Chicken Pelau

Chicken pelau isn't something I'd ever heard of before reading through Julia Turshen's new cookbook, Small Victories. Please bear that in mind, since I have no reference point or strongly-held beliefs about what makes a traditional chicken pelau.

Since chicken pelau isn't something I've had before, it seemed like the natural choice for a recipe to test from Small Victories. Also, it won the vote for this week's idea post.

Julia Turshen is one of those food writers and recipe developers you're likely to find lurking behind some of the major celebrity and celebrity chef cookbooks. Julia's credits include Hot Bread Kitchen, Fat Radish, and Buvette, just to name a few recent cookbooks. Small Victories is her first independent cookbook, where she showcases simple homey recipes, each tied to a "small victory" that's meant to impart a little bit of cooking wisdom. Some of her small victories are interesting, others are (I think) a little lame, like the two discussed in the header for this recipe. Always have a one-pot meal up your sleeve and you can learn something new everyday? I feel no more victorious.

This recipe for chicken pelau comes, evidently, from an old babysitter from St. Vincent. Pelau is one of Trinidad's national dishes, a one-pot curry pilaf with meat and veggies, a great way to feed a group with minimal prep time and very little hands-on cooking time. A key feature that differentiates pelau from other pilafs is the browning process involved. As you beginning cooking the dish, you need to take a leap of faith and brown your sugar in some very hot oil until it caramelizes, but before it burns and turns bitter. This takes a lot less time than making actual caramel and it adds some great flavor to the final dish. As long as you can open your windows and turn on a fan, it's not so bad.

One-pot meals are great crowd-pleasers and are highly adaptable to personal taste and dietary restrictions. This chicken pelau is already gluten and lactose-free. Don't eat meat? Use mushrooms in place of the chicken. Can't eat sugar? Well, it's not going to be a traditional pelau, but you could simply omit the caramelized sugar step and end up with a great curry pilaf. Want to add more vegetables? Just chop spinach or kale into ribbons, then add them to the pot 5-10 minutes before the rice finishes cooking. In the end, you'll have your own personalized spin on a lovely rice dish from the Caribbean, with a huge amount of flavor but without much hands-on time.

I took a few liberties with Julia's chicken pelau when making mine, because I wanted to use brown sugar and brown rice and because I snooped at other recipes for pelau and noticed a few differences, like when the rice is added and how hot the chile pepper ought to be.

Get your chicken diced into 1-inch pieces and rub with the spice mixture, then set it aside while you prepare all your vegetables. I opted to use the thinnest blade on my food processor to chop my carrots, celery, onion, and bell pepper for the sake of speed and consistency. The thin slicing also guarantees they melt into the pilaf.

The scariest step is cooking the sugar in the oil without letting it burn. I wasn't able to get any good photos of this because of all the steam from my pan (in fact, I completely failed to get any good in-progress photos), so I'll do my best to describe it. The sugar is going to take at least a minute to liquefy in the oil, and it's going to look concerning because the oil and sugar will be separated. Just keep stirring, and after another minute or so, the oil and sugar will come together into a homogeneous mixture. Since we're using brown sugar, the liquid is already going to look quite dark, but it's not done yet. Before you add the chicken, the sugar-oil mixture needs to start frothing. All told, this process only takes about 4 minutes. It creates a ton of smoke, and if you have sensitive smoke detectors, this will probably set them off unless you're strategic about your fan placement. However, the smoke dissipates quickly, and everything after is really easy and proceeds along the same standard order most one-pot dishes:

1) Brown your meat. 2) Sweat your veggies. 3) Add the rice. 4) Add liquid and bring everything to a boil. 5) Reduce to a simmer and cook until rice is down. 6) Let stand briefly, season and serve.

There, that's the magical one-pot formula, although it's not actually in this cookbook.

I liked this recipe quite a bit, but I'm a sucker for coconut curries of all varieties. I found it to be sweeter than I expected, but part of that is the coconut milk, and the other part likely due to a low final chile heat. I used a sliver of a ghost pepper from my co-worker, thinking that would provide enough spice, but actually I could have added another sliver or two and the spice level would have been closer to my expectations. Pelau is definitely best piping hot, you want to eat this right away, don't wait until it's lukewarm.

Tom said he would pay for this pelau (the vegetarian version anyhow), and everyone who tried it liked it. While this chicken pelau isn't an instant stunner of a recipe, and I didn't have to restrain myself from eating the entire pot, it's a simple and fully-flavored, cheap, nutritious dinner that's great as a solo dinner but also impressive enough for company. I can see chicken pelau being a regular weeknight meal; it's reasonably healthy and could be made even healthier with the addition of more vegetables, it's adaptable to whatever you had on hand, plus it can be portioned and frozen for long-term storage.

