Galinhada Mineira, The best Brazilian Food! | Brazilian Rice with Chicken and Vinaigrette
Galinhada is a traditional Brazilian food. It's basically rice with chicken.
There are some variations across Brazil. My recipe is closer to the one made in the State of Minas Gerais. But this is my own take on the recipe.
As a side dish, I like to prepare a simple tomato and onion vinaigrette.
The recipes are:
For the Vinaigrette
Ingredients
1/3 of a onion.
1 big tomato, or a pack of cherry tomatoes (I prefer cherry tomatoes).
Salt, pepper and sugar.
3 tbsp. Olive oil.
6 tbsp. Vinegar and/or lemon juice (It works with either, vinegar is the traditional one, but I like to mix both).
Steps
Just chop the onions and tomatoes.
Add salt and pepper as you like.
A little bit of sugar to break the tomatoes acidity.
Add the olive oil and the vinegar/lemon.
Mix everything well, then keep in the refrigerator until it's time to eat.
For the Galinhada
Ingredients
(On the video I doubled the recipe)
2/3 of a onion.
2 cups of rice.
400g of chicken (I like chicken breast, but you can use any cut you like, even with bones)
You favorite seasoning **.
** I just recommend adding turmeric as a seasoning, it will taste more like the traditional recipe, and it goes well with this dish.
Steps
Chop the onion (I use the same onion as the one for the vinagrete, so I chop everything while doing the vinagrete, makes it easier)
Cut the chicken as you like. I like to cut into small cubes so it's evenly mixed with the rice later. But you can do bigger pieces, and keep the bones if you like. Traditionally, it's made with the whole chicken.
Season the chicken reserve.
Add some olive oil or another oil of you preference to a pot and add the onions.
You need to cook the onions until they are dark brown, so be careful to not let it burn. Keep mixing the onions to cook evenly. If the onions burn, the taste will be bitter, so be careful.
Once the onions are ready, turn down the heat to avoid burning and add the chicken to the pot. Once all the chicken is inside, mix well and you can rise the heat again to cook faster.
Your goal now is to cook the chicken and dissolve the onion. The dissolved onion will form a sauce that will give the rice the characteristic color of this recipe, so this step is very important.
If the chicken is already cooked and the onions are not dissolved yet, you can add a little bit of water, and keep mixing until it's eventually dissolved.
You don't need to dissolve all onions completely, just make sure you have a brownish thick sauce like liquid formed on the bottom of the pan (as you see on the video).
At this point, you can add your rice. Mix it well until all the sauce has tinted the rice evenly.
Add water until it's around 1cm over the rice level on the pot, mix a little bit to break any chunks of rice.
At this point, you can taste the water to check the seasoning. Add more salt if needed.
You can add boiling water so it cooks faster, but if the water is not boiling, keep mixing on the high heat until it starts boiling.
Once the water is boiling, turn the heat down to the minimum, and put the lid on.
If you can see water on the pot, don't try mixing, let it cook.
Once the water is no longer visible, you can use a spoon to check if it's already dry, and you can taste the rice to check if it's cooked.
If the rice is still hard, and there's no water in the pot left, you can add a little bit of water to keep cooking.
If the rice is already soft, but there's still water in the pot, let it cook a little bit more without the lid so the water dries out.
Once the rice is cooked and the water is gone, it's ready.
Plate it with the vinaigrette while it's still hot.
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