Fake-out risotto

I don’t have any pictures of this meal, but I wanted to tell you about it anyhow.

Yesterday I had some bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs that needed to get cooked soon, and some other staples: olive oil, onions, garlic, rice, a little bit of rosemary that’s been in my fridge for a while. So this is what I did with them.

I heated the oven to 325 degrees. The chicken thighs went in in my ceramic dutch oven, and I salted them a little.

I cut two onions in half and left the skin on. I cut through two garlic bulbs crosswise, also with the skin on. They went on top of the chicken. So did a few sprigs of rosemary. And then I poured about a cup and a half of olive oil over the whole thing.

That went in the oven for two hours (I think that was slightly too long), which basically made confit.

When they came out, I pulled out the skins of the onions and garlic as best I could, and the sprigs of rosemary, and took the chicken off the bones. (Which wasn’t hard; it just fell off.) Then I put the oil/garlic/onion/chicken into jars to store.

Eventually, those jars went into the refrigerator, but before I did that I decided I wanted to eat some. So I put a cup of (white basmati) rice into a largeish saucepan, with about a quarter cup of the olive oil, some of the roasted garlic, some beef bouillon because that’s what I had, and three cups of water. (The back of the bag calls for less water, but stick with me.)

Then I brought it all to a boil, turned down the heat, and let it simmer until most of the water was absorbed. That took about 20 minutes. I took it off the heat and let it sit a little longer.

The consistency of the rice was at that point closer to risotto than regular rice, which is what I was going for, but there wasn’t any cream (or even butter) in it. Which is wonderful for me, because I can’t normally eat risotto due to my issues digesting heavy cream.

Put a little in a bowl, topped it with some of the chicken. And it was the most comforting comfort food I could imagine.