MyPlate For The Heart

We bought a whole chicken on sale ($5) in our grocery store so we decided to turn it into some great meals.
We cooked the chicken in the crock pot – this serves many purposes – a tender juicy chicken, great broth and no attendance time. Directions: Cover chicken with water; cover; cook on high until done and tender, about 3 hours (if you don’t have a crockpot, simmer on stove for 1 hour in plenty of water in a large pot.)

Once the chicken was cooked it was cooled and then cut and put in bags and frozen for later use. We removed the fat from the broth using our special cup shown above and refrigerated the broth for later use.

For our first meal, we decided to make Arroz Con Pollo – Chicken with Rice:
2 cups rice
4 cups of water/broth,
2 tablespoons chopped green onion
1/4 cup chopped red pepper
2 tablespoons chopped sundried tomatoes
1/2 cup black beluga lentils (brown will also work)
1 cup cooked chopped chicken, skinless
black pepper and garlic/parsley powder to taste
Place all ingredients into the rice cooker; cover and cook. 20 minutes later, dinner is done! (You can also cook on top of the stove and simmer all until liquid is evaporated.)
Serves 6 to 7. Extra rice and chicken went into bags for the freezer for later use.

Beluga black lentils are great to have on hand. They cook as quickly as rice and make a colorful addition to many dishes. We got them from the Whole Foods Market. You can also use plain brown lentils as well.