Tender by Lucy Tweed: Chicken with salad dressing rice is an easy, adaptable one-pan family dinner

I can’t tell you the number of iterations I have made of this very easy, very adaptable, one-pan dinner for the family. It’s loaded with all the flavour, all the aromatics, and all of that excellent sticky, meaty juice stays in the pan. The rice cooks around the meat and becomes a combination of tender and chewy and sticky and crispy. I dare you to adjust the flavour profiles. Go mad. Use a curry paste. Do it with minced meats. Do it with dumplings on top. You literally can take this anywhere you like; you can be inspired by any culture and any cuisine. Make your mid-week, one-pan wonders your own, as they should be.

Chicken with salad dressing rice

1 tbsp olive oil

6 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs

Salt

1 onion, chopped

4 garlic cloves, smashed

1 rosemary sprig

1 tbsp dijon mustard

1 tbsp wholegrain mustard

125ml (½ cup) dry white wine

200g (1 cup) long-grain white rice

375ml (1½ cups) chicken stock

200g green beans, trimmed (sliced if thick)

1 tbsp butter

1 tsp fresh thyme leaves

chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley, to serve

Preparation

Step 1 Preheat the oven to 180C fan-forced.

Step 2 Heat the olive oil in a large heavy-based casserole dish over medium heat. Season the chicken with salt and place it, skin-side down, in the pan. Cook until golden and crispy, about 10 minutes, then flip and sear the flesh side for 2 minutes. Remove and set aside.

Step 3 Add the onion, garlic and rosemary to the pan, stirring to coat them in the oil. Add both the mustards, then add the white wine and de-glaze the pan, scraping the base. Simmer briefly and reduce a little.

Step 4 Add the rice and stir to coat it in the mustardy base. Pour in the stock, bring to a gentle simmer and cook for 5 minutes.

Step 5 Nestle the chicken back into the pan, skin-side up. Transfer to the oven and bake, uncovered, for 25 minutes.

Step 6 Remove from the oven, tuck the beans around the chicken, dot the butter over the top and sprinkle with the thyme. Cover loosely with foil and return to the oven for 10–15 minutes until the beans are just tender and the rice is cooked.

Step 7 Scatter generously with fresh parsley and serve straight from the pan — saucy, crispy, chewy and fluffy in all the right places. Refrigerate in an airtight container for up to 3 days, or freeze for up to 3 months.

Serves: 4-6

Cook time: 1 hour

Hints

• Experiment with rice types! This is about exploration . . . or what you have in the pantry.
• If the rice starts to look dry, top up with an extra splash of stock or water mid-bake.
• Swap green beans for broccolini, asparagus or even peas or spinach. The only limit is your imagination, and possibly the fridge crisper contents.

Extracted from Tender by Lucy Tweed. Photography by Rob Palmer, Murdoch Books, $39.99