Tag Archives: chicken

Slow Cooker Chicken and Rice

21 Oct

 

A couple of weeks ago, I picked up a 40 pound case of Zaycon Foods boneless, skinless chicken breasts like the case I got in March.  A friend of mine came over with her case, and we worked on processing the cases together.  She cut the butterfly breasts into 2 pieces, while I cooked dinner (bacon wrapped chicken stuffed with cream cheese and chives, with sweet potato chips as a side), grilled about half of each case, and got the FoodSaver bags ready.  5 hours later and we had 80 pounds of chicken processed!  As she was cutting the breasts and removing extra fat, there were small chicken pieces that we set aside, my guess it was about 4 pounds worth.  We decided it would be best for some kind of stew, so I decided on chicken and rice.  I had onion, carrots, and corn in the freezer, so after a long night of prepping chicken, it was easy to throw this all in the slow cooker and let it cook overnight.  It turned out perfect!

 

Slow Cooker Chicken and Rice

What you need:

4 pounds fresh chicken, diced
2 cups carrots, sliced
2 cups onion, diced
2 cups kernels of corn
8 cups water
6 chicken bouillon cubes (gluten-free)
1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
1 1/2 teaspoons dried basil
Salt and pepper to taste
2 cups cooked rice

How to make it:

Add all ingredients, except rice, to the slow cooker.  Cook on low for 8-10 hours, or high for 3-4 hours.  After it is done cooking, stir in the cooked rice.  Serve hot.

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Bacon Wrapped Chicken with Goat Cheese and Chives

25 Jun

I had thawed chicken for tonight’s dinner, but had no idea what I wanted to make.  I remembered I had bacon on hand, and bacon always makes everything better, right?  So, I started looking at bacon wrapped chicken recipes, and found a few that had a filling of cream cheese and chives.  I didn’t have cream cheese on hand, but I did have soft goat cheese from our Farmer’s Market visit, so I decided it would work.  I also had fresh chives from the fresh herb pack. Normally, this would be baked in the oven, but since it is so hot here, I didn’t want the extra heat.  I thought about grilling, but we had a threat of rain all afternoon.  So, I cooked this in a little olive oil on the stove top, and it turned out really well.  I served with baked potatoes and salad.

 

Bacon Wrapped Chicken with Goat Cheese and Chives

What you need:

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
8 oz soft goat cheese or cream cheese
1 tablespoon fresh chives, minced
4 strips bacon
Olive oil

How to make it:

Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.

Pound each chicken breast to 1/2′ thickness.  Spread goat cheese or cream cheese over each chicken breast.  Sprinkle each with minced chives.

Roll each chicken breast.  Wrap each breast with a piece of bacon, stretching bacon around each breast to make it thinner.  Place the wrapped chicken breasts in the skillet with the preheated oil. (You can see I was in a hurry and didn’t get the bacon wrapped around the chicken real well)

Turn wrapped chicken often to get even cooking on all sides.  Cook until internal temperature is 180 F.

Alternate baking instructions: Place wrapped chicken, seam side down in a greased 13-in. x 9-in. baking pan. Bake, uncovered, at 400° for 35-40 minutes or until a thermometer reads 180°. Broil 6 in. from the heat for 5 minutes or until bacon is crisp.

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Creamy Mustard and Tarragon Chicken

6 Jun

I normally not a big fan of mustard, but I got past it and this was really, really good.  So good, in fact, that my 3-year-old ate almost a whole piece of chicken on her own!  I used fresh tarragon from the herb pack I got from Bountiful Baskets, and chicken breast from my freezer stash of Zaycon Foods chicken.  The chicken was very moist and tasty.  I did change the original recipe a bit.  First, doubled the sauce, and then, since I didn’t have sour cream, I just milk.  It worked out well.  I served it with a wild rice blend and salad.

 

Creamy Mustard and Tarragon Chicken
Original recipe here

What you need:

1/4 cup all-purpose flour
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoon olive oil
4 (5 ounce) skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1 cup low-sodium chicken broth
1 cup dry white wine
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1/4 cup milk
1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon

How to make it:

Place the flour in a shallow dish and mix in salt and pepper. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Dredge chicken breasts in the flour.  Add chicken to the pan. Cook the chicken in the hot oil and butter until golden, about 3 minutes. Flip chicken and brown on the other side, an additional 3 minutes. Remove chicken from skillet and tent with foil.

