 40 minutes of hands-on prep time. This pilau will even sit quite happily for up to 45 minutes once cooked until ready to serve. It will stay hot and the rice will stay fluffy. As long as you keep the lid on 😮
Chicken Pilau is the kind of comfort food I love. We cook everything in the one pot, with the ‘hard work’ (but not really) done at the start. Once it hits the oven, there’s nothing left to do but wait a bit, and fluff up a touch before serving. You only need a fork to eat it too. Comfort food for me = one utensil or fingers to eat. Easy, lazy, delicious eating.
🥘 Ingredients
This recipe is compatible with a low FODMAP diet and is gluten-free.
Basmati rice - long, slender-grained aromatic rice traditionally used in Indian dishes.
Dry Spices – cumin seeds, coriander seeds, black peppercorns, nutmeg, cardamon pods, cloves, cinnamon sticks and turmeric.
Chicken - skinless thigh fillets (boneless).
Ginger – fresh
Ghee – Indian clarified butter
Fresh Herbs - bay leaves, curry leaves and coriander leaves
Tomatoes - canned whole peeled
😕 So many ingredients!! Is this really complicated?
Please don’t be put off by the long list of ingredients. Haven't quite got round to organising your spice rack in alphabetical order (what; you have a life?!). Then the hardest thing about preparing this pilau might be the time spent finding the spices! Get them all out before you start.
This recipe takes about an hour and 10 minutes in total (of which 35 minutes is 'active' hands-on time). The remainder of the time is oven, then resting time. You need to keep the lid on until ready to serve. You are literally instructed NOT to do anything! 😆
What if I haven’t got cloves, cardamon pods, cinnamon sticks…..
There are a lot of different spices in this recipe. It won’t be a deal-breaker if you’ve run out of something or didn’t have the exact quantities I’ve given here. One or two spices left out would be OK, you will still love it!
Can I use pre-ground spices?
Yes. At a pinch (excuse the pun). The suggestion to freshly toast whole spices (peppercorns, cumin and coriander seeds) to enhance their flavour and fragrance. Freshly grating the nutmeg, rather than using pre-ground makes a world of difference. Having said this, if using pre-ground spices is the only way you’ll consider cooking this, then please go ahead!
Disclaimer: whole nutmeg is an absolute bugger to grate. They look and feel like tiny smooth oval bits of wood. Do yourself a favour; save your knuckles (and patience) and invest in a nutmeg grinder. These are nifty little gadgets! Just put a whole nutmeg inside and crank the handle. I love my yellow nutmeg grinder (pictured).
What is ghee?
Ghee is Indian clarified butter. Clarified butter is made by heating up unsalted butter until the water evaporates. This creates a richer, deeper flavoured butter. Ghee takes 'ordinary' clarified butter to the next level. It is cooked until the milk solids begin to caramelise (a bit like brown butter, but not taken quite so far). It tastes and smells amazing. In this dish, the rice is coated in a thin layer of ghee, which gives a great mouthfeel as well as toasty buttery flavour.
🔪 Instructions
- wash and drain the rice which helps you achieve separate grains without clumping
- prepare a dry spice mix by toasting, then grinding whole spices.
- melt the ghee in a large pan. Add ginger, the dry spice mix and other aromatics.
- lightly colour some chicken pieces in the infused ghee
- add a tomato broth, then the rice.
- clamp a lid on and transfer to the oven for 20 minutes.
- rest for 15 minutes (or up to 45 minutes) without lifting the lid to allow the magic to happen. Serve!
Spice bags are a thing
Removing whole spices after cooking is a win-win. You get the wonderful fragrance and flavour without the bitty woody ‘surprise’. How unpleasant is it to bite into a whole cardamon pod or clove? Those things are intense!
I thought I was so smart when I thought to put whole spices in a something that I could pick out at the end of cooking. I used those metal tea infuser things first. You know, those things you put tea leaves in. They have an annoying habit of opening just enough mid-cook though to release a whole spice or two. Then I discovered spice bags! You can buy them cheaply online. I bought a range of sizes of unbleached paper bags with a drawstring top. Be gentle with them, they are made of paper after all. When everything else is stirred through, push in the spice bag with a light touch. At the end of cooking time, retrieve the bag (which will be resting on the top) and discard it. Brilliant!
Is the size/shape of the cooking pot important?
Yes. The rice needs to be in a thin enough layer for the heat to get through. We want the rice to cook evenly without stirring. A thinner layer will make it easier to fluff up and serve without disrupting the grains too much either. I’ve settled on using a big heavy circular pot which is 30cm (around 12 inches) in diameter. When I've experimented using a smaller deeper vessels, the rice has been undercooked at the top. It is important to use a pot with a well-fitting lid. This is because the ratio of water to rice is important. We don’t want any water to escape, which would stop the rice having enough water to cook properly. We can help keep the steam in by placing a sheet of foil across the top of the pan under the lid.
We gently colour the chicken in ghee, flavoured with the spices and ginger paste. This is more about coating the chicken with flavour than cooking it. We cook the chicken all the way through in the oven.
Dark meat (from the leg or thigh) is juicier than its white (breast) counterparts - it has a higher fat content. We cook the chicken immersed in liquid. This results in tender bite-sized nuggets
Top Tip
Grate frozen ginger with a zester (rather than finely chop fresh ginger) - so much easier!
Buy ginger fresh and peel off the skin with the edge of a spoon. Cut into chunks and freeze in a well-sealed container or ziplock bag. Ginger is so expensive; you’ll kick yourself for allowing it to got dry and wrinkly in your pantry. Grating frozen ginger gives you wonderful ginger flavour without the ginger chunks.
