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A recipe remake turns into this quick and easy skillet meat.  Skillet Chicken Kiev with Rice was once a stir-fry recipe, but is not a flavor packed, buttery, dill-y delicious skillet meal your family will love.

When you first start blogging, or at least when I first started blogging, you make recipes and take pictures.  For me, I was just doing it for fun.  Actually, I still am blogging for fun.  My goal is to just keep working at it and slowly build it into something I can do for fun when I retire.  IF I retire.

So, here I am almost 6 years after I started writing and sharing my own recipes.  I look back on those early years, and those photos, and think, “What was I thinking?”  I wish I knew then what I know now.  I’d probably have more followers and more revenue.

But, that’s neither here nor there.  We all go through the learning curve.  I don’t know any blogger that doesn’t have content they’d like to redo.  I most certainly have some of my most creative and delicious recipes from my earlier days.  Recipes that I look back on and think, “Why don’t I make that again?  It was so good!”

Well, this recipe is a version of a redo for one of those recipes.

It was initially Chicken Kiev Stir-Fry.  I was, at one point, obsessed with stir-fry recipes.  They’re simple, quick, and can be made with anything.  Case in point.  I also have a Tex-Mex beef stir-fry, a ratatouille stir-fry, and even a bayou stir-fry recipe.

You can take any protein, any vegetables, and any seasonings and make a stir-fry.  Just sayin.

And that was my thought process behind this recipe.  I wanted the buttery dill goodness that is chicken Kiev, but didn’t want the time it takes to make the compound butter, pound and roll the chicken, and cook it.  Since it was a stir-fry it had to have vegetables in it, right?  So, I tossed in some green beans?  What was I thinking?  Broccoli was a much better choice for this stir-fry.

So, I set out to redo this recipe that I looked so fondly on and every time I made it I thought, “What if I did this instead?”  I actually said that quite a few times.  Like 6 or 7 to be exact.  Yes, I made this at least 6 if not 7 times to redo the stir-fry recipe.  And look what happened!  It’s a completely different dish entirely.  Who knew that was going to happen?

I actually love this much better than the other one.  There is so much buttery flavor combined with the fresh dill and tender chicken.  And all that just penetrates the rice so it’s packed with all that flavor, too.  I’m hungry.  Is it time for dinner yet?

I truly does taste like chicken Kiev.  For those that don’t know what that is, chicken Kiev is chicken cutlet that’s pounded thin and rolled around cold butter which in my experience is a compound butter of garlic and dill.  Then it’s breaded and either baked or fried.  Its origin is unknown but might be attributed to a French chef in the court of Alexander I of Russia.

Sorry for the history lesson, but I thought some might be familiar with the dish as it has lost popularity since I first ate had it for dinner.  It was in the same boat as chicken cordon bleu which has lost popularity, too. You just don’t see it on the menu.  Maybe I should start a revival of all the 80’s recipes I loved as a kid and make them skillet meals.  Or at least just try to bring them back.  They were so delicious!

With that being said, I took the tender pieces of chicken and sautéed them with garlic, butter, and a little garlic infused olive oil from my favorite local store Manassas Olive Oil.  Then I took that out of the pan, added some white wine to deglaze the pan and sautéed the rice just a bit before adding chicken stock to the pan.

Oh yeah.  I simmered the rice in all that garlic, butter, and chicken goodness along with lots of fresh dill.   I’m not sure why dill is so synonymous with eastern European cuisine, but it is.  And it’s delicious.  I wish there were more recipes with fresh dill.  It has such a great flavor.

Then about halfway through I added the broccoli to steam and the chicken to finish cooking.  And, as if that’s not enough, I stirred in quite a bit more butter and topped it off with a little more dill.

See what I mean?  Doesn’t it look AH-mazing??

I feel the need to explain why I tried several different variations of this recipe.  It was all about the timing.  If you kept the chicken in there the whoel time the rice is cooking, then you have over cooked chicken.  That’s never a good thing.  If you put the broccoli in too early, then its mush by the time the rice is done.  That’s not good either.

I tried several variations to get the timing right so everything was cooked well, not over cooked, and everything still had the flavors I wanted in this dish.  Sometimes you gotta break a lot of eggs to make some macaron.  I know.  That’s not the saying but it’s my saying.

What recipes would you re-make on your blog?