Shredded Chicken For Many Recipes

There are some really smart people on the interwebs. A pin on Pinterest suggested using a KitchenAid mixer to prepare shredded chicken. I took this one step further and used my crockpot to cook a bunch of chicken breast--making the whole process even easier. There are so many recipes that call for chicken, so why not make a lot of head of time?

Ingredients & Tools

• boneless, skinless chicken
• slow cooker
• standing mixer

Cook the chicken on low in your slow cooker for 2-4 hours, depending on the amount of chicken. This should be "naked" chicken. Add the seasoning you need to the specific recipes once you're actually making it.

Allow the chicken to cool completely. Add it to the mixing bowl. There's no need for any kind of liquid.

Start at the lowest setting. The shredding took less than a minute and I only increased it to the third setting. This was so simple.

I used some of the chicken right away in my middle eastern salad. The rest is in the freezer for an easy weeknight dinner.

Brined & Roasted Turkey Breast

There is nearly no measuring in this recipe. You can measure if you want to, but know I'm already eating and on my second glass of wine. I don't even know if this qualifies as a recipe since it is so simple. 

Turkey is delicious and easy to make in the oven, but I have yet to tackle an entire bird. I also cook for two, so it wouldn't be very practical to wrestle with a 20 pounder.

For the brine, you'll need:

• 1 cup salt
• 1/2 black peppercorns
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• a gallon of water 

I did not measure the water, or the peppercorns, but you should. [Or don't and the world keeps spinning]. Alton Brown taught me all the wonders of a brine. Essentially, a brine is salt solution that, through the magic of osmosis, creates a juicy protein by trapping in the moisture. There are many recipes for brines that start with stock and call for a lot of herbs and spices. Save that for November. For a weeknight meal, this simple brine makes the final dinner incredibly moist.

I let the breast hang out in the brine for an hour after work, turning it over after 30 minutes.

Ingredients & Tool

• a brined turkey breast
• thyme
• sage
• rosemary
• garlic powder
• Kosher salt
• olive oil
• roasting pan
• meat thermometer 

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees.

Rub the turkey liberally with olive oil. Season it all over with the combination of dried herbs of your choosing or use my suggestions. Roast for 90 minutes or until the internal temperature reaches 165 degrees.

And that's it! I added two sweet potatoes to the pan and some broccoli in another roasting pan.

If only all dinners could be made entirely in the oven. Enjoy!

Arroz Con Pollo: Puerto Rican Chicken with Rice

These labels conjure a lot of memories. I seldom eat Puerto Rican food now and I decided to tackle what I hoped to be a basic recipe: arroz con pollo or rice with chicken. I ate this weekly growing up, but since my grandmother spoiled me in more ways than one, I never had to do any of the cooking in my house, even as a teenager.

I e-mailed my cousin in Arizona for the recipe. She replied with excellent step-by-step instructions.The ingredients call for recao, or recaito as Goya labels it. It's a wonderful cilantro base for cooking just about anything. I thought for my first attempt, I'd take a shortcut and buy the pre-made recao. Of course, I got to the supermarket, the entire Goya aisle made me miss my grandmother so much I had dreams about her two nights straight. In my predictably emotional state I bought sofrito instead. I came home, panicked, and called my aunt. She assured me the sofrito would work just as well. She also offered this advice: coje tu tiempo y hágalo con amor; take your time and make it with love. She's a smart lady.

Ingredients & Tools

• 3 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
• 2 cups of white rice
• 5 tablespoons of recao or sofrtio
• 1 envelope of Sazón con achiote 
• 4 ounces of tomato sauce
• Spanish olives - optional
• canola oil
• salt
• heavy pot with a good fitting lid

Chop the chicken into bite-sized pieces and season with salt. I didn't do this since I used some pre-made ingredients containing salt, but then we needed to add some at the table.

Cook the chicken over medium heat in a small amount of canola oil until no longer pink.