Reduce heat to medium. Stir the onion into the remaining oil in the skillet. Cook until softened, 2 to 3 minutes. Pour the chicken broth into the pan, and simmer while scraping the browned bits of food off of the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon. Pour in the wine and bring back to a simmer. Cook the sauce until reduced by half, about 3 minutes. Return chicken to the pan along with any juices that have accumulated. Simmer chicken in the sauce until it is cooked through and no longer pink in the center, 3 to 4 minutes. Transfer chicken to a warmed platter.

Whisk the mustard and milk into the liquid in the pan; stir in the tarragon. Spoon sauce over chicken to serve.

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Zaycon Foods Grilled Chicken Breast Strips

3 May

Ok, I know, I know, I just bought 40 pounds of fresh chicken breasts in March at $1.89 per pound.  I had wanted to pre-cook some of it before freezing it, but I didn’t have the time to do it.  Then, Zaycon Foods announced they were having a Fully Cooked Grillmarked Chicken Breasts Strips event for $2.89 per pound, I debated on whether or not to buy in.  My friend that I had split with before had contacted me to ask if I was, but I was still on the fence.  She said she was interested in sharing again, so I eventually decided that I would participate.  I know the other chicken I had just purchased was cheaper per pound, but for the convenience of having fully cooked chicken to pull out for various uses was very appealing to me.  Plus, fully cooked chicken at the store is usually closer to $4 per pound, so I was pleased with the price as well.  The original e-mail said that it would be 8 5-lb bags, but when I picked it up this week, it was 32 1.25-lb bags.  Which, actually is fine, because this size bags is actually better portion size for my use.  I haven’t used it yet, but by looking at the bags, it looks really good, not a lot of gristle like some fully cooked chicken tends to be.  Once I do use it, I will give an update as to how it tastes.

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Ultimate Chicken Fingers and Green Beans with Cherry Tomatoes

28 Mar

I had a bag of Zaycon Foods chicken I had kept in the refrigerator instead of the freezer, and I was having trouble deciding how to cook it.  On Sunday, my girls wanted pancakes, so while I was making them using Bisquick, a recipe on the box for Ultimate Chicken Fingers caught my attention, and I decided that would be how I would cook the chicken.  Then, this week I received green beans and cherry tomatoes from Bountiful Baskets, and I thought they would make a nice side for the chicken fingers.  So, here are the recipes for both!

 

Ultimate Chicken Fingers
Based on recipe here

What you need:

2/3 cup Bisquick mix
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon salt or garlic salt (I used garlic salt)
1/2 teaspoon paprika (I didn’t use paprika)
3 boneless skinless chicken breast halves, cut crosswise into 1/2-inch strips
1 egg, slightly beaten
Olive oil
How to make it:
Preheat oven to 450 F.  Line a baking sheet with foil, and spray with cooking spray.
Mix Bisquick mix, Parmesan cheese, salt and paprika in 1-gallon plastic zipper bag. Dip half the chicken strips into the beaten egg; place in bag of Bisquick mixture. Seal bag; shake to coat. Place chicken on baking sheet. Repeat with remaining chicken. Spray or brush with olive oil.  
Bake 12 to 14 minutes, turning halfway through cooking, until no longer pink in center.
Green Beans with Cherry Tomatoes
Based on recipe here
What you need:
1 1/2 pounds green beans, trimmed and cut into 2 inch pieces
1/4 cup olive oil
3/4 teaspoon garlic salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons chopped fresh basil
2 cups cherry tomato halves
How to make it:
Place green beans in a large saucepan, and add enough water to just cover the green beans.  Cover pan, and bring to a boil.  Turn heat to low, and simmer until tender, about 10 minutes. Drain off water, and set aside.
Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Stir in garlic salt, pepper and basil. Add tomatoes, and cook stirring gently just until soft. Add green beans, and toss gently to blend.  Cook just another minute or so, then remove from heat.

