Southern Chicken and Rice

This recipe for Southern Chicken and Rice was requested by my Instagram family when I posted a video yesterday. Luckily I took photos just in case y’all wanted a written recipe so I was able to get this up close to immediately!

It’s exactly what it sounds like: chicken and rice! They’re stewed together chicken bog style to make a big ol’ batch of easy, simple, and inexpensive. to make comfort food. Make sure to read the post below for advice and suggestions on switching this recipe up.

Ingredients You’ll Need

Feel free to jump to the full recipe, but here are useful notes about the ingredients you will need to make this Southern Chicken and Rice recipe:

• Chicken: A whole chicken cut up into 8-10 pieces (discard the back). You can also use a couple of packs of whatever type of bone-in chicken pieces you want. For the Southern Chicken and Rice pictured, I used a pack of thighs and a pack of wingettes.
• Rice: I like to long-grain parboiled rice, but any long-grain rice should work. I don’t recommend short grain, as it’s more starchy and can become sticky and thicken everything too much.
• Butter: For sauteeing the onion. If you decide not to sautee the onion you won’t need the butter.
• Water: For simmering, obviously. You can substitute chicken broth, but you’ll likely need to reduce the amount of salt called for.
• Vidalia onion: A white or yellow onion will work, too. I like to slice it thinly, but you can quarter it or dice it. I remove it from the final dish, but feel free to leave it in.
• Bay leaf, dried parsley, garlic powder, seasoned salt, kosher salt, turmeric, cracked black pepper: Now you can dial this back and keep it super simple with just kosher salt and cracked black pepper. I played with the seasonings added to get what I feel is an elevated version of the flavors this dish always has.

How to Make Southern Chicken and Rice

Full instructions are included in the recipe below, but here is a basic overview of what you’ll need to do, along with some important tidbits to help you make the most of this Southern Chicken and Rice recipe:

• Prepare for Southern Chicken and Rice. Melt your butter in a large stockpot over medium heat. Once the butter has melted add the onion. Stir to coat in the butter, then let them cook just until they’re slightly softened. Add the chicken pieces and water, and then stir in the kosher salt, dried parsley, black pepper, garlic powder, turmeric, and bay leaf. Bring the pot to a boil, then reduce the heat to medium-low and cover it with a lid. Set a timer and walk away for an hour. After an hour the chicken should be cooked through. Use a fork to check, just see if the meat will pull away from the bone. If it does, use tongs to remove the chicken from the liquid. If it doesn’t replace the lid and continue cooking the chicken for another half an hour. When the chicken has been cooked through, pull the chicken from the pot. If you’d like to remove the skin and bones let it cool a bit, then do that before you return it to the pot. 
• Add and simmer the rice. Pour the liquid through a strainer into a large container. You started with 8 quarts, and you should still have around that much left, but we might not need it. Return 6 cups of the liquid to the pan, then add the chicken back. If you’d like to skip this step you can, just remove the bay leaf and measure out two cups of the liquid. Set the liquid aside, just in case. Stir in the rice, chicken bouillon, and seasoned salt. Replace the lid, reduce the heat to low, and let everything cook undisturbed for 15-20 minutes until the rice is tender. 
• Finish the Southern Chicken and Rice. Once the rice is done give everything a good, gentle stir. If you didn’t debone the chicken use tongs to squeeze each piece of chicken – the meat should just fall off the bone without much pressure, then stir. If you’d like to have more liquid in your chicken and rice, add as much of the reserved broth as you’d like. Keep in mind that you’ll need some for leftovers, as the longer the rice sits the more liquid will be absorbed. When you’re happy with the consistency, give it a taste and adjust for salt as needed. Ladle into bowls and serve alongside some cornbread. Dassit! 

Southern Chicken and Rice or Chicken Bog?

Depending on what your ancestors – recent or more distant – called it, you might consider this Southern Chicken and Rice recipe to be Chicken Bog. You’d be correct! Me, I don’t consider this to be Chicken Bog, and I am also correct. It’s a very colloquial term, as are most names of food.

Chicken Bog in its most simple form is a dish comprised of chicken and rice stewed together, with some salt and pepper. It’s called chicken bog because the chicken gets “bogged down” in the rice, so yes! That’s exactly what Southern Chicken and Rice is, so it makes sense to call it Chicken Bog, too.

My recipe for Chicken Bog is a tad more involved; it needs more ingredients and requires more steps. This is what it looks like —

Obligatory Pinterest Graphics –

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