Roll the Goya ad! Sazón is a seasoning blend. Think of it as the Puerto Rican Mrs. Dash. Achiote is also known as annatto, coming from the seeds of the achiote tree that gives this dish its color. 

Add the Sazón, sofrito or recao, and the tomato sauce. Bring this to a gentle simmer and stir frequently. At this point, as my cousin said, your house will smell amazing. It's true! It will look a bit like the start of a soup.

Add 2 cups of rice, 2 cups of water, and the drained olives. Turn the heat up to high. The rice should not be visible when it's first added. Bring it to a boil and some rice should start peeking through as the water starts to evaporates. Stir.

Lower the heat, cover, and cook for 20-30 minutes. After 15 minutes, check the water level. My cousin's advice, word for word: If the rice seems too grainy, add a small amount of water, a tablespoon at a time. If it seems mushy, cook it uncovered for the remaining time.

This tasted like home. I will be making this often.

Spinach-Stuffed Turkey Meatballs

Our weekly menu usually includes a pasta dish. While French is my favorite cuisine to eat out, Italian is my favorite to make at home. So many good things start with a tomato sauce, but with pasta primavera my only exception, a pasta dinner is light on the veggies, if there are any at all. These meatballs are my effort to put something green in these dinners, similar to the ziti recipe.

Ingredients & Tools

• 2 lbs. ground turkey
• 1 package of thawed, drained frozen spinach
• 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
• 2 teaspoons dried basil
• 2 tablespoons garlic powder
• 2 tablespoons dried oregano
• 2 tablespoons Kosher salt
• a large bowl

Add the dried spices to the turkey and gently work them in with your hands. Avoid squishing the turkey or overmixing because you'll end up with dense meatballs.

Create a patty in your hand and add spinach to the center. I don't measure this. I just ensure there's enough spinach that the title of this recipe makes sense, but not so much that actually forming the meatball is tough.

That one on the bottom looks like it's going rogue.

Brown the meatballs in batches or cook them all at once on jelly rolls in the oven. I still need jelly rolls, so I do this on the stovetop.

Make your favorite sauce or use a store-bought brand--there's no shame in that. I use one 28 ounce can of crushed tomatoes and dried spices. 

Cook the meatballs in your sauce for about 20 minutes or until they're cooked all the way through.

Enjoy your pasta dinner with a bit less guilt.

Baked Ziti

I cannot make lasagna. I've tried, but the noodles and the amount of sauce get me every time. I've blundered boiling the noodles; they stick together, rip, and tear. One of my lasagna attempts with one of the no-boil pastas was swimming in a pool of sauce. The optimist in me wanted to present it as lasagna soup.

Choose your culinary battles wisely. Ziti, to this total non-Italian, has the same flavors as lasagna with 100% less headache. I make two batches at a time because it's not at all double the work and then I have a entire dinner with leftovers in the freezer. I started making double batches of ziti when my husband and I, then dating, first moved in together. We were living in a smaller Brooklyn apartment that had a kitchen that was comparatively enormous to what we have now. Go figure.

Ingredients & Tools

• 2 lbs. ziti
• 2 lbs. ground turkey [beef or chicken]
• 2 28 oz. cans of crushed tomatoes
• 16 oz. shredded mozzarella
• 15 oz. ricotta cheese
• 2 defrosted boxes of frozen spinach
• 2 tablespoons oregano 
• 2 tablespoons garlic
• 1 tablespoon basil
• 1/2 tablespoon red pepper flakes
• 4 teaspoons Kosher salt
• olive oil
• 2 large pots with lids
• collander
• 2 oven and freezer-safe dishes

Add about 2 tablespoons of olive oil to a large pot and brown the protein. I'm making beef stew this week, so I went with ground turkey for this dinner.

Drain the protein of your choice and fill another pot with water for the pasta. Crank up the heat and cover it.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In the pot where you cooked the meat, add another 2 tablespoons of olive oil and the dried herbs. Ina Garten cooks dried herbs and spices to "wake up" the flavors. She's a genius, so I do what she does. This "waking up" takes under a minute.