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Zaycon Foods Chicken

23 Mar

I’m really liking Zaycon Foods so far.  You order and pay online, then when you pick it up, you don’t even have to get out of the car, they load it for you.  Buying meat this way, then getting produce from Bountiful Baskets, makes it so that I don’t have to be in the grocery store as much.  This is nice for a couple of reasons, one is that I don’t have a lot of time for long trips, and another is that I don’t have to make my kids be in the grocery store as long.

This week, Zaycon Foods had a boneless, skinless chicken breast event here in my town.  Chicken is their trademark event, and I have seen pictures of others who have gotten it, and I decided I wanted to try it.  This time, I didn’t share the case, I just bought one for me.  It was a 40 pound unit, and the price this time was $1.89 per pound.  Sometimes the grocery stores will have chicken as low as $1.67 per pound, but it’s not often and hard to get a good quantity since they usually have limits.  I can’t get to the grocery store every day to get daily limit to stock up, so I was happy for this opportunity to stock up.  So, what does a 40 pound box of boneless, skinless chicken look like?  Like this:

Inside the box was a large, sealed bag that contained 4 unsealed bags of chicken breasts.  Lots of juices are with this chicken, so you need to have a workspace prepared in case of spills.  Here is how each piece of chicken looks:

This was actually one of the largest ones, weighing about 2 pounds.  I first cut it down the middle, then trimmed off the extra fat.  I also trimmed some of the chicken from the undersides.  Those pieces I cut in smaller pieces and collected in a measuring cup to get to 2 cups.  The recipes I use that call for diced chicken or pre-cooked chicken typically are for 1 cups of chicken, and this ends up being about 1 pound worth of chicken.  Once that was all done, I decided to put 1.5 to 2 pounds of whole chicken breasts into each bag.  I used a roll on my FoodSaver to create my own size bags for this.  I cut the larger size chicken breasts in half, so those bags had 4 chicken pieces, then the smaller ones I would put 3 pieces in a bag.  It was a lot of work!

I ended up with 16 bags of whole chicken breasts, weighing between 1.5 – 2 pounds each and 4 bags of diced chicken pieces, that were 2 cups or 1 pound each.

My freezer is now just about full!  So, I guess my hopes of buying a 1/4 cow are on hold for now.   I’m happy to have the chicken and looking forward to getting to try it out!  Now that I have a variety of meat in the freezer, when I make my meal plan for the week, I can take out the meat I need for the week and not worry about if I can get the meat on sale at the grocery store.   This also means I need to have a good system for labeling and inventory of the freezer, which I will talk about in a later post.

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Chicken Marsala

24 Feb

This wasn’t in the original meal plan for this week, but since I wasn’t feeling well earlier this week, I fell behind in cooking and had some things I needed to get cooked before they went bad.  So, I decided to make Chicken Marsala, something we haven’t had in a while.  For the sides, I steamed my last bunch of asparagus and made mashed potatoes with a partial bag of potatoes I had left.  Since I have herbs from the Italian themed veggie pack, I added crushed fresh garlic and minced fresh rosemary to the mashed potatoes.  It was a nice addition.  I also got to use the fresh herbs in the Chicken Marsala.

Chicken Marsala
Based on recipes here and here 

What you need:

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon minced fresh oregano
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
8 oz package mushrooms, sliced
3/4 cup marsala wine
2 teaspoons minced fresh parsley
1/2 teaspoon minced fresh rosemary

Pound chicken to 1/4 inch thickness.  Mix together flour and oregano, and fully coat chicken with this mixture.  Heat the olive oil in a large skillet.  Add chicken and cook until no longer pink.

To the skillet, add and melt butter.  Add mushrooms, wine, parsley, and rosemary.   Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer.  Cover, and cook for 5 minutes.  Flip chicken over, cover again, and cook for another 5 minutes.  Remove cover and simmer until sauce has reduced by half.

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Avgolemono Soup

18 Feb

It has been a LONG time since I have had this soup.  I hadn’t actually made this soup until now.  When I was making the chicken broth, my uncle commented on Facebook that when my grandmother was cooking chicken broth on the stove in the morning, he knew they were having Avgolemono Soup for dinner that night!  That was my motivation to finally make it.  The ingredient list is short, but it does require a little time and attention while making it.  The results are worth it, I promise!  If you want, you can add some cooked, shredded chicken to this to make it more of a meal.  I made it without.

