On a Chicken and Rice Mission

This week I made another attempt at baked chicken and rice. I've made some progress but still I am not satisfied with the results. A few years ago, before I became a pre-packaged food snob, I would buy the boxed "just add chicken" kit and follow the directions. It made for a decent chicken and rice dish, but nothing extraordinary. Now I am on a mission to get it right. I am convinced there's a way to get moist, flavorful chicken atop a bed of fluffy rice with just the right balance of seasoning.

So far my recipe attempts have taught me that most people either have flavorless and dry chicken & rice or they buy those dastardly kits. I am determined to not stoop back to that level.

I was flipping through an ad I received in the mail from Kroger recently, and noticed the recipes included were not really recipes so much as ways to cobble together a meal from frozen, pre-cooked boxed items. Just like those chicken & rice kits. Grumble Grumble Grumble...

It made me think about how much cooking and recipes rely on those heat & eat type foods. Just turn on Food Network and watch any number of shows. They aren't cooking, they're opening boxes and assembling; Semi-Homemade, 30 minute meals... They're all about getting the meal from box to table as rapidly as possible, tossing nutrition out the window. Now that we've got these pre-done meals to a reasonably tasty level, why make it from scratch? The boxed stuff is close enough for most kitchens, right?

But back to my mission to make a good chicken & rice dish, minus the boxed stuff and all the extra sodium and preservatives they so generously provide. I have made some progress in the right direction. I can finally product a moist piece of chicken from the oven. I can even get rice that is fairly fluffly and light. Now my battle is with the flavor.

I suspect my culprit is the broth. I am about to step even further away from the pre-packaged world and make my own, forgoing what I have thought to be good chicken base for the last couple of years. So to get a satisfying baked chicken & rice dish, I am forced to buy a whole chicken, roast it, use the leftovers to make stock, and then I can proceed to make my intended dish.

Or I can just go buy the $3 kit at Kroger. But I am stubborn, and will not be that easily disuaded from the chicken-y greatness that eludes me for now.