Add both cans of crushed tomatoes.

Add 4 teaspoons of Kosher salt. Add the ground turkey/beef/chicken and cover the pot. Allow the sauce to simmer for about 20 minutes, as the pasta cooks.

Cook the pasta just under al dente, following the directions on the box. I cooked my ziti for 9 minutes. Drain and get the assembly line ready. Start by placing a thin layer of sauce at the bottom of each baking dish to prevent sticking.

Add a layer of ziti. Look, it doesn't matter if they're all lined up! In fact, it'd be pretty hard to line up ziti noodles. Rejoice in the freedom.

Totally drain the thawed spinach. This involved squeezing the life out of these greens. You don't want to add unnecessary liquid. Add all of one box of spinach to each of the dishes. I know lasagna doesn't traditionally have spinach, but I like to have a vegetable with dinner and this is an easy way to get a serving in.

Add another layer of sauce and the ricotta.

Cheese loves cheese. Add a layer of mozzarella. If you're all about equal distribution, think one fourth of the total amount of mozzarella.

Add another layer of ziti. Look at the chaos!

Finish it off with the rest of the mozzarella.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes and when it doesn't cut into a perfect square when you serve it, know it's supposed to be that way. Enjoy!

Braised Turkey

The first recipe in The Four Hour Chef is a lesson on braising. This recipe is a first for me. I've never braised before and it was easy. The results were fork-tender, delicious turkey and an impressive gravy.

Braising is just cooking what is usually tough cuts of meat in liquid. The liquid could be water-based with herbs and spices, but most recipes call for wine. I had some hearty red wine left over from the holidays and some homemade chicken stock, so I felt remarkably prepared to tackle my first braising task.

Several years ago, Mark Bittman wrote about braising an entire turkey for Thanksgiving. I stumbled upon the article in my fervent braising research. He goes all in: butchering the whole bird, using fresh herbs, separating white and dark meat during cooking. I bet it's great, but that was too big a task for my first effort. I've also already internalized an important idea from Ferriss' book: shrink the margin of error. Instead of an entire turkey for a high-stakes holiday, I give you turkey drumsticks on a snowy Saturday night.

Ingredients & Tools

• 2 turkey drumsticks
• 4 carrots
• 3 celery stalks [I added another while chopping]
• 1 large onion [my equivalent was 1 tiny and 1 medium onion on this particular day]
• 1 cup of wine
• 2 cups of chicken stock or water
• 1 tablespoon rosemary
• 1 tablespoon basil leaves
• 1 teaspoon ground sage
• 2 bay leaves
• salt
• pepper
• canola oil
• oven safe pot with lid

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and preheat a heavy pan with half an inch of canola oil. Rinse and dry the drumsticks. Season them liberally with salt and pepper.

The first way to introduce flavor in a braised dish is to brown the meat. Leave them untouched on one side for 5-7 minutes until the skin gets crispy and a beautiful browning has happened.

Practice some balancing skills by making sure all sides are browned. Remove the drumsticks and set aside.

Meanwhile, chop the onion, celery, and carrots. These three ingredients are the French holy trinity, culinarily referred to as mirepoix. I decided on a large chop because this is a slowly cooked dish. When I'm cooking over a long stretch of time, like in my CrockPot, a small dice becomes very mushy and seemingly disappears into the liquid.

Cook the onions and the celery together for about 5 minutes or until they begin to caramelize.

Create some room in the center of the pan and add the wine. Allow the alcohol to cook out, less than 5 minutes. Use a wooden spoon to deglaze. This just means scraping the caramelized meat and vegetable 'bits' [that's an industry term]. This is how the sauce becomes even tastier.

Add the carrots and the stock. My homemade stock produced 1 3/4 cups. Make sure there is enough liquid to cover the drumsticks halfway.

Combine the dried herbs and add them to the pot. If you have fresh herbs, use them. If you prefer a different combination, use them. Let this and all recipes be your guide, not a mandate.

