Cuban Chicken and Rice

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Juicy dark meat chicken and rice simmered with bacon, onions, garlic and peppers, served with black beans, peas, and cilantro for a simple, homey one-pot meal that's packed with the flavors of the Caribbean.

One-Pot Chicken and Rice with Cuban Inspired Flavors

Most cuisines from around the world include some version of chicken and rice, cooked together in wine or broth, with vegetables, herbs and spices. These dishes are often the kind of simple one-pot comfort food that leaves everyone at the table feeling cared for and content.

This version of chicken and rice incorporates some of the flavors of Cuban cuisine (cumin, cilantro, garlic, onions, and peppers) along with a few untraditional ingredients (beans and bacon). Everything simmers together in one pot, for a meal that is simple and packed with flavor.

While most traditional chicken and rice dishes use bone-in, skin-on chicken, this recipe uses boneless, skinless chicken thighs, ensuring that a delicious, warm, comforting meal will be on the table in under an hour.

Sprinkling fresh parsley over a bowl of Cuban Chicken and Rice.

Use Canned Clack Beans or Dried

I would pretty much always rather cook dried beans than use canned beans in recipes like this chicken and rice dish for a handful of reasons…

Dried beans are significantly less expensive than canned
Cooked dried beans are less likely to cause uncomfortable intestinal gas
Cooking beans from scratch gives you complete control over flavor

While cooking dried beans requires a bit of advance planning (more so for beans cooked in the slow cooker than the instant pot), the actually hands-on time to prepare a pot of beans is about 5 minutes.

Having said that, I use a can of black beans more often than not, because I often find myself deciding to make this dish about an hour before I want to be eating it. 🙂 It's delicious either way.

The Incredible Flavor of Aleppo Pepper

This recipe might be full of Cuban flavors, but there is nothing "Cuban" about Aleppo Pepper. The spice is named after the city of Aleppo in Syria, although with all the turmoil in the region, most of the Aleppo pepper available today comes from Turkey and a handful of other places.

Traditionally, Aleppo pepper is used to season meat or beans, or sprinkled over salads and vegetables. But, it can be used in place of any other variety of dried red pepper. In this dish, I've used it along with the more traditional Cuban spices of cumin, garlic, and oregano to add a little bit of smokey heat without going overboard.

The thing I love most about Aleppo Pepper is how much flavor you get for the amount of heat the pepper packs. Aleppo is about half as hot as crushed red chili flakes but packs double the flavor.

Ask anyone in my family, and they’ll tell you I have a remarkable habit of going overboard with chilies and peppers, creating dishes that are so spicy we all have steam coming out of our ears. I just love the flavor of peppers so much that I tend to get a bit carried away. (Sometimes, more than "a bit" carried away.)

With Aleppo pepper, I can add twice as much and get four times the flavor without burning off our tastebuds. 🙌 Even though it's not a spice used in Cuban cooking, it's SO GOOD in this dish, I just couldn't bear to leave it out.

Aleppo Pepper can be difficult to find in most supermarkets, but it readily available online.

Stirring rice into a stock pot to make Cuban Chicken and Rice.

Want a Real Treat??? Serve Cuban Chicken and Rice with Homemade Flour Tortillas

Homemade flour tortillas will forever ruin you from ever enjoying the standard supermarket variety again. Just warning you now.

They are surprisingly easy to make, especially if you have a standing mixer to knead the dough for you. You literally dump all the ingredients into the mixer bowl, let the mixer knead the dough until it's soft and pliable, divide the dough into balls, roll them out and cook them like pancakes in a skillet.

When our son moved into his first apartment at the age of 19, he immediately asked for a standing mixer as his next birthday gift just so he could make tortillas. Just like his mother, he made them often because once you try them, packaged tortillas will simply no longer do.

This is the homemade tortilla recipe I've been using for the past 20 years.

Besides homemade tortilla, do you know what else goes really well with Cuban Chicken and Rice? A tall, refreshing Perfect Cuban Mojito. Cheers!

And, if you have leftover cuban chicken and rice, use it to make this super easy 30-minute chicken soup!

More Warm and Cozy Comfort Food Recipes:

If you give this recipe a try, let me know! Leave a comment, rate it, or take a picture and tag it #alittleandalot on Instagram.

📖 Recipe

Yield: 6 servings

Cuban Chicken and Rice

Prep Time 30 minutes

Cook Time 25 minutes

Total Time 55 minutes

Ingredients

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
½ lb thick cut bacon (about 6–7 slices), cut into 1-inch pieces
1 medium or large yellow onion, peeled and diced
1 red (or any color) bell pepper, seeded and diced
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon Aleppo pepper (or chili powder)
1- 2 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground black pepper
1 cup long grain rice
3 cups chicken broth
2 lbs boneless skinless chicken thighs
1 ½ cups (15 oz) black beans, drained (see note)
1 cup frozen peas
½ cup chopped cilantro

Instructions

Heat oil in a large heavy bottomed saucepan or dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the bacon and cook, stirring often, until the bacon is crisp. Use a slotted spoon to remove the bacon to a paper towel lined plate.
Remove all but 2 tablespoon of fat from the pan and return the pan to the burner. Turn the burner down to medium heat. Add the diced onion and bell pepper, and cook until the vegetables are soft and the onion is translucent, about 5 minutes.
Add the tomato paste, minced garlic, cumin, oregano, Aleppo pepper, 1 teaspoon of salt, black pepper, and rice. Cook, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes longer to toast the rice and the spices.
Pour the broth into the pan and turn the heat up to high. Add the bacon and the chicken thighs back to the pan, nestling them down into the broth. When the liquid begins to boil, cover the pot and lower the heat to maintain a gentle simmer. Cook until the rice is tender and the chicken is cooked through, about 15-20 minutes.
Stir in the beans and frozen peas. Cover the pot and remove it from the heat. Let sit covered for 5 minutes to cook the peas and warm the beans.
Taste, and adjust seasoning, adding more salt if desired. Sprinkle with cilantro and serve.

Notes

If you don't have Aleppo pepper, ground chipotle pepper powder can be used instead. Chipotle pepper tends to be hotter than Aleppo pepper, so use half as much, adding more if desired, to attain the desired level of spiciness.

If you’d like to use cooked dried black beans instead of canned, these slow simmered black beans take about 5-minutes of hands-on time if you cook them in the slow cooker and produces richly flavorful beans.