Recipe: Rice with Raisins and Cinnamon

In our house, we use EVERYTHING. Including chicken and turkey carcasses. When we get a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store, we save the carcass, and my husband makes chicken stock from it.

But he doesn’t make the stock as often as we buy rotisserie chickens. So when the pandemic hit, we had four carcasses saved in our freezer. They were taking up room I needed for other food. I told him he had to cook the bones or I would throw them out. So he cooked.

I won’t provide the recipe he uses for chicken stock here. It’s basically boiling the bones until the last bit of meat falls off, along with water, onion, carrots, celery, and some spices. Once the meat is off the bones, strain the liquid and set it aside. That’s the broth.

Then, the hard part—pick out the meat to use so it doesn’t go to waste, and separate it from the bones to be discarded. It’s wise to let the meat cool before attempting the separation.

Once the stock is strained, the challenge is how to use it. We got a full mixing bowl of broth out of our recent batch made from the four carcasses.

Of course, chicken broth is an ingredient in many recipes. One of our favorites is Rice with Raisins and Cinnamon. I don’t know if that’s the official name of this dish, but it’s what my husband wrote on the index card when he found this recipe back in 1988. I don’t know where he found it, maybe Southern Living. He liked a lot of recipes from Southern Living.

We often make Rice with Raisins and Cinnamon with our homemade stock, because there’s usually plenty of chicken to add to it. I used the stock to cook the rice (a double recipe), and we still had eight cups of stock left over. I used some of it for chicken noodle soup, and the rest to cook short ribs in the Instant Pot. I’ve become a much more prolific and creative cook during the pandemic. After all, what else is there to do?

Here’s the rice recipe:

Rice with Raisins and Cinnamon

1 Tbsp butter
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 tsp chopped garlic
1/4 cup raisins (go heavy on the raisins if you like them)
1 cup rice
1/2 cup almonds
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 2-inch stick cinnamon (substitute ground if you don’t have a stick)
Salt & pepper to taste

1. Melt butter in pan on stovetop. Add onion and garlic and cook until wilted. Do not brown.
2. Add raisins, rice, and almonds, and stir.
3. Add broth, cinnamon, salt, and pepper.
4. Bring to boil, stirring. Then cover and simmer for 17 minutes, or until rice is tender and liquid is absorbed.
5. Remove cinnamon stick and serve. Serves four. Recipe can be doubled easily.

That’s the official recipe, but what we typically do is add the chicken meat and carrots and onions from making the chicken stock. This time, I made the rice with the homemade chicken broth, then dumped everything else in the pot when the rice was close to being done. I don’t like cooked carrots, but they do add color, so I tolerate them (and put most of them on my husband’s plate).

I like using ground cinnamon better than stick, because it infuses the rice with a stronger spicy flavor. If I were making this on my own, I might also add a little sugar, though the raisins do provide some sweetness and tang.

Served with salad, this makes a filling meal.

What recipes have you discovered during the pandemic?