Spicy Chicken and Rice

November. Thanksgiving month. The food drive. Fifth year. But this year everything is different — the pandemic requires a completely new format. No indoor distribution. No volunteers packing boxes shoulder to shoulder. No fellowship hall gatherings. Everything must be drive-through: families pull up, trunk open, volunteers load boxes. It's assembly-line charity. It's impersonal. It's the only way.

I organized it in two weeks. Derek built a logistics plan (the man cannot be stopped from project-managing everything; I have accepted this as a feature, not a bug). The church parking lot became the staging area. Fifteen volunteers in masks. Boxes pre-packed: turkey, canned goods, rice, pasta, potatoes, and — my addition this year — a jar of my spice blend in every box. My blend. Not Mama's. Mine. Because every family who takes a box home should be able to season their food with something that says: someone made this for you. Someone cared enough to mix garlic and paprika and cayenne and put it in a jar with a label that says "From Set the Table with love."

Saturday: ninety families in the first hour. Cars lined up around the block. Trunks popping open. Volunteers loading boxes. Ninety families. Then a hundred. Then a hundred and ten. By the end: 127 families fed through car windows in a church parking lot during a pandemic, each one driving away with a turkey and a jar of spice and the knowledge that someone showed up for them.

I stood in the parking lot after the last car left and I cried. Not from grief. From overwhelm. From the size of the need and the size of the response and the gap between the two that I can never fully close but that I narrow every year, one box at a time, one jar at a time, one Saturday at a time.

The spice blend I put in those 127 boxes wasn’t decorative—it was a recipe. Specifically, it was made for this dish: a one-pot spicy chicken and rice that my grandmother made when she wanted to say “I love you” without saying it out loud. The garlic, the paprika, the hit of cayenne—that’s the whole jar, right there in the pot. Every family who took a box home had everything they needed to make this, and I hope some of them did, because this is the kind of meal that makes a hard week feel survivable.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 35 minutes | Total Time: 45 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 1/2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 1/2 cups long-grain white rice, uncooked
1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes, undrained
2 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 medium onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (or to taste)
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp salt, plus more to taste
1/4 tsp black pepper
2 tbsp olive oil
Fresh parsley or green onions, chopped, for garnish (optional)

Instructions

Season the chicken. In a bowl, toss chicken pieces with paprika, cayenne, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, and black pepper until evenly coated.
Brown the chicken. Heat olive oil in a large, deep skillet or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the seasoned chicken and cook for 4–5 minutes, turning once, until browned on the outside. The chicken does not need to be fully cooked through at this stage. Remove and set aside.
Soften the aromatics. In the same pan, reduce heat to medium. Add the diced onion and cook for 3 minutes until softened. Add the minced garlic and stir for 30 seconds until fragrant.
Build the base. Add the uncooked rice to the pan and stir to coat it in the oil and aromatics, about 1 minute. Pour in the diced tomatoes (with their juices) and the chicken broth. Stir to combine and scrape up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan.
Return the chicken and simmer. Nestle the browned chicken pieces back into the pan. Bring everything to a boil, then reduce heat to low. Cover tightly and cook for 20–22 minutes, until the rice has absorbed the liquid and the chicken is cooked through to 165°F.
Rest and serve. Remove from heat and let sit, covered, for 5 minutes. Fluff the rice with a fork, taste and adjust salt if needed, and garnish with parsley or green onions before serving.

Nutrition (per serving)

Spicy Chicken and Rice — The Recipe That Lives in Every Jar