Adapted from: Small Victories

Chicken Pelau

Adapted from Julie Turshen's recipe for chicken pelau in Small Victories. A great, easy, and scaleable one-pot meal. Want to make this dish vegetarian? Use thickly-sliced cremini mushrooms in place of the chicken.

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Course: Main

Cuisine: Caribbean

Keyword: Julia Turshen, Small Victories

Prep Time: 20 minutes minutes

Cook Time: 50 minutes minutes

Resting time: 10 minutes minutes

Total Time: 1 hour hour 20 minutes minutes

Servings: 4

Calories: 758kcal

Ingredients

• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• Kosher salt
• 1 pound (455g) boneless, skinless chicken thighs*
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil or one with a high heat point, like avocado, divided
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 small yellow onion minced
• 2 medium carrots minced
• 2 small celery stalks minced
• 1 small green pepper cored, deseeded, deribbed, and minced
• 3 garlic cloves minced
• 1 jalapeño chile or scotch bonnet pepper** halved, seeded, and minced
• 4 sprigs of fresh thyme leaves only, minced
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste or sugar-free ketchup
• 13 ½ oz (400 ml can) full-fat coconut milk, shaken for richer dish, use coconut cream
• 1 ½ cups (360 ml) chicken broth or water
• 15 oz (425 g can) black-eyed peas, pigeon peas, or black beans*** rinsed and drained
• 1 cup long-grain brown rice**** rinsed four times, soaked 20 minutes in cool water

Instructions

• Cut the chicken into 1-inch cubes. Stir the garlic powder, paprika, and 1 teaspoon Kosher salt together in a large bowl. Add the chicken to the spices, rub the spices onto the chicken pieces to coat. Cover and set aside.
• Seriously: Turn on the exhaust fan over your stove and open all the windows in your kitchen and adjoining rooms.
  
• Heat 1 tablespoon of the vegetable oil in a heavy-duty large pot over medium heat. When it starts to shimmer, add the brown sugar. Cook, stirring constantly, until the sugar completely dissolves in the oil and becomes a deep, bubbly brown, about 4 minutes.
• Immediately add the chicken pieces to the caramelized sugar and cook, stirring occasionally, until the pieces are deeply brown all over, about 4 minutes.
• Reduce the heat to medium-low, add the remaining 1 tablespoon of oil, all the minced vegetables (onion, carrot, celery, bell pepper, garlic, hot pepper), thyme, and a large pinch of salt. Continue sauteing and stirring occasionally until the vegetables soften, about 10 minutes.
• Add the rice to the pot, stirring it into the veggies to coat the grains, about 1 minute. Add the tomato paste (or ketchup), coconut milk, and water, stir together and scrape up any bits stuck to the bottom of the pan. Turn the heat up to bring the mixture to a boil.
• When the mixture boils, add the black-eyed peas (if using) and another pinch of salt, stir together, then reduce the heat to low, cover the pan, and simmer for 30-40 minutes or until the rice is tender.
• Turn the heat off, leave the pot cover on, and let the pelau rest 10 minutes.
• If you used the whole scotch bonnet, remove and compost it. Season the chicken pelau to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Notes

* I think chicken thighs are a better choice than chicken breasts here, but pelau can be made with virtually any protein, and the style of cooking will ensure that your cut of meat stays nice and tender. Not a meat eater? Use 1 lb of sliced cremini mushrooms in place of the chicken for their umami flavor.
**Julia's recipe calls for the low-heat jalapeno, while traditional recipes call for scotch bonnet or bird's eye chile peppers. Choose whatever chile pepper best suits your palate.
***Can't find pigeon peas or black-eyed peas in a can? Either make your own (by soaking them overnight and then cooking them), substitute in black beans, or skip these altogether.
****Julia's recipe calls for long-grain white rice. If you chose to go this route, you only need to cook the rice about 20 minutes, then turn off the heat and let sit while covered 10 minutes.

Nutrition

Calories: 758kcal | Carbohydrates: 77g | Protein: 38g | Fat: 34g | Saturated Fat: 25g | Cholesterol: 107mg | Sodium: 289mg | Potassium: 1251mg | Fiber: 11g | Sugar: 14g | Vitamin A: 5660IU | Vitamin C: 25.3mg | Calcium: 101mg | Iron: 8.3mg

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