A new spin on chicken and rice...

One of our favorite staples to have in the freezer is edamame - simply boiled and seasoned with salt, the beans by themselves make for a quick nutritious snack. Since I'm always looking for new ways to match edamame with other ingredients, I thought this recipe for Brown Rice and Edamame would be an excellent choice for a side tonight.

You can use any long grain brown rice that you want, but we opted to use the more pungent brown Jasmine in this dish. Whenever possible, we like to layer in as much flavor as we can - so instead of using water to cook the rice, we tend to use either vegetable or chicken broth. After the rice has cooked for about half an hour, the frozen green soybeans are tossed in to warm up while the rice finishes. Now, you could stop here and just season with salt and pepper, but tossing this with a tangy dressing adds a whole new dimension. This mixture of lime juice, rice vinegar, toasted sesame oil, a dash of sugar and thinly sliced green onions was devoured by the grains of rice adding a zesty bright essence that kept it light and fresh.

To go with the rice, I needed to marinate a couple chicken breasts to get this recipe for Maple-Glazed Chicken Breasts started. The marinade consisted of sticky pure maple syrup, soy sauce, lemon juice, garlic and ginger - the chicken breasts are added to this mixture and they both sit in the refrigerator to chill out for a couple hours. As you grill the chicken breasts, the marinade is brought to a simmer in a separate pan and reduced down instead of throwing it out - this is where the glaze/sauce comes in. While infusing the chicken with a sweet and salty combo, the marinade kept them extremely tender and moist throughout. The only thing I would do next time is add a little spice, be it a few dashes of hot sauce or crushed red pepper, to add just a note of heat to contrast the sweetness.

Recipes
Brown Rice and Edamame
Maple-Glazed Chicken Breasts