Perfectly Poached Chicken breast

1. Place 2-4 skinless, boneless chicken breast in a pot.
2. Pour enough water and chicken broth in the pot to cover the chicken breast. You want more broth than water. I try for 75% broth. You can also add white wine. Add salt and pepper to taste.
3. Bring the water in the pot up to the boil over medium-high heat.
4. Reduce heat and simmer for five minutes.
5. Turn the heat off.
6. Let the chicken breast sit in the hot water for twenty minutes.

Use the poached breasts to be added to salads, to make chicken salads, sandwiches etc.

Anonymous wrote:Meatloaf - but the Lipton Beefy onion packets and follow those directions.

Tacos - Buy ground beef, lettuce, and the El Paso dinner kit (not just the shells!!!)

Stew - buy flour, potatoes, a bag of baby carrots, and stew meat (its already cut up and ready to go) - and buy the McCormick seasoning packet and follow those directions.

Baked Perdue Oven Roaster (the fat one with the white popper thing when it's ready) - rub olive oil on it (after you pull the bag of guts out and rinse it off) - put in a big pan with 1 cup of water, sprinkle with McCormick Lemon Pepper Seasoning Salt (no lemon pepper - has to be the salty one). Follow bag directions for baking till the popper pops. Serve with stovetop stuffing. To get real gourmet, simmer the juice for 3 minutes with 1 spoon of cornstarch mixed with 1/4 cold water (for gravy).

Cook chicken breasts on the stove with olive oil and a lid cover, Goya Adobo seasoning from the hispanic aisle, and some onions (for bone-in breasts, takes about 35 minutes, boneless, maybe 20 minutes - flip once during cooking)

cripes how much red meat do you eat every week? this is ridiculous? where is the fish or vegetarian choices in here???

^^^

One advantage--you can get good at carving up chickens. It'll help when you have to carve up that holiday turkey.

Look up how to do it online, or in Joy of Cooking, or Cook's Illustrated.

They may recommend a boning or carving knife, but I like to use a chef's knife.

If you just go ahead and carve it into pieces when you take it out of grocery bag/shell, it looks better to serve and it's easier to store the leftovers.



If you're so inclined, you can break up the carcass and freeze that and the bones for stock. Stuff the bones & pieces into a gallon-size ziploc freezer bag. Don't forget to pour in the gelatin that congealed on the bottom of the plastic shell the chicken came in. Keep the bag in your freezer. When the bag is full, you have enough to make a pot of stock some weekend.

Buy a rotisserie chicken. One night, serve the pulled meat with a big green salad, fresh bread, and baked or mashed potatoes or rice. The second night, use the meat for soup/tacos/sandwiches/whatever.

+1

Sloppy Joes.

To start, it's easy. Brown the ground beef or turkey, follow the directions on the grocery store mix. Serve over toasted buns.

It's not hard to do better, though. I chop onion, carrot, zucchini, and garlic all very fine, and add them to the ground meat. You could also do bell peppers, I suppose. Once it's all mixed up and fried up, then I add the flavorings from scratch. Don't measure, just guess, stir in, taste, adjust: dried thyme, ketchup, worcestershire sauce, chili powder, fresh ground black pepper. Maybe a tiny bit of brown sugar. Maybe chopped tomato if I have one that needs to be used up. Water, beer, or a tiny bit of homemade stock if it needs thinning. Tomato paste if it needs thickening.

One skillet, serve it over buns, done. Add a vegetable.

Speaking of vegetables,

Sauteed spinach.

Slice a shallot very thin. Mince or thin-slice some garlic--2 or 3 cloves.
Wash a bunch of spinach. Dry it in a colander or salad spinner.

Heat a frying pan over medium heat. When it's hot, add a little oil and swirl it around. Fry the shallots and garlic for about a minute--don't let the garlic burn. Start adding the spinach (still a bit damp from the wash/dry) into the pan. The pan should be hot enough that the spinach makes crackly sizzly sounds. Fill the pan, the spinach shrinks quickly. When it's shrunk down, add some more. When it's all in there, add a handful of raisins, and half a handful of pine nuts if you have them. Salt to taste.

Non-fried chicken

1package skin on thighs or thighs and drumsticks
A can of bread crumbs
Paprika
Salt or garlic salt
Pepper

Mix about a cup and a half of bread crumbs in a ziplock with salt(1/2 tsp) a couple shakes of paprika and a couple shakes of pepper

Line a jelly roll pan with foil.

Put the chicken in the breadcrumb bag one or two pieces at a time. Shake. Put skin side up on foil.

