This wasn’t a planned meal, but we hadn’t made our grocery list yet for the week and were winging it with what we had on hand. What we ended up with was basically a chicken pot pie (minus the pie part) and served it over some jasmine rice.

Ingredients

• 4 Tbsp. butter – we like KerryGold
• 1 c. carrots, diced – I didn’t measure them, just grabbed a bunch of baby carrots until I was tired of dicing them
• 3-7 cloves of garlic, minced – garlic is a variable, add as much as you like
• 3 chicken breasts, grilled then diced into small pieces – you can make the chicken however you want, but it was nice out and Donald likes to grill
• 1/4 c. flour
• 4 c. chicken broth – you might be able to use a cup less, but we were waiting on the rice to finish cooking and kept adding more and cooking it down
• 1/2 tsp. thyme – I mean, I didn’t actually measure it
• 1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes – again, imprecise addition, no sense in dirtying another measuring spoon
• Salt and pepper to taste – I use less salt because I don’t use the low-sodium chicken broth
• 1/2 to 3/4 c. heavy cream – we used heavy cream in a recipe earlier in the week, so I just added whatever was leftover

Directions

1. Send your significant other outside to grill up the chicken breasts. Donald had decided to marinate them in Italian salad dressing for about 1/2 hour prior to grilling. While this is happening, prep the other ingredients. Donald also measured out the flour and put all the other ingredients on the kitchen counter.
2. Set up a cutting board, knife, prep bowl, paper towel, and your iPhone at the table. Watch an enjoyable TV show or YouTube video while dicing the carrots and mincing the garlic. Toss them together into a prep bowl as you go.
3. In a large pot (hopefully, one with good handles, as mine does not and I used a potholder to hold it in place, but the potholder was too big and I ended up singeing it), melt the butter, then add the carrots and garlic. Stir for a few minutes.
4. Add the diced chicken, then sprinkle the flour and mix until everything has a nice coating. Cook for a couple minutes, then add the chicken broth (we reserved some, but ended up adding in the full 4 cups as we went). Add in the thyme, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper, then stir occasionally as the sauce thickens.
5. While the stew cooks, make the rice. Donald used our rice cooker. It took longer than the stew, so I kept adding broth to the stew and cooking it down as we waited. It gave the carrots more time to soften, so it all worked out.
6. Once the rice is done (and you don’t have to keep cooking down the stew), add the heavy cream to the stew and stir. Let it thicken for a couple minutes, then take it off the heat.
7. Serve the stew over the rice and enjoy! We are currently watching episodes of “How I Met Your Mother” as our dinnertime entertainment.