Ina Garten’s Easy Chicken and Orzo Recipe Perfect for Winter

This dish was delicious and made a high volume of food, which makes it perfect for meal prepping in colder months.

I understand why this is Garten’s favorite. It’s hearty without being overwhelming, delicious without being too complicated, and fairly easy to pull together. 

It’s even (mostly) a joy to cook. When I first seared the chicken, I started to smell it right away — that savory scent had me ready to dive into the finished dish. Even though the raw chicken was unseasoned, the browning gave the skin flavor. 

The saffron added a wonderful depth of flavor, making it a little more interesting than my typical chicken soup, and the dill brought a welcome brightness to the dish. The end result was a little salty, so next time I’ll use low-sodium chicken stock and will add less salt to the pot before boiling. 

I thought there were a few pain points, which mainly came when I was dealing with the veggies. Chopping and cleaning them was relatively easy, but it took a long time. And sautéing them took almost twice as long as the recipe suggested.

In my opinion, there needed to be more orzo. There wasn’t enough to thicken the broth as Garten intended, so when I re-heated the pot the next night for dinner I added more of the pasta, which helped a bit.

Overall, this recipe took a long time to make, but it was worth it. I’m just one person, so I froze several portions for a later date and still had enough left to enjoy multiple nights in a row. 

I think this is definitely worthy of being called a go-to dinner, especially in the fall and winter when warm deliciousness is what we need to soothe our souls.