We combine canned tomatoes, turmeric, salt and water to create our ‘stock’.
Be careful when dealing with turmeric! It lends a wonderful colour to the dish, but will stain everything in its path. Try opening the jar over the sink.
We shake in the rice and bring the mix to a simmer so that the whole surface is on the move. Gently push in the spice bag and a couple of curry leaf sprigs on the top. Cover the pot with a sheet of foil, clamp a heavy lid on and transfer to the oven.
Don’t stir the rice too much!
The rice in this Chicken Pilau (Pulao) should be fluffy with separate grains – never mushy or sticky. To achieve this, we need to treat it gently to keep the grains intact. We avoid stirring too much when adding it to the pan.
Whatever you do…don’t lift the lid!!
Resist the urge to check on the dish both while it’s in the oven and resting (and any stage in-between). Just don’t. The rice needs the steam kept inside to cook properly. You’ll have to trust the process the first time you make this (and still marvel afresh each time after!).
You can eat curry leaves, but you might prefer to discard these when serving up the pilau. Placing them on top of the rice before transferring to the oven makes them easy to retrieve and discard. You’ll find that the cinnamon sticks, bay leaves and spice bag tend to work their way to the top too. Remove these before fluffing up your rice.
Adapted from a recipe from Rick Stein’s book ‘India’. I'm sorry; I can't find a link for the original recipe online to share with you. I've been cooking this dish for a while now; no doubt I have made a few changes along the way.
📖 Recipe
Equipment
- Large shallow oven-proof casserole pan with a heavy well-fitting lid 28-30cm (11-12 inches) diameter
- Mini food processor or pestle & mortar/spice grinder
- Spice bag/tea infuser
- Microplane (optional) – handy for grating frozen ginger (note)
Ingredients
- 400 g basmati rice
- 2 teaspoons cumin seeds
- Teaspoon black peppercorns
- Tablespoon coriander seeds
- 750 g chicken thighs (skinless/boneless)
- ½ whole nutmeg
- 30 g fresh ginger (a thumb-sized amount)
- 10 whole cardamom pods
- 10 whole cloves
- 75 g ghee
- 2 bay leaves
- 2 cinnamon sticks
- 400 g canned whole peeled tomatoes
- Teaspoon ground turmeric
- 2 ½ teaspoons salt
- couple of sprigs curry leaves
- large handful coriander leaves
Instructions
- Preheat Oven – to 180°C.
- Wash & Drain Rice - gently wash the rice in several changes of fresh cool water (from the tap is fine) and drain.400 g basmati rice
- Prepare Spice Mix - preheat the pan (no oil necessary) over medium heat. Add the cumin seeds and toast briefly until the seeds smell fragrant and start to brown. Shake the pan often to make sure they don’t burn. Tip out into your food processor or spice grinder. Repeat the process with the peppercorns and coriander seeds (together is fine). These are a little bit larger, so will take a touch longer. Grate the nutmeg and add this to the toasted whole spices. Whizz up to a fine powder.2 teaspoons cumin seedsTeaspoon black peppercornsTablespoon coriander seeds½ whole nutmeg
- Chop Chicken - trim away excess fat from the chicken thighs and cut the meat into bite-size pieces.750 g chicken thighs
- Ginger - Finely grate or very finely chop the ginger.30 g fresh ginger
- Cardamom & Cloves - split open the cardamom pods. Roll over them with a glass or rolling pin, or bang down on the flat of a large knife blade. Put these in a small spice bag/tea infuser with the whole cloves.10 whole cardamom pods10 whole cloves
- Ghee, Bay Leaves & Cinnamon - melt the ghee in the pan over medium heat. Add the bay leaves and cinnamon sticks. Cook, stirring frequently for a couple of minutes until sizzling a little.75 g ghee2 bay leaves2 cinnamon sticks
- Ground Spice & Ginger Paste - reduce the heat slightly and add the spice mix. Stir often for a couple of minutes until fragrant. Add the ginger, stir through well. Be careful; this will hiss and spit.
- Colour Chicken - increase the heat to max again and stir in the chicken pieces. Cook for around 5 minutes. Stir often until lightly coloured all over. We're not aiming to cook it all the way through in this step.
- Prepare Liquid – in a large bowl, crush the canned tomatoes by hand. Squeeze them one at a time, slowly and under the surface of the water. Measure out 550ml/g of water (from the tap is fine). Use some of the water to swill out and rinse the tomato can. Add this to the crushed tomatoes with the rest of the water.400 g canned whole peeled tomatoes
- Add Liquid - add the tomatoey liquid to the pot. Add the turmeric and salt. Bring the contents to a simmer. Use a flat-ended wooden spatula to deglaze the pan. Stir everything well together. We don't want to stir too much once we add the rice in the next step.Teaspoon ground turmeric2 ½ teaspoons salt
- Rice – shake in the rice and use the handle of an item of cutlery to rake through and distribute the rice evenly. Gently push in the spice bag/tea infuser in the centre and place the curry leaf sprigs on top. Bring to a simmer so that the whole surface is gently moving. Cover the top with a sheet of foil and put the lid on.couple of sprigs curry leaves
- Bake - promptly transfer to the oven and cook for 20 minutes.
- Rest - remove the pan from the oven (but don’t lift lid!). Leave to rest for 15 minutes. (or up to 45 minutes).
- Serve - remove and discard the spice bag, cinnamon sticks, bay leaves and curry leaves. Fluff up the rice grains with a fork; rake a fork through, a few layers of rice at a time. You can either serve straight from the pan or tip out onto a platter. Serve sprinkled with chopped coriander.large handful coriander leaves
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