Hello!

I'm not sure if you remember, but last month I published a post about how I'd had a dish named after me by Lisa...

I'm a dish!

Her description of the dish was...

yes, a dish I've named after our dish aussiesarah. It's chicken sprinkled w/Ranch dressing mix, roasted on rice, then sliced red peppers added and doused w/Tabasco at table. Ace!

Yum, yum, yum. I emailed her shortly after to get more detailed instructions on how to make it.

I had chicken on my mind for dinner, and I thought, you know, how good would Ranch dressing be on that chicken? Good! And since meeting you, I've become a rice addict, so of course that was my selected side. But being the lazy person I am, I'm a one-potter gal, so I shook the chicken up with the Ranch dip mix, I put a cup of basmati in the pan, then two cups of water on top, and then I put the chicken breasts on top of that, with a pat of butter on each, and put it in the 400F oven for like 20 minutes. Then I put the red peppers in so they would be just tender-crisp, and baked it for about 10 more minutes. It was awesome! Of course, to top it off, I had to add the Tabasco (fresh parsley, too). It all worked.

Anyhoo, I made it today for lunch. I doubled her quantities for four of us, and used skinless free range chicken breasts. I put the rice in the dish, poured water over, and then put the ranch-dip-powder-coated breasts on top, each topped with a dollop of butter.

chicken ready for oven

For the first 20 minutes of cooking, I covered the dish with foil, because I thought this would help the rice cook faster and prevent the breasts from drying out. MISTAKE! Covering them in foil keeps the breasts disappointingly pallid, and didn't seem to speed up the rice-cooking process at all. So I removed the foil and let it keep cooking until all the water was absorbed, and put slices of red capsicum on for the last 7 minutes or so. Because of the doubled quantities, this one took about 40 minutes in total.

Awesome Aussie Sarah Chicken

To finish it off, I sprinkled it with parsley, and we ate it with Crystal Hot Sauce. At first, we thought it might be a bit bland, what with all the whiteness, but it was brilliant. If you have a look at Lisa's photo, she left the skin on her breasts, which made them much browner and (I think) even tastier.

It was so good! So quick and easy to cook, and incredibly tasty! The ranch dressing not only flavours the chicken, but the rice as well. It's a one-pot-meal of deliciousness. Since starting the How to Eat project, my whole family has been suffering some serious rice cravings. We descended upon the delicious ranch-dressing-infused rice and chicken like a pack of hungry wolves. It was just perfect.

It was pretty healthy too; we ate it with salad. I definitely want this to become a regular addition to the repertoire of family meals!