Monday, June 28, 2010

Arroz Con Pollo

I got a slow cooker recently, and one of the first things I made was arroz con pollo, which is a very tasty Cuban dish consisting of saffron rice with shredded chicken, peas, and red peppers. Slow cookers are very easy to use, because you just put all the ingredients in the pot and cook it for a long time.

Ingredients:
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
about a cup of frozen peas
1 (14 oz) can of chicken broth
1/2 a red pepper, cut into strips and sauteed lightly
1 (5 oz) packet of saffron rice
shredded cheese, to taste

Directions: Combine all ingredients in slow cooker (mine recommended using the 4-quart pot for this, but I found that the 2-quart pan was plenty big). Cook on high for 4 hours (I found that it only needed to be on high for about 3 hours and then I turned it down to low for an hour, although it was fully cooked after 3 hours on high. The most important thing is that the chicken be fully cooked.) Slow cookers naturally make the meat very tender, so after cooking you can easily shred the chicken using a fork or spoon, and then stir to combine before serving. If you like cheese, you can also stir in some shredded cheese before serving, and then you can season with salt, pepper, garlic, and paprika to suit your tastes. Note: If you want to cook this all day while you're at work, you can cook it on low for eight hours, but set it to cook on high for 1 hour before it switches to low. For food safety reasons, raw chicken needs to be cooked on high at first to kill bacteria, because it grows too fast when its cooked on low.

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