Baked Chicken Rice

This baked chicken rice casserole with drumsticks is a typical Mediterranean comfort food. It's perfect for family style dinner, it's inexpensive and doesn't require a lot of ingredients. Most importantly, kids love this dish.

Course Main Course

Cuisine Albanian, Mediterranean

Keyword Chicken Rice, chicken rice bake, Pule me oriz, Pule me pilaf, rice casserole

Prep Time 30

Cook Time 45

Total Time 1 14

Servings servings

Calories 512kcal

Author Sonila

Equipment

Baking dish

Ingredients

10 chicken drumsticks
1.5 tsp salt
1 tsp peppercorn
8 cups water
4 cups white rice 1 cup rice is about 225 grams
1 onion (medium size)
5 garlic cloves add more if you like garlic taste
5 tbsps butter unsalted
1 tbsp oregano, dry
1 tbsp paprika
1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley for garnish
1 lemon (optional)

Instructions

Make sure chicken is thawed before you start cooking.
Add chicken drumsticks to a medium size pot, add water, salt and peppercorn. Set to boil, then lower heat to medium. Cover the pot. Once water boils, let cook for 15-20 minutes. Turn heat off.
Add 4 tbsps of butter in a skillet. Chop onion very fine and mince garlic. Add onions and garlic to skillet and saute until onion becomes translucent. Stirr often so onion cooks evenly and doesn't stick to the skillet.
Add rice to skillet and continue mixing occasionally. You want all rice to get coated and become shiny without browning. Pour this mix into the baking tray and spread evenly.
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. (about 180 degrees Celsius)
Remove chicken drumsticks from pot. Season the drumsticks well with paprika, oregano and a little more salt. You can fry them in butter for a minute just to give the skin that crispy look (the frying part is optional). Place them in the baking dish over the rice.
Use a ladle to take the chicken stock from the pot and fill a measuring cup. Add exactly 8 cups to the baking dish. If there's not enough chicken stock then add the remaining cups just water. Keep the ratio 1 cup rice, 2 cups water (or stock).
Make sure salt content is ok at this point as it is hard to add once the dish has cooked.
Add remaining butter over chicken drumsticks, just coat them a little bit.
Place baking dish in the oven carefully. Let bake until all stock/water has evaporated (it can take 30-40 minutes depending on oven). Once there's no more water in the dish, change oven setting to broil for few minutes, then turn it off and let the dish cool. Fluff the rice with a fork before serving.
Garnish with freshly chopped parsley! Serve with a side salad of choice. Enjoy:)

Video

Notes

Amount of salt is a bit tricky. If you are cooking chicken yourself, I suggest adding the salt to the pot where you'll boil chicken. If you are using a combination of chicken stock, salted butter and water then you might have to do a little test of flavor then add salt as needed (before baking). Once you bake it and water evaporates it's hard to add more salt.
TBSP - Tablespoon
TSP - Teaspoon
Make sure you pick a tray big enough to handle 4 cups of rice cooked by volume. Otherwise cook a bit less. This tray as shown in pictures is about 2 meals for my family, sometimes even a bit more depending what side salad I use. Leftovers hold really well in the refrigerator for few days. I never froze the leftovers so I don't know how it holds frozen.
Lemon - not everyone is a fan of lemon in this dish so that's why I'm adding this ingredient as optional. It's very traditional to add it in the Mediterranean. I usually squeeze half the lemon and add it to the baking tray evenly before placing it to bake. I use the other half over the chicken drumsticks before I season them.

Nutrition