Return the turkey back to the pot. I was short of the 2 cups of liquid, but this came up halfway, so I didn't add water.

Add the bay leaves, cover, and allow to braise in the oven for 90 minutes. Your turkey is done when a fork easily moves the meat away from the bone.

You will have this after an hour and a half. The gravy reduces beautifully. I added a touch more salt, but before you season it, taste the gravy. It reduces and concentrates in the oven.

We ate it with brown rice and loved the gravy. Loved!

Simple Roasted Chicken

Roasting a whole chicken intimidated me. The final product looked so impressive, I was convinced it was going to require culinary school-level skills. It doesn't. This is not just a simple dinner, but it is so economical and delicious--a combination that means I make this often. The whole chicken is far cheaper per pound than a package of chicken breasts or drumsticks. Everyone gets to have some of their favorite parts and, if you have the time, you can make your own stock too--also easy!

Roasting is baking, but with a savory food. Do not fear your oven. This verb was another culprit in making me think this recipe was out of reach. If you can successfully preheat and own a meat thermometer, you can do this.

You could dedicate a Ph.D. to researching roasted chicken recipes. The kinds of herbs you use are all just a matter of taste. The oven temperature and internal temperature of the chicken, I think, should be constant regardless of if you make a thyme and rosemary chicken or a beer-can chicken.

Ingredients & Tools

• 1 whole chicken
• 1 lemon
• 1 head of garlic
• 4-5 root vegetables
• 4 tablespoons or 1/2 stick of cold unsalted butter
• 5 tablespoons of olive oil
• Kosher salt
• pepper
• baker's twine
• meat thermometer
• roasting pan

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees. This may seem high if you've roasted chickens before, but this hot oven produces excellent results: crisp skin, and moist meat, since the cooking time is reduced.

Use whatever root vegetables you're in the mood for. Carrots, parsnips, and potatoes all work. I was in a potato kind of mood and I'll be using the celery in a stock. Chop your vegetables and place in the bottom of your roasting pan. Season them with salt and pepper, but using olive oil, butter, or some other fat isn't necessary since the chicken will take care of that. This is the bed for your chicken.

This is my least favorite task: cleaning and handling raw meat. Do it quickly and move on with life. 

Season the inside of the chicken liberally with Kosher salt and pepper. In more involved recipes, you may be tying a bundle of herbs together, but the title of this post is simple roasted chicken and simple it will stay.

Cut the lemon in quarters and the head of garlic in half--no need to peel. Put both in the chicken. 

Cut the cold butter into thin pats. Use your fingers to gently separate the skin from the meat. Put the pats of butter under the skin. This is going to keep everything moist and flavor the chicken and the vegetables.

Rub the entire chicken [the outside now] with olive oil. I prefer this to butter on the skin because the milk solids in butter burn more easily.

Use some kitchen twine to tie the legs together. I have never attempted to truss a chicken. I will and I'll report back. In the meantime, if you haven't trussed either, just tie the legs together in a very simple knot and tuck the wings underneath so the tips don't burn. Leave the ends of the twine long enough to make removing it after cooking easy.

Roast until the dark meat reaches 165 degrees. This will vary depending on the size of the chicken and even by oven, but it will take roughly 75 minutes. I check the temperature after an hour and fifteen minutes exactly and judge how close to done it is at that time, but don't baste [that's what the butter's for!] or keeping opening the oven. That will just increase cooking time and that will increase the likelihood of a dry bird.

If your bird comes with the plastic pop-up timer, ignore it. As you can see it, it's in the breast and that cooks faster than the dark meat. When you're 75 minutes are up, place your meat thermometer in the leg. At 165, it's done. The breast meat won't be dry because of the butter. Life is good.

This will be your final product. Impress millions or just your family. We ate this the potatoes and spinach. 

The potatoes were amazing because of the garlic. If you need another reason to try this recipe, it's the potatoes.