Chicken Wing Plov in a Pan: Step-by-Step Recipe

Name: Chicken Wing Plov in a Pan: Step-by-Step Recipe
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 50 min
Yield: 2
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: Rice 1 cup; Chicken wings 4-6; Carrots 1-2; Onion 1-2; Garlic 1 head; Vegetable oil 50 ml; Barberries 1 tsp; Cumin, salt, sweet paprika, saffron, hot red pepper to taste

I was making chicken plov the other day and got to thinking: what do we picture when we hear the word plov? The outdoors, the steppe, a campfire and a big cauldron. In the cauldron there is meat, rice, spices and barberries. Everyone has their own version. And yet the dish can be cooked perfectly well at home.

Plov (polow, osh, palov, paloo, ash, palau, polu, palow, pilav, pylav, plov, pilaf) is a dish that is complex both in its ingredients and in the way it is cooked, most often made with rice, though other grains turn up now and then. With meat, poultry or fish.

Plov is a very ancient dish, at least 2,000 years old! The tradition seems to have taken shape somewhere in the East, possibly in India, Persia or the Middle East. Plov is the jewel of Asian cooking.

For all the abundance of plov recipes and of dishes that resemble it, colouring the rice with saffron or turmeric is not unique to plov. Paella and risotto are made the same way, and so is plain meat with rice.

No celebration in the East is complete without plov, especially weddings, funeral feasts and the celebration of a birth. There are special people in the East, masters called ashpaz, who are forever “migrating” from one feast to the next and do just one thing: cook plov.
Hundreds of plov recipes are proof of its popularity. Combining its two components, the zirvak and the grain, lets you cook the dish in all sorts of ways. Doesn't that sound a lot like the principle behind paella and risotto: rice plus a filling?

But there is no campfire, no cauldron and no breeze across the steppe, no starry sky and no bird calling in the distance. There is a city, a kitchen, a deep frying pan, chicken wings and rice. So how do you make plov with chicken?

Ingredients

2 servings

Rice 1 cup
Chicken wings 4-6
Carrots 1-2
Onion 1-2
Garlic 1 head
Vegetable oil 50 ml
Barberries 1 tsp
Cumin, salt, sweet paprika, saffron, hot red pepper to taste

Step-by-step recipe

Why chicken wings? Well, we have no lamb. Beef is a lot of fuss, and pork is not popular among the peoples of the East. That leaves poultry. To my mind, wings are ideal. They cut into small pieces and are not too fatty, unlike the chicken as a whole. You could certainly use a whole bird for the dish, but it would be too much for the two of us. And reheating it later, or cooking with just part of a chicken, is not quite the thing. So we decided to use wings only, since there are plenty of them around these days.
Rice is the hardest and most important part. Different dishes call for different rice. Plov needs a fluffy rice, one that doesn't clump together as it cooks. With shop-bought rice of unknown origin it is very hard to guess right. The packet says “Rice”. So what? Write “Food” on a pack of sausage. Does that make things any clearer? Your best bet is a rice you know for certain, one whose behaviour in the pan you can predict. I use a fluffy long-grain rice I am familiar with, or basmati. I know exactly how it behaves, and we can experiment next time.
Spices. Salt, of course. Coarse and non-iodised is best. I must admit I can't salt food with fine table salt, it always causes me trouble. Cumin. Very important. You may also find it sold as zira or jeera. The seeds are very aromatic. Without cumin, plov is just rice porridge. Saffron gives plov that colour you can never forget. Saffron is an expensive spice, and it is almost always replaced with turmeric.
Red pepper. Flavour, colour and heat.
Barberries are a matter of tradition. Plov without barberries is like borscht without cabbage. That's personal… You can buy barberries almost anywhere, or pick them yourself. They give plov a delicate tartness. If the barberries are overdried and look like little pebbles, moisten them a little the day before cooking. There is no need to cover them with water: just wet them and keep them in the fridge for a few hours.
And that is really all. Barberries, salt, cumin, saffron and pepper are the foundation. Everything else is variations, traditions, preferences and misconceptions.
Bearing in mind that this is a home kitchen, we will cook everything in one pan.
Cut the chicken wings at the joints into 3 pieces. Remove any remaining feathers and rinse well.
Heat the vegetable oil in a deep saute pan or a small cauldron, if you have one. Let the oil get really hot, until a light white haze appears. The oil has to “burn off”.
Fry the wing pieces over high heat, stirring constantly, until the meat is golden brown. This takes 15-20 mins. By then the chicken wings will be almost cooked through.
Add half a teaspoon of cumin seeds and keep frying for another 5 minutes.
Add the onion, cut into thick strips, and the carrots, coarsely grated or diced.
Add the unpeeled garlic cloves. If you are cooking in a cauldron, you can put in whole heads too. Mind you, there will be a fight over them at the table later.
Add the barberries and all the spices. The amount of saffron or turmeric, salt and pepper is entirely up to you. But remember, plov should be well spiced.
Keep frying everything together for another 10-15 minutes, until the onion and carrots are soft and browned.
From this point on, it is time to add the rice.
Be sure to rinse the rice, or the plov will turn out like porridge! Polished rice carries a lot of rice flour, which the dish does not need. Rinse under cold running water until the water runs clear. It is also worth letting the rice sit in water for a little while.
Add the rinsed rice to the pan, stir and pour in the water. Use twice as much water as rice. If you had 1 cup of rice, you need 2 cups of water.
Bring to a boil, turn the heat down to the minimum, cover the pan with a lid and leave the plov alone for 20 minutes. In that time the rice will soak up all the liquid, cook through and turn fluffy. Be patient and don't go checking how things are going in there. If you can't wait, use a glass lid on the pan. Everything will turn out as it should. Just wait 20 minutes.
When the 20 minutes are up, make sure the rice is done and the water is gone. If the rice is not quite ready and is literally, as the Italians say, “al dente”, just cover the pan with the lid and let the rice finish cooking for another 5-6 minutes. If there is still a little liquid left in the plov, keep the dish uncovered for a few minutes, until the steam stops rising. For a non-professional ashpaz, that is allowed.
Next, stir the plov gently so that everything is evenly distributed. The grains of rice should not stick to one another. Chicken plov should be, what am I saying, it must be fluffy, a pleasant deep, deep yellow, dotted with barberries and cloves of garlic.
Turn the chicken plov out onto a large platter if it is being served as a festive dish, or portion it onto plates. Serve straight away.