Easy One-Pot Chicken Rice and Veggies Recipe

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Cooking With Anadi

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Healthy One-Pot Chicken Rice with Veggies

Have you ever been stuck with leftover veggies? I have! I’ve been referencing my Ragu alla Bolognese recipe literally ever since I’ve made it! Just so much goodness came out of it! For the full picture of what I’ve been up to with the Bolognese sauce and leftover ingredients, be sure to follow me on Instagram! In my stories and posts, I always share my behind the scenes glimpses! You can see my fun kitchen experiments and sneak peeks at recipes to come!

An excellent discovery I’ve had from the leftover eggplant was my very first eggplant Parmesan. I used to always scoff at eggplant Parmesan, thinking that it could never hold a candle to Classic Chicken Parmesan. Well, spoiler alert, I was wrong! I loved it! Thank you leftover eggplant for getting me out of my comfort zone and finally trying this out! I definitely want to make a recipe for this soon! Let me know in the comments if you want to see my eggplant Parmesan recipe!

Eggplant isn’t a bad vegetable. You can make Baingan Bharta or Aloo Baingan Sabji if you want some Indian ideas for using eggplant. I also had leftover zucchini, but my girlfriend took over and made some zoodles. That was easily off my plate! Carrots… they’ll be used here, you’ll see! But I love it! Now, the villain here was…. CELERY! One issue I had is all the celery I had leftover. Argh, I do NOT like raw celery at all! If you’ve checked my Better Chicken Salad Sandwich recipe, this isn’t a conventional chicken salad… It has NO CELERY! Because I hate that texture! Yuck! If you don’t like celery too but want the essence of a chicken salad, then this is the recipe for you, and I recommend you check it out!

Now I really don’t like food waste. One of my life mottos. No ingredient is a bad ingredient. But what to do with celery since I hate it so much?

Okay, I’ll be honest. I gave some stalks of celery to my girlfriend’s mom. She suggested “You could snack on some with a dip.” Yeah, true, but I didn’t feel like making a dip or going out to buy one that would just sit in my fridge when the celery is done! And as I said, I really don’t like raw celery. Any dip won’t disguise that taste!

I could make a soup, you may suggest. Yes, yes I could. But I already had a buttload of Bolognese sauce, and that was hot enough! As I’m writing this, it is July, and a heatwave was brewing!

What do I do? Well, I never said I don’t like COOKED celery! The taste kind of disappears if you’ve got enough flavors going on in your dish, so it’s fine! Celery is basically water!

One night I wasn’t sure what to make for dinner. I still had the leftover carrots to use too, and I had some chicken breast to eat. What’s the master meal of speediness, health, and deliciousness?

One-pot meals! One pot chicken and rice dishes, to be precise! Seriously, Google one-pot healthy meals, and you’re always suggested chicken and rice with veggies!

“Chicken and rice” can be viewed as bland bodybuilding food or a beautiful pinnacle of health. Let’s make this one the latter! It’s also applauded for dirtying minimal dishes and to meal prep for the week.

I’ve got my favorite Spicy One Pot Chicken & Rice recipe that I always resort to when I don’t know what to make for dinner! However, I’ll admit that’s an elevated chicken and rice. We’ve got lots of ingredients, and you bake it in the oven. Ehh maybe you want something faster with more veggies?

I’ve got you covered today! This is strictly made on the stovetop, minimal ingredients, and minimal effort! We’ve got extra veggie goodness, so if you’ve got veg laying around from something, then you can finish it up in here! It’s kind of like a stir fry but even easier I’d say!

What are you waiting for? Let’s get cooking!

Tips for an Excellent One-Pot Chicken Rice and Veggies

• You can use this recipe for any vegetables you don’t like! If you have eggplant, tomato… anything, use it in this dish! The combinations are endless!
• I do recommend homemade taco seasoning so that you can control the amount of salt and spice in it.
• Place a well in the pan so that you can cook your chicken and the veggies together evenly
• Don’t cook the chicken all the way through when you’ve added the chicken in the pan. Give one side a good sear
• If using fresh thyme, reduce the amount by one-third to one-half.
• Gently cook so that the rice and chicken get finished together
• If using fresh peas, boil them in water for 5-6 minutes before adding them to your pan
• Let the pan sit covered with a lid on the stove, with the heat off. All the residual moisture will be absorbed, making the rice fluffy and soft

