Paprika Chicken

I have taken a very complicated meal and made it simple.

What you need:

One chicken
One onion
Paprika (this is a red spice you can find in the spice section of most grocery stores)
Rice
About a quarter stick of butter

Let's start with the rice.  Pick the style you most prefer.  I suggest you look at the previous blog.  For me, I use four cups of water and two cups of brown rice.  Boil the water, add the rice, cover and cook at lowest setting for about 50 minutes.

Now for the chicken.

I recommend buying chicken already cut up.  You can cut it up yourself but you will need either, a special kind of scissors or a saw.  There are ways to cut up a chicken with a knife but this requires some attention to detail and who wants to bother with that.

Set the cut up chicken aside.  Now, find a frying pan with tall sides and a lid.  This is a fairly hard combination to come by so you can use a regular frying pan and then transfer everything to a pot with a lid later on.

Chop up your onion into whatever size pieces you like.  I have heard that if you chew gum while doing this, your eyes won't water.  If that works, let me know.

Over a high heat, melt the butter in the pan and then add the onion bits.  I think this is called saute-ing but maybe not.  In any event, stir to keep the onion from burning and continue until the union becomes glassy or sort of clear.  This should take about 5 minutes.

Add the chicken pieces.  For about 5 minutes, flip the chicken around in the butter and onions.  This will feel kind of clunky since the chicken pieces are likely to be big.  What you want to do is cook the chicken long enough to get rid of visible pink.  The meat will still be pink on the inside but white on the outside.  If this has not been achieved in 5 minutes, check to make sure the heat is turned on.

Now, let's assume you are going to use a pot.  If you are a single man, this may be problematic because there is a chance that you only own one pot and it is currently cooking rice.  Maybe I should have mentioned that earlier.  This is a perfect opportunity to borrow a pot from the cute girl down the hall.  Make sure she knows you are cooking with fire (as opposed to the microwave).  This sends the subliminal signal that you are at least partially domesticated; a definite turn-on as this represents less work for her down the road.

Back to cooking.

Put the chicken/onion/butter mess into the pot.  Add about 4 heaping tablespoons of Paprika.  This seems like a lot but its okay; after all this isn't salt.  Now, add enough water to cover the chicken.  Stir until the Paprika is dissolved in the water.  Bring water to boil, then reduce heat to minimum and cover.  Cook for 45 minutes.

By now you have forgotten completely about your rice so check the time.  DO NOT uncover the rice until 50 minutes has passed.  The rice should be done before this next step with the chicken.  If there is still water in the rice, test the rice to make sure its soft.  If its not, cover and cook for a few more minutes.  If it is soft, drain off the excess water and set aside.

Back to the chicken.

After 45 minutes, the chicken is barely hanging on the bone.  One piece at a time, take the chicken out.  Take the skin off the piece and set aside (the skin not the chicken).  Take the meat off the bone and put it back into the pot (the meat not the bone).  Be careful because chickens sometimes have secret bones that are easy to overlook.  Throw the bones away.

Gather up all of the chicken skin and feed it to your dog saying, "Whose a good boy?"

By now, we have a pot full of chicken meat and red water.  We have another pot filled with rice.  In a giant bowl, mix the two pots.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  I'm not sure what this means but I know it when I taste it.  I start with 1 heaping teaspoon each of pepper and salt.  Stir it in and taste.  Remember, its always easy to add a little more salt.  It's a real pain to try and take out salt if you find you've added to much.  So be careful.

This is enough food to last a person for a week.  However, single guys tend to base their consumption on flavor and how much spare room they have in their stomach.  This stuff is delicious so I give it 2 days at the most.

Enjoy.

Jim