Avgolemono Soup
Recipe from my Uncle Chris

What you need:

1 quart broth
1/4 cup long grain rice or orzo
1 egg
Juice of 1 lemon

How to make it:

Bring broth to boil. Add rice or orzo. Cover, reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, squeeze lemon and mix with egg in a bowl.

When rice is done cooking, remove from stove. Using a ladle, add a small amount of hot broth very slowly to the egg-lemon mix while constantly stirring the egg-lemon mix with a wisk or mixer. Continue doing this with about half the broth and then reverse the process; use your ladle to slowly add this mix back into the remaining broth. When this process is complete your soup should look frothy.

Return it to the stove to heat back up to serving temp–But don’t let it boil! What you are making is called a suspension. The soup looks creamy, but it is actually comprised of tiny globs of egg suspended in the broth. The cooling process used to create the suspension is called tempering. If you just dumped the egg into the hot broth it would cook too fast to suspend (you end up with egg-drop soup). You don’t ever want to boil the soup because that will cook the egg too much and cause it to separate from the broth. This happens also when you reheat the soup. It never looks as good as it does on the first serving.

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Homemade Chicken Broth

18 Feb

Last night, I made Kotopoulo Lemonato, and when we had finished, I just couldn’t throw out the chicken bones.  I had started a scraps bag of carrots, celery, and onion in the freezer to make broth some day, plus I have plenty of celery, carrots, and onion on hand.  So, I decided it was time to try to make chicken broth.  I was going to do the stove top, but decided to try out the slow cooker instead.  I have a 5.5 quart slow cooker, so it was a nice big size to get everything in.

 

Homemade Chicken Broth

What you need:

Whole chicken carcass or bones
1 onion, quartered
3-4 celery ribs
1 carrot, cut in pieces
Spices (I used a bay leaf, 3 cloves of garlic, fresh ground black pepper, and the chicken had some spices still from cooking, which was rosemary and oregano.  I did not use any salt.)
Water

How to make it:

Place chicken bones, vegetables, and spices in slow cooker.

 

Pour in water to be just level with the top of the slow cooker.  Turn on low, and allow to simmer for at least 8 hours, I did mine for just over 14 hours.

Allow to cool slightly and pour through a mesh strainer to separate the liquid out.  Discard the vegetables and bones.  Pour liquid into containers to cool.

Once at room temperature, cover and put in the refrigerator to allow the fat to separate.  Remove fat from top and you have chicken broth ready to go!

This yielded 6 cups of broth for me.  I divided into 3 cups each.  Most soup recipes I have call for 1 quart of chicken broth, so I will just add a cup of water to this and use it as a base for those soups.  I made Avgolemono Soup (recipe coming!) with 3 cups of it tonight, and I will use the other 3 cups for Broccoli Cheddar Cheese Soup in a few days.

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Chicken Fried Rice

13 Feb

I’ve made plenty of stir fry, but never actually made fried rice.  I had veggies to make egg rolls, so I knew I wanted to make egg rolls, but I wanted something to go with it, so I decided to give Chicken Fried Rice a try.  I’m glad that I did, because I baked the egg rolls, and this time, they didn’t really turn out well.  I’m not sure what the problem was, but I was glad to have made the fried rice so we had something to eat still!  Fried rice is perfect for using up leftover rice and vegetables, or whatever vegetables you think you want.  Tonight, I used some diced onion and a small bag of frozen peas and carrots.

 

Chicken Fried Rice
Based on recipe here

What you need:

1.5 lbs chicken, cubed (can be cooked or uncooked)
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 cups vegetables of your choice, I used onions, peas, and carrots
4 cups cooked, cold rice
3 eggs, lightly beaten
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1/4 teaspoon pepper

How to make it:

Heat oil in a large wok.  Add chicken and cook until no longer pink.  Add in vegetables, and cook a few minutes until just tender.  Stir in rice, cook for a few minutes.

Move chicken, rice, and veggies out of the center and pour in eggs.  Cook until eggs set, stir to blend in.  Stir in soy sauce and pepper, cook for a few minutes until heated through.

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