With the cost of living increasing week upon week, I’m always looking at ways of reducing our expenditure without compromising on the things that really matter to us – and for us, we aren’t willing to compromise on our healthy eating and nutrition but I’m pretty sure, like me, you’ve all noticed the weekly food shopping bill increasing. People often comment that healthy eating is expensive but this recipe works out to be £1.07 per portion (*using herbs and spices I already have in the cupboards) which is a lot cheaper than a lot of processed or frozen meals.
A few simple cost saving tips I used for this recipe
- Buy a whole chicken or chicken on the bone – this works out a lot cheaper than buying individual chicken breasts or boned portions
- Bulk buy where possible – I buy a 10kg bag of rice which lasts for us ages and works out to be so much cheaper in the long run than buying smaller bags
- Buy large bags of vegetables in season and then use them in multiple meals throughout the week
- Adapt recipes to include things that you have in stock (both fresh and storecupboard ingredients)
- Buy your herbs and spices from the world food aisle or from local shops rather than the pricy small jars
This dish has become one of our favourite meals recently – the recipe below is enough for 6 portions so we have it cooked fresh for dinner and then I box the leftovers up for lunches over the next few days – saving both time and money too.
Ingredients
- a whole chicken
- 1 onion, finely chopped
- 2 or 3 carrots, sliced into rounds
- 2 peppers, roughly chopped
- 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
- 350g of rice
- 700ml of water
- spray oil
- 15ml of lemon juice (or half a fresh lemon squeezed)
- 1 tsp of chilli powder
- 1 tsp of garlic powder
- 1 tsp of ginger powder
- 1 tsp of tumeric
- 1 tsp of cumin
- 1/2 tsp of black pepper
- a pinch of salt
- 1 cinnamon stick (or 1/2 tsp of cinnamon powder)
- 6 cloves
- 6 cardamon pods
Method
Step 1
Spray your largest lidded saucepan with some low calorie spray oil and place on a high heat. Add the whole chicken and cook for a couple of minutes each side.
Step 2
Whilst the chicken is browning slightly in the pan, prepare your vegetables. You can add other vegetables if you have stuff to use up.
Step 3
Weigh out your rice and soak in cold water for 30 minutes, rinse and drain ready to add later
Step 4
Remove your chicken from the saucepan and set aside on a plate for now.
Step 5
Add your chopped vegetables to the pan that you’ve removed the chicken from with a small splash of water.
Step 6
Add in the spices and stir and leave to cook for 5 minutes
Step 7
Add the lemon juice
Step 8
Add the chopped tomatoes
Step 9
Give it a good stir to mix everything through evenly
Step 10
Add the chicken back to the pan on top of the vegetables and spoon a bit of the sauce over the top. Add 200ml of boiling water
Step 11
Put the lid on top and allow to cook for one hour. I turn the chicken over after half an hour.
With 20 mins left, preheat your oven to 180 / gas mark 5
Step 12
After an hour, remove the chicken from the pan (adjust cooking time if you have a bigger chicken!). Put the chicken in an oven proof dish and place in the oven until browned (about 25 mins)
Step 13
Add the drained and rinsed rice to the vegetable mixture
Step 14
Add the rest of the water (boiling), stir through and place the lid on top again. Cook for 20 mins
Step 15
Remove the chicken from the oven
Step 16
Turn the heat off on the rice, leave the lid on for a further five minutes.
To Serve
Place the cooked rice on a large serving dish and place the chicken on top. If you’ve got any parsley, you can add a bit of that to garnish.
We eat it hot like this and serve ourselves family style at the table and then I remove all the chicken from the bone and portion into tupperware along with the leftover rice, allow to cool before putting in the fridges for lunches for the next couple of days.
Reheat your leftovers thoroughly in the microwave.
To make it go even further, you could serve with a side dish of other vegetables such as steamed broccoli or green beans or bulk it out by adding more vegetables to the cooking process.
And as I mentioned above, you can use whatever spices you like in the sauce and adapt according to your individual tastes and what you’ve got in.
Also – cooking the chicken like this is the best way I’ve ever tasted – it simply falls off the bone and is so juicy and tender.
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Hi George on this recipe do you remove the skin off the chicken because of the grease?
Hi,
I don’t remove the skin to cook it as my husband enjoys a small bit of crispy chicken skin with his portion. I remove the skin from my portion to eat once served but you could cook the whole recipe with a skinned chicken if you prefer!