Chicken For the Week

Chicken Foil Packs

One of our most frequently asked questions about cooking the meat in the share is "What should I do with the chicken?"  I was having that conversation with a new member recently when another member offered a GREAT idea!  Rachel very generously took the time to write her method up, so I can share it with all of you...enjoy!

This works well with a half chicken on the bone.  If I only have a whole I'll cut it in half.  I'll do up to three at a time and season them all differently.  May need to cook a bit longer if oven is really full.  I'll do this on a Sunday afternoon or evening since I'm generally puttering around the kitchen anyway.

Place chicken on large square of tinfoil. Season as desired then wrap the foil up around the chicken with a small vent at the top.  As if it were a crab rangoon or purse dumpling.  Bake in the oven at about 375 for 45mins to 1hr depending on size of chicken.  I pierce with a knife at the joint and make sure juices run clear to check it's done.  All the juice is staying in that foil pouch anyway so you're not loosing moisture. Allow chicken to cool in foil pouch.  Close foil over top so it's sealed and store in fridge until you want to eat it.  Shred off the bone and you're done.  Great for pastas, stir fry or fry rice, salads, soup, tacos - anything in a South American vein works well. 

Notes- You will never get crispy skin doing this.  But you will get fat and moisture.  I just peel the skin off before I shred the meat.  Also, the juices and fat will congeal at the bottom of the foil packet. I'll heat that gel up in a pan and use that instead of oil or butter if I'm reheating the chicken.  That gel adds yummy flavor to pasta sauces, too.  You can leave seasoning large - whole garlic cloves, a whole chipotle pepper etc  because they are in such cozy quarters with the chicken so the flavor will permeate and be lovely.  A lot of those larger seasonings can be added to the end dish.

These are my favorite seasonings for the pouches...all plus salt, pepper and a little rub of oil.

Half a lemon, big sprigs of rosemary and/or thyme or a good TBSP of dry herbs, and whole, peeled garlic cloves.  

Lots of grated ginger, sesame oil, Chinese 5 spice and a big squirt of Sriracha.

Packet of taco seasoning, a halved lime, and a TSP of adobo sauce.

Olives, sun dried tomatoes (fresh tomatoes do not do well!), and a TSP of dried tarragon. Reconstitute it all with some white wine and add the shredded chicken for a very yummy pasta sauce.

Hope you like it!  I was finding myself putting off making the chicken because I didn't have time in the evenings.  This makes life so much easier.

Crock Pot Packs

A couple of weeks ago I saw an idea going around Pinterest that looked interesting, make ahead crock pot meals.  I liked it!  I love using the crock pot, it's almost like someone else made dinner, and I often cook things like spaghetti sauce and soup in big batches to put some in the freezer.  So I decided to give it a go.

First stop, gather the ingredients.  I started with recipes from a couple of different sites (although I never follow recipes exactly, these are pretty close to what I did).

I made a total of 5 different recipes from these two sites:
http://www.ringaroundtherosies.net/2012/02/freezer-cooking.html
http://mamaandbabylove.com/2011/04/05/freezer-cooking-with-slow-cooker-recipes/

I made Teriyaki Chicken, Healthy Mama BBQ Chicken, Peppers & Sausage, Beef Fajita, and Cilantro Lime Chicken. (These all link to the blogs where the recipes are, you'll have to scroll down each page to the right spot.)

Next it was time to do the prep.  This is the step that makes this worthwhile.  It took me about an hour and a half to wash, peel and chop everything, which is quite a while, but now I don't have to do that each time I want to start a meal in the slow cooker.

It took about another hour to make sauces and assemble the bags.  Regardless of the recipes (told you I didn't follow them exactly!) I did not add any of the meat. I just put in the veggies, sauces and seasonings for each meal into a ziplock freezer bag and labeled each.

I use our meat, of course, so that means no boneless, tasteless chicken breasts, but the recipes work great with whole or half chickens in the crock pot. It just means that when you serve them you're pulling the meat off the bones.  (We usually just do it as we eat, but you could bone the chicken and put the meat back in the pot before you serve.)

Finally, the clean up.  It looked bad, but really only took about half an hour.  All together I prepared 10 meals in about 3 hours.  That works out to about 18 minutes per home-made, veggie-filled, processed-food-free meal!  It takes just a few minutes to put the meal in the slow cooker and dinner time clean up is easy too, just one pot.