Bake 375 for 45 minutes.

Yummy, crunchy and non greasy.

Serve wih a big salad and some broccoli

Put drumsticks in the oven with a dab of butter and salt and pepper. Place half an onion and two carrots in baking pan. Bake until done.

Slice a cucumber and a tomato.

Boil some potatoes.

This ain't no restaurant!

NP here.

Seconding the thanks to bakersman. Great recipes and I also appreciate the helpful newbie notes.

OP here and I'm so thankful for all of the help, especially from bakersman--thank you so much for your thoughtfulness and time in writing the recipes out for me. I can't wait to try in the next couple of days. You are awesome!

Slow cooker chili: lots of good recipes around, can be made with any meat you like.

Pesto chicken or salmon: slather pesto on chicken or salmon, bake. Homemade pesto is great but jarred pesto will work, too. Serve with rice or roasted potatoes plus steamed/sauteed veggie of choice.

Anonymous wrote:Is there any reason to add salt to boiling water for pasta besides for taste?

No. It is for taste. But it is difficult to salt pasta after it is cooked.

Is there any reason to add salt to boiling water for pasta besides for taste?

If you like seafood, I second the fish tacos suggestion. I used to be scared of cooking fish, but once you figure out a way that works for you (broiling or grilling are good) it's an easy and quick fresh dinner that my kids love. Cut up some avocados, get some shredded cabbage, put some salsa, tortillas, and yogurt or sour cream on the table and you're done.

For fish, I really like these fish in a packet recipes from the Moosewood cookbook too. Basically, you throw fish, some veggies, and some seasonings in tinfoil, bake it, and serve with some rice or couscous or something.

http://books.google.com/books?id=76yiLzTTdfIC&pg=PA243&lpg=PA243&dq=fish+in+a+packet+moosewood&source=bl&ots=zzGSfu-fM4&sig=TMafFM4zj40EQpY15QnWVXSfjIQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=eBIcUNWtOsiF6AGqo4H4AQ&ved=0CFQQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=fish%20in%20a%20packet%20moosewood&f=false

NP here but totally going to try that Lemon Chicken. Thanks for the recipe!

Lemon Chicken

Serves 4

Ingredients

¾ cup of all prupose flour
1/4 cup of olive or canola oil
4 boneless chicken breasts
1 quart of fresh white mushrooms
1 large lemon cut
1 teaspoon of dried oregano (double that for fresh - chopped)
1 teaspoon kosher salt (1/2 teaspoon of table salt) 1/2 a teaspoon of black pepper

Directions

1. Cut the chicken breasts into bite size pieces (about an inch long and half as wide)
2. Cut the mushrooms into quarters or slice them.
3. In a plastic ziploc tyos bag, add the flour, salt and pepper. Close the bag and shake to combine.
4. Heat the oil in a frying pan that has a cover. (if you stove top temp goes from 1-9 you want to be at 5). The oil is ready when is slides smoothly (it slides faster than it did when it and the pan were cold) across the bottom of the pan.
5. While the oil is heating, place a few pieces of chicken in the bag with the flour and shake to coat the chicken with the seasoned flour.
6. Add the chicken to the hot pan and cook until the pieces are light brown. You will want to move the turn over the pieces of chicken as you go to get the pieces evenly browned.
7. Add the oregano and mushrooms to the pan. Cover, reduce to a simmer (2-3 on the 1-9 heat scale) and simmer for 5 minutes. This will allow the mushrooms to release their water into the pan.
8. Stir everything in the pan. Use a spoon or spatula to loosen any browned flour bits from the bottom of the pan -- they are full of flavor.
9. Quarter the lemon and squirt its half the juice onto the chicken and half directly into the pan. Give everything a good stir and then add the rinds to the pan.
10. Cover and simmer for another 5 minutes.

11. Remove the rinds and give everything a good stir. The flour from the chicken should have helped to make the juice and water from the mushrooms into a sauce. Because the amount of liquid in the mushrooms (the fresher the more water) and the size of the lemon, the sauce may be thick or thin. If it seems thick and pasty, add some additional lemon juice and/or chicken broth. If it is too thin, remove the chicken and continue to simmer the sauce until it thickens. If you have no sauce, well you were cooking at too high a heat or you checked the pan too often and let the water escape. You can remove the chicken and add some chicken broth and lemon juice to the pan to try and resurrect a sauce from the flour bits still on the bottom of the pan.

Serve with/over rice (brown or white).

Total cooking time is about 20 minutes.