Chris' Favorite Rice

My husband Chris loves rice, so I spend a lot of time experimenting with rice dishes and different types of rice and different ways to cook it. This dish is by far his favorite. It pairs well with roasted chicken.

One of the ingredients in the dish is chicken stock. You can substitute chicken boullion if you would like, but the chicken stock is a lot better for you, and is a way you can get the very last bit of nutrition from your vegetables and your meat. The trick to good stock is to not let it get to a boil. If you let stock boil with any meat in it, you end up with greasy stock. Once you have a few bubbles coming up from the bottom, turn down the heat and let it simmer. I find the best way to do this is to start it in a big pot and then transfer it to my slow cooker once it has started to simmer. Then I walk away for a couple of hours. When you come back, you have stock!

I keep a large plastic bag in the freezer to which I add onion peels (the WHOLE peel, the papery part, too), carrot peels and tops, celery tops, and any sprigs of thyme, marjoram, and parsely that I don’t end up using in cooking before it goes bad. When it comes time to make the stock, I just throw the contents of the bag into the stock pot with whatever meat I have – leftover bones from a whole chicken or turkey, turkey necks from the store, or a real soup bone. All of them work just fine. My family jokes that it looks like cooked garbage... but they don't complain about the result.

I freeze the stock into ice cubes and then store them in a plastic bag in the freezer until I need it.


Chris’s Favorite Rice
2 tbsp olive oil
½ medium onion, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 c uncooked rice
2 c chicken stock

Sautee onion, celery, and carrot until soft. Add rice, continue to cook until rice has turned very white. Add chicken stock, cook 20 minutes or until rice is done.