Chicken Rice Pilaf with Mushrooms (Traditional)

I know a lot of articles on cooking blogs start with “my grandma gave me this recipe” but I am going to risk you not believing me and start exactly like that. Before I made this dish I called my grandma to see if I memorized the recipe correctly and to double check how she does it. What you will see down bellow is in fact my grandma recipe that I recreated for you folks to see: Traditional Balkan style, chicken rice pilaf with mushrooms. This dish is not so easy to make so please be sure to double check if you did all the steps before proceeding to the next one. Furthermore, I will offer solutions for quick fixes in case something didn’t go according to plan. The easier and faster version of this dish, with peas, can be found in my chicken pilaf with mushrooms recipe. Enough yapping – check out the recipe for chicken rice pilaf with mushrooms, Balkan-style. 

Preparing the Ingredients 

As usual, we start by preparing the ingredients. As you can see in the image above, this part is fairly simple: you only need to cut the onions and carrots into small pieces. I used mushrooms that were not too big so I just peeled and cleaned them. If you get those big ones, I suggest cutting them in half. It’s not a good idea to cut them into small pieces as you want to feel the taste of mushrooms in the end and if you cut them too small, they might just get mixed into the dish. 

My advise is to rinse the rice at this point to save up time later.

For the meat, I used chicken drumsticks. My grandma advised me not to use chicken breasts as the dish might get too dry so now, I am advising you to do the same – try making this chicken rice pilaf with chicken drumsticks. 

As far as seasoning is concerned I used dried basil, dried dill, and dried celery. You can replace this with fresh ingredients, just be sure to cut everything to small pieces and add it at the same step as when I added the dried seasoning. Of course, I used salt (just 1 tbsp) and 1 chicken stock cube. I know that this looks like a “cheat” but it really does add to the flavor so I suggest you try it. If you don’t want to use it, then just add a bit more salt to the recipe. 

Cooking the Chicken and Rice Pilaf 

Since this recipe is one of the longer ones, there are more steps to follow so I will divide the cooking part into steps in order to make it easier for you. You can see the shorted version of this process in the recipe part as well. A word of caution: Use a large enough pot as you need to put several ingredients together and chicken drumsticks can be pretty clunky. Anyway, here are the steps to follow in order to cook the chicken and rice pilaf with mushrooms: 

Step 1: Stew the onions and meat (15 minutes)

Start by putting 3 tbsp of olive oil in the pot. Once the oil heats up, add the chopped onions and stir it. Cover the pot with a lid and cook it like that, with occasional stirring, for 5 minutes, until the onions get a glass-like look. Add the chicken drumsticks as well as 1 tbsp of salt, and mix it with onions. If needed, add a glass of water and cook for 10 minutes. Be sure that the onions don’t burn! Again, if needed add water. Adjust the heat to medium. 

Step 2: Add chopped vegetables and rice (30 minutes)

This is a tricky part. Add rice, chopped carrots and mushrooms at the same time to the mixture of onions and chicken drumsticks. Add around 500ml (around 2 cups) of water to the mixture. Add basil, dill and celery.  Mix it all up and cook it on medium heat for at least 30 minutes. The reason why I say that this is the water – you need to get it right, the mixture in the end should be moist but not watery. I know, this sounds contradictory, but the best way to deal with this is too cook with less water, stirring regularly. If you added too much water, you can drain in in the end but you will be draining the nutrients in that way as well, that’s why I don’t advise it. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius (400 Fahrenheit) for the next step. 

Step 3: Bake the pilaf in the oven (45 minutes)

The third and final step is to brown the pilaf in the oven. I used baking paper as it eases the cleaning process but you don’t have to do that. Take the meat out from the pilaf and spread the mixture without meat in the baking dish. Once the pilaf is spread evenly, put chicken chopsticks on top so that the meat gets a nice color during the baking. Put it in the oven and bake it until the water evaporates and the chicken pilaf with mushrooms gets a nice, brown color. Allow the dish to rest for few minutes before serving it. 

Final Thoughts on Rice and Chicken Pilaf with Mushrooms 

As you can see, this dish is a bit more complex as the ingredients have different cooking time so you need to do it step by step in order to get it right. Probably the most difficult thing is to get the amount of water right – as I mentioned, my advise is not too add too much and compensate with more stirring in order to prevent the rice pilaf with mushroom from burning. I am sure that you will get it right – good luck and bon appetite!