Hey hi hello everyone! Welcome back! Did you all have a good week? I know we’re all stressing but we’re so close to Thanksgiving break. We got this!!

Today we’re going to be making some Poultry Pilaf!! In Breath of the Wild, this is a super easy and convenient recipe to make using ingredients that you probably already have: rice, butter, chicken, and and egg (honestly not sure why there’s an egg in there, I don’t think I’ve ever had pilaf with an egg in it…)

I’ve never made my own pilaf before, so I had to follow a recipe as a base so I knew what I was doing and did not completely screw it up. I followed this recipe here, which was very easy to follow.

I started off by making my broth. The recipe calls for chicken broth but I did not have any on hand, so I substituted it for beef broth (side note: when I was going through and proofreading this, I realized I originally somehow wrote ‘teeth broth’ instead of ‘beef broth’. I’ve been cracking up about it for the past 20 minutes and my boyfriend thinks I’m crazy.) , which I made using this:

You just mix a tablespoon with a cup of boiling water, and it instantly creates beef broth. Super easy and convenient! I made 2 2/3 cup of broth as the recipe called for.

Next I gathered the spices I needed:

These all went into the beef broth when measured out, along with some butter. I definitely added more garlic than was called for, because I am a garlic FIEND. I usually double (sometimes triple) the amount of garlic a recipe calls for because I love it that much 😍          

Next I put the broth, spices, and butter on the stove to simmer and get nice and hot.

It looks kinda funky, but that’s just the film from the butter that was melting into the broth. The next step was to toast the rice for a few minutes in some olive oil. The recipe called for white rice but I only had brown, so I used that. It ended up kinda backfiring on me but more on that later. I also was supposed to add some orzo as well, but I didn’t have any of that either… I’m really terrible at being prepared. After toasting the rice, I poured the broth mixture into the rice and let it simmer and wait for it to be absorbed.

Once the broth has been added, it was time to just let the rice simmer and absorb the broth. The recipe says this will only take about 20 minutes, but it took longer because I was using brown rice. It’s important to try to keep the lid on as much as possible to keep the heat in, but I opened it a few times to stir it and to check if it was done yet.

While I was waiting for the rice to finish, I took care of the chicken. I actually had some leftover chicken thighs that worked perfectly for this recipe so I just used those, but if you are cooking your own, you can use either thighs or breasts and just throw cut up pieces into a pan along with the spices of your choosing.

After checking on the rice again, it was finally done! Well, it was as done as it was going to get. Remember how I said that me using brown rice was kind of an issue? That’s because the rice has absorbed all of the liquid, but it was still a little crunchy. I couldn’t leave the once in the pan any longer as it was going to burn. I probably could have added some water or other liquid base and let is cook longer to hopefully get rid of the crunchiness, but I wasn’t sure if it was going to work so I opted not to. I stirred in my chicken pieces, put the rice in a bowl, topped with some parsley, and it was done! I have to say that I think this is one of my better looking dishes.

Th final verdict? The crunchiness of the rice obviously is a turn off. I feel as if I’m a decent enough cook to know I shouldn’t have used brown rice, but at the time I thought it would be fine. The beef broth was also a little too overwhelming for my taste. It has a very distinct and salty flavor, and it overpowered the rest of the dish which I didn’t like. Coincidentally, both of the things I didn’t like about the dish were both things that I changed so I guess I have no reason to complain. Way to go, Kaitlyn.

Besides the aspects of this dish that I changed myself and didn’t like, I had a lot of fun making this! I’m glad I to to try something that I’ve never cooked myself before, and even though it didn’t come out as well as I had hoped, now I know better for next time. \

Thanks as always for reading, everyone! What do you think I should make next week? Let me know in the comments! Should I do a  meal or dessert? Help me pick! Enjoy your week and don’t forget, it’s almost Thanksgiving!!!