Chicken spinach and rice

It’s spinach season and we're not complaining. We've been making green smoothies like there’s no tomorrow and other spinach recipes. Am we worried about oxalates? Maybe a bit, but we think we need to stop worrying about the things in real food and just focus on actually eating it to get some nutrients. Speaking of, let’s start with this simple chicken, spinach and rice recipe that is packed with protein and flavor and you can make for dinner without much effort.

It’s pretty much comfort food, but healthy and it tastes SO good. Like we said, comfort food. The protein comes from the chicken, but also from the lentils that we decided to throw into the skillet, because folate and also from the spinach. Believe it or not, leafy greens like spinach are a great source of protein. And fiber. And a lot of other things that help your body detoxify and nourish the cells.

If you’ve ever had the Greek spinach and rice, this is pretty similar, but with chicken. We paired it with some tzatziki and lettuce salad and in our humble opinion, this was the solid combo.

What You Need For The Chicken, Spinach and Rice

• boneless skinless chicken thighs
• rice, Arborio will be good (we just used whatever was in our pantry and we're not sure because we put it in a jar and didn’t label).
• spinach
• brown lentils
• lots of scallions
• garlic
• olive oil
• black pepper kernels
• curry powder
• crushed red pepper
• salt and pepper
• water or stock – stock will make for deeper flavor, but we personally always prefer water as we could add as much salt as we like.
• dried mint or if available fresh leaves

How it comes together

Years ago a recipe like this chicken spinach and rice would seem like a huge undertaking for us. We mean our grandma used to make things like that and to us, she was a reliable cook. She was actually a “chef”, and we thought we could never make the things that she made.

We still don’t think we can do even a quarter of what she was able to make on her own. But we think this recipe comes pretty close to the chicken and rice she used to cook for us when we were kids. Also, over the last year or so we've realized that recipes like this chicken, spinach and rice skillet are the easiest way to cook dinner or anything. Because most the work consists of putting things into a large pan and being patient. So if you’re not a professional cook, don’t be intimidated. It’s simple and you can do it!

So to start, make sure to wash the spinach and clean the scallions. Rinse the lentils and the rice and wash the chicken as well. Peel the garlic and mince it, chop the spinach roughly and the scallions thinly.

Add the rice, lentils, spinach, scallions, black pepper kernels, curry powder, olive oil, mint, garlic, crushed red pepper and a few generous pinches of salt to a large cooking pan. Add water or stock and stir together. Place the chicken on top of this.

Then cover with a lid and bring to a boil.

Once boiling, reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes.

When the 30 minutes are up, shred the chicken with two forks and stir it through the rice and spinach. Have a taste and add salt if needed.

Serve with tzatziki and a salad like this one or this one.