Tools Needed

• Nonstick pan
• Cutting board
• Chefs knife
• Mixing bowl
• Wooden spoon
• Lid

Ingredients for Healthy One-Pot Chicken Rice and Veggies

This Healthy One-Pot Chicken Rice and Veggies has just a couple of ingredients to make this delicious and easy to whip up! Let’s review what we’ll be using here:

• Boneless, skinless chicken breast
• Homemade Taco Seasoning
• Basmati rice
• Olive oil
• Celery
• Onions
• Carrots
• Peas
• Thyme
• Chicken broth
• Salt
• Cilantro

How to Make One-Pot Chicken Rice with Veggies

Now time to make our easy and healthy One-Pot Chicken Rice and Veggies! Remember, this is literally all made IN ONE POT! Woohoo, no dishes! Okay, you have to wash the pot and the cutting board and the knife… But it could be worse!

Don’t forget that the FULL PRINTABLE RECIPE with all measurements and cook times is available at the bottom of the post, so that you can save this recipe for later!

1. Heat olive oil in a saute pan and add the celery, carrots and onions. Saute until the veggies start to turn soft.
2. In the meanwhile, cut chicken into 1 inch cubes and place in a bowl. Season with Taco Seasoning and salt, olive oil and toss well to coat.
3. Once the veggies have softened, create a well in the middle of the pan and place the chicken in the created space.
4. Turn heat a notch higher and give the chicken a quick sear. Turn and seal each side of the chicken until no longer pink on the outside. There is no need to completely cook the chicken at this stage.
5. Season with thyme and mix until fragrant.
6. Add rice and mix well for 4-5 minutes to lightly roast the rice. Pour a splash of water/broth to deglaze the pan and scrape any bits from the bottom of the pan.
7. Pour in 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 cups of water/chicken broth, season with a pinch of salt and bring to a simmer.
8. Once simmering, lower the heat to low, cover the pan with a lid and wait for the rice to become fluffy.
9. Once the rice is cooked, taste and adjust seasoning to taste, add in frozen peas and mix well. Cover with lid and let the peas defrost naturally.
10. Garnish with cilantro and serve right away!

That’s one of my favorite movies by the way:)

But yes, of course! When you hear “chicken and rice,” meal prep is probably the association you’re making in your head.” The two ingredients together is definitely a star for meal prepping! However, I would recommend you keep it in the fridge for no longer than 3 days. Cooked chicken will become dry and stale if left for too long.

What's Actually in the Seasoning - No Paprika, No Garlic Powder

The chicken here is seasoned with 2 to 3 teaspoons of my homemade taco seasoning, and that blend is deliberately short: equal parts chili powder, cayenne pepper, black pepper and ground cumin. That is the whole list. There is no paprika in it, no garlic powder and no onion powder, which is exactly what most store-bought taco packets lean on. Store-bought seasoning still works at the same amount if that is what is in the cupboard - just expect a saltier, more garlicky result.

The savory backbone comes from somewhere else: three-quarters of a cup each of finely diced onions, celery and carrots, softened in the pan before anything else goes near it, plus half a teaspoon of dried thyme stirred through the chicken once it has been seared. There is also no butter anywhere in this dish. One to two teaspoons of olive oil does all the cooking, which is part of why each of the 2 servings comes in at 671 calories with 27 grams of protein and 11 grams of fiber.

Easy Swaps, Add-Ins and Leftovers

This is a one-pot, family-friendly dinner that bends easily. The rice is 1 cup of basmati, but any long grain rice works - jasmine is the closest swap, and plain long-grain white rice is the most neutral. The 1 3/4 cups of liquid is chicken broth, and chicken stock, vegetable broth or water with a bouillon cube dissolved into it all do the same job. Boneless skinless chicken breasts are what I use, cut into 1 inch cubes, but boneless skinless thighs are juicier and far more forgiving if you worry about drying the pan chicken out.

For add-ins, sliced mushrooms go in with the celery, carrots and onions at the very start so they have time to give up their water. A handful of spinach can be stirred in at the end alongside the peas, off the heat, and it will wilt in the residual steam. Cilantro is the garnish here, with flat-leaf parsley as the milder swap if cilantro is not for you.