Slow cooker Tex-Mex chicken and rice one-pot dinner
I'm grateful to slow cooker manufacturers everywhere for not actually building the airtight appliances they intended to build. Nothing makes me happier than the house filling with the aroma, escaping from under the lid, of whatever is gently cooking in the pot for many hours.
A recipe like this Tex-Mex chicken and rice, with corn and black beans tucked here and there, can cook on the stovetop, but in the slow cooker, the flavors have a chance to intermingle on their own (without tending by you), and the musky scent of cumin warms up the kitchen as it cooks. You'll find jars of sofrito in the Spanish foods section of your supermarket. If you use converted rice, you can cook rice right in with the rest of the dish, and it won't turn to mush in the slow cooker. This is a one-pot dinner that freezes well, so make the full batch and save some for a quick microwave reheat on another day.
Slow cooker Tex-Mex chicken and rice one-pot dinner {gluten-free}
From the pantry, you'll need: chicken breasts, cumin, chili powder, kosher salt, fresh black pepper, chicken stock, onion, sofrito, canned chile peppers, canned black beans.
Serves 6.
Ingredients
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cubed into 1/2-inch pieces
1 Tbsp ground cumin
1 Tbsp chili powder
Large pinch each of kosher salt and fresh black pepper
1/2 Tbsp neutral oil (vegetable, canola, rice bran, etc.)
1 cup converted white rice (uncooked)
1-3/4 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup diced onion
4 oz sofrito
10 oz frozen corn kernels
4-oz can diced roasted chile peppers, drained
15-oz can black beans, drained and rinsed
1/2 cup roughly chopped fresh cilantro, for garnish
Directions
In a large mixing bowl, using your very clean hands, toss together the chicken, cumin, chili powder, salt and pepper, and oil. Make sure that all of the chicken pieces are coated with the spices.
Pour the chicken into a 6-quart slow cooker, and cook on LOW for 2 hours.
Then add, all at once, the rice, stock, onion, sofrito, corn, chile peppers and black beans. Stir everything together. Cover and continue cooking on LOW for 2-1/4 hours, stirring once or twice during that time.
Taste, and add salt and pepper, if needed. Then, if you like cilantro, stir in the fresh cilantro at the very end, or garnish right before serving.
More ideas for slow cooker rice:
Slow cooker Caribbean pepper pot, from The Perfect Pantry
Slow cooker Greek rice with red bell pepper, feta, and kalamata olives, from Kalyn's Kitchen
Slow cooker chicken Alfredo rice casserole, from Oh, Sweet Basil
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Can cooked rice be added , at the end of the cooking? I prefer to use regular brown rice.
Cousin Martin, yes, but the rice won't absorb all of the flavors. You'd really be making a different dish than this one. It would surely be tasty, but it will be something different.
I agree completely about the way the slow cooker melds the flavors together! Now I have to look for sofrito in a jar. I'm loving slow cooker rice dishes too.
Kalyn, it's easy to make sofrito, and keep it in the freezer, but it's even easier to buy it. I always find it in the Spanish foods aisle in my regular grocery store.
Hi there, I like to use Brown Rice too. Will that work in this recipe? If so, how should we modify it. Thanks! Signed,
Novice Slow Cooker.
Cshropsh, I don't recommend cooking brown rice in the slow cooker, because it will get gummy. You can cook it separately, as suggested in the comments above, and create a different dish with these flavors. But it's the cooking of the rice in the slow cooker, with the other ingredients, that gives this a rich flavor. Use the search box at the top to find other Tex-Mex chicken and rice possibilities on this blog; there are several.