Roasted Chicken with Wild Rice Salad
Ingredients
- Chicken
- ½ cup cold water
- 8 shallots, peeled and quartered lengthwise
- 8 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
- 1 lemon, thinly sliced
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 4 bone-in skin-on chicken thighs
- 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
- freshly ground pepper to taste
- ¼ cup dry white wine
- 2 teaspoons molasses
- Salad
- 1 cup wild rice, rinsed
- 4 cups water
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 cup minced parsley
- ½ cup minced cilantro
- ¼ cup loosely packed mint leaves, minced
- 1 green chile pepper, seeded and sliced into thin rounds
- Dressing
- 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- 2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
- fine sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Directions
- Mix ½ cup cold water, shallots, garlic, lemon, olive oil, 1 teaspoon salt, and black pepper together in a bowl; add chicken and turn to coat with the marinade. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate 2 hours to overnight.
- Preheat oven to 425°F (220°C).
- Whisk white wine and molasses together in a small bowl until smooth. Remove chicken from marinade and arrange in a roasting pan. Pour the marinade around the chicken. Drizzle wine-molasses mixture over the chicken.
- Roast chicken in preheated oven until no longer pink at the bone, 50 to 55 minutes. Move chicken to a cutting board and let rest for 10 minutes.
- Mix rice, 4 cups water, and ½ teaspoon salt together in a saucepan; bring to a boil, reduce heat to minimum, place a cover on the saucepan, and cook rice at a simmer until tender, 40 to 50 minutes. Drain rice and transfer to a bowl to cool.
- Combine cooled wild rice with parsley, cilantro, mint, and chile pepper together in a large bowl. Whisk extra-virgin olive oil and red wine vinegar together in a small; season with salt and black pepper. Drizzle dressing over rice mixture and stir..
- Shred chicken. Mix some of the caramelized marinade from the roasting pan into the chicken and mix; add to the wild rice salad and stir.
While the chicken can be marinated for just two hours, leaving it overnight will really make a difference. Plus, prepping part of the recipe in advance cuts down on the workload come mealtime!
Reviews
What others are saying
Sam Dalton says:
I've been eating wild rice a lot lately and really enjoyed this dish. I added extra lemon chicken to mine. The dressing was also really easy to make and I plan to use it on other salads as well.
Jessica Scott says:
I love wild rice, but this was my first time trying in with a salad. I marinated the chicken overnight and the next day it was so full of flavor .Definitely worth it! The dressing was very simple, but really it's all that was needed because the chicken boasts so much flavor. Great salad, so good that it makes you forget that it's healthy.