This is definitely an experiment I'll repeat!

Boneless, Skinless, Tasteless!

It’s a little frustrating that most recipes I find for chicken call for boneless, skinless chicken breasts.  Don’t misunderstand; I certainly appreciate the ease of those neat little cutlets.  They cook quickly, they are easy to work with, and they don’t even look like any sort of living animal.  The down side of course is they don’t have much flavor, and the texture is pasty, and if I think about it, even a little bit, I know that they WERE part of a living animal, usually one that had a miserable, drug laden life and was butchered in  appalling nditions.   

Wait, that’s more than one downside isn’t it?  I also know that, as a farmer it’s difficult to provide my customers with boneless, skinless breasts that would be tasty, and humanely raised and butchered.  The processing is significantly more expensive and the chickens we raise are more than just that one part.  We need to make use of, and profit from, as much of the animal as possible.  That’s part of keeping our prices reasonable, and our business sustainable. 

So all of that brings me back to my original complaint, the over abundance of recipes for boneless, skinless chicken breasts!  Here are some ways I’ve found to get around that problem.

Cook a half chicken ahead of time  I often put a half chicken in a skillet with a little bit of water, cover it, and turn it before on starting the rest of the meal.  It takes about 30-45 minutes to cook while I take care of whatever else is going on (homework, food prep, emptying the dishwasher, whatever) and when I’m ready to put the rest of dinner together I can easily pull the meat off the bone and get on with the recipe.   (If I’m using a small whole chicken this way I cut it in half with kitchen shears before putting it in the skillet, this cooks quicker than keeping it whole.)

I can easily add the cooked chicken to pasta or rice dishes.  This has the additional benefit of stretching a smaller piece of meat to feed more people.  Last week I did this with a two pound bird and easily fed four adults and three kids with a Lemon Caper chicken similar to the one in last month’s newsletter.

Crock pot cooking is another easy way to use whole chickens.  Like the above method, I can remove the meat form the bone and add it to other recipes, or I can make the whole meal in the crock pot.   I used to think of  cocrock pot cooking as more suited to wintery comfort foods, but I do love not having to heat up the kitchen in the summer!

Finally, I’ve learned how to cut up a whole chicken.  Julia Child I’m not, but I can get it into recognizable pieces.  I learned by following the pictures in my old Betty Crocker cookbook, but there are lots of resources online now with video and audio instructions to follow. This one from Gourmet Magazine is quite helpful http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW5BFvCmV7k.  Give it a try!  Don’t forget to save the neck and back.  Keep a zip lock bag in the freezer and throw them in until you’re ready to make a batch of stock.

Beef Carnitas

Ingredients

Cooking spray
1 cup chopped onion
4 garlic cloves, crushed
2 pounds beef (round steak, stew meat, or Swiss steak) trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces 1 cup less-sodium beef broth
1 teaspoon sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 large unpeeled orange wedge

Instructions

1. Heat a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray.
2. Add onion; sauté 4 minutes or until tender. Add garlic; sauté 1 minute. Add beef; sauté 5 minutes or until beef is browned on all sides.
3. Stir in broth, sugar, salt, and pepper; nestle orange section into beef mixture. Bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 1 1/2 hours or until beef is tender.
4. Remove and discard orange. Continue simmering, uncovered, 8 minutes or until liquid almost evaporates, stirring frequently.

Italian Sausage Risotto

*~*~*~This is one of our family's favorites!!!*~*~*~*

Serves 4-6

Ingredients

1 lb Italian pork sausage
1 onion, finely chopped
1 T butter
1 ¼ C Arborio rice
½ C good red wine
3 C hot chicken broth
1 T grated Parmesan cheese (plus extra to serve)
salt & pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Skin the sausages and pinch small sections into a large frying pan. Fry gently until lightly crusty. Remove sausage from pan and set aside.

2. In the frying pan melt the butter, add the onion and cook over moderate heat until it softens. Add the rice and toss until well coated in butter, stirring constantly.

3. Add the wine and stir until it is absorbed. Add the sausage and stir through.

4. Add the chicken broth and bring back to a boil. Reduce the heat to very low , cover, and cook 15-20 minutes until the broth is absorbed and the rice is tender, stirring occasionally.

5. Remove from heat. Stir in Parmesan, add salt & pepper to taste and serve.