Roasted Chicken with Spinach-Rice Stuffing

I can't stretch a chicken into 5 meals as some people can, but I do enjoy a roasted bird once in a while. It's really so easy to throw a chicken into the oven and to make a 'stuffing' to accompany the delicious, juicy meat (I don't stuff the bird with stuffing, but I still call it stuffing... would dressing be a more appropriate term?)

 

My grandmother shared with me the following tips for roasting a chicken:

• Salt the bird inside and outside.
• Put half of a smaller onion, half a lemon, and a short celery stalk inside the bird's cavity.
• Dot the skin of the chicken with pieces of cold butter, and sprinkle with desired dried or fresh herbs (a little rosemary goes a long way here...)
• Roast at 400 degrees for 15 minutes per pound. After cooking for required time, tent breast meat with foil and continue to cook until the dark meat reaches an internal temp of at least 170 degrees and the juices run clear--no pink. (Chefs cook to 165, the recommended temp is 180. I find that to be a little on the dry side.)
• Allow the chicken to rest in the pan for 10 minutes or so.
• Remove the chicken from the roasting pan and place the pan over a stove burner, turn it on medium. Add water a little white cooking wine and scrape the bottom to deglaze the pan. Pour the pan juices into a bowl through a strainer. After the juices settle, you can use a baster to remove the clear layer from the top--this is the fat. Alternate you can place the bowl in the fridge and remove the solidified fat later. (In the above picture, I hadn't deglazed the pan yet.)
• You can serve the glaze as 'gravy', add some glaze to the recipe below for flavor, AND save some for another recipe. (Why do just one option?)

In the mean time, prepare the Spinach-Rice stuffing, also a recipe from my grandmother. This was originally from an old cookbook called Sunset Favorite Recipes II, but Grandma replaced the water chestnuts with mushrooms (a wonderful substitution as I detest water chestnuts) and I made my own modifications.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup brown basmati rice (or if you have 2 cups cooked rice, you can skip Step 1)
• 2 T olive oil
• 1/2 cup diced onion
• 1/2 cup diced celery
• 8 oz package sliced mushrooms
• 6-12 oz fresh spinach leaves (to taste)
• 1/4 tsp dried rosemary
• salt and pepper to taste

1. Cook rice separately as you normally would. (I like to cook mine in chicken broth or stock, and/or add a few tablespoons of the pan juices from the roasted chicken above). I remove a portion of cooked rice before continuing to serve to my kids, who despise this recipe.
2. Heat oil over medium heat in large skillet. Add onion and celery, cook several minutes. Add mushrooms, spreading them out to cook evenly. When mushrooms are browned, add spinach, stirring frequently, and remove pan from heat when spinach is wilted.
3. Add rice, rosemary, salt, and pepper to spinach mixture.

 

After serving the meal, debone and shred the remaining chicken meat, and perhaps use it for a nice chicken salad. Use the carcass to make Chicken Bone Soup--also a recipe from my grandmother.

Freezer Cooking Day Results 4-12-11

I'm pleased to report that our frreezer cooking day endeavor was a success. This photo shows just half of the meals we prepared yesterday, as my friend took her half home to her own freezer.

Here's the list of prepared food that I ended up with (Most of these recipes are from Fix, Freeze, Feast: The Delicious, Money-Saving Way to Feed Your Family):

• Molasses Glazed Chicken Thighs (2 meals, 1.5 lbs each)
• Cashew Chicken Stir Fry (3 meals, 2 lbs each)
• Sweet Asian Chicken (3 meals, 2 lbs each: 2 meals of whole breasts for grilling, 1 meal of chunks for kebabs)
• Mustard Oregano Pork Chops (this recipe made 12 chops, we each took 6, I will probably make them for 1 meal)
• Turkish Pork Loin Chops with Bacon (6 chops, which I will probably use as 3 meals because they are quite large)
• Shrimp Curry (2 meals)
• Sesame Sirloin (2 meals)
• Roasted Chicken-some carved, some shredded (2 meals)

 If I'm doing my math correctly, I have EIGHTEEN meals from about 6 hours of work--2.5 hours preparation, 3.5 hours for the actual freezer cooking event. Cutting and bagging all of the meat in advance was a huge time-saver and kept us very organized. I did mine right when I brought it home from the store, and it took up less space in the fridge than when it was in the (leaky) store packages.

 

Even more exciting is that my friend decided to package her meat in smaller one-pound portions, so in cases where I ended up with 3 two-pound meals, she ended up with 6 one-pound meals! (Her kids don't eat as much as mine do. I also make more because my husband loves to take leftovers to work the next day.)

 

In addition, I am using my carcass and neck from the roasted chicken to make Chicken Bone Soup today, and I also saved the juices and deglazed the roasting pan, so I will have a nice supply of chicken stock on hand.

 

And yes! Everything fits nicely into my freezer... along with all the other freezer meals I've been putting up here and there...

Menu Plan Monday: April 11th

Tuesday: Roast Chicken with Spinach-Rice Stuffing (Recipe to follow...)

It's Monday and I'm making a menu plan to go with my freezer cooking plan, and I'm taking the time to blog about it!

• Monday: Mini Hamburgers, Salt and Pepper Potatoes, steamed broccoli
• Tuesday: Roast Chicken with Spinach-Rice Stuffing (recipe to follow)
• Wednesday: Leftovers
• Thursday: Soy-Glazed Salmon, soba noodles, steamed asparagus
• Friday: Chicken Casserole w/homemade biscuit topping, sliced cantalope
• Saturday: Dinner Out
• Sunday: Leftovers
• Monday: Grilled chicken from Freezer Cooking Stash (hmmm... which marinade?) with salad and baked sweet potatoes.

Find more meal planning inspiration at orgjunkie.com!

Freezer Cooking: Tips for Meat

Today I spent some time prepping the meat we are planning to use for tomorrow's freezer cooking day. I wish I could take credit for this bright idea! My friend suggested that we cut the meat and separate it into freezer cooking bags in advance. What you see here is approximately 15 pounds of chicken (my share) and 6 pounds of sirloin (which we are splitting in half). Tomorrow we'll add marinade to these cuts of meat and they will be ready to go in the freezer.

Some additional tips for cutting up large quantities of boneless skinless chicken breasts:

• Open the packages and look at all the breasts before starting to cut. I prefer to reserve the smaller, neater breasts for the recipes that call for a whole breast to reduce portion size. To reduce size even further, I'll cut off the tenderloin. Identify the small breasts and bag them for the appropriate recipe.
• Cut some of the chicken for the same recipe in different ways. For instance, after I reserved the smallest breasts whole, I cut some of the larger breasts into large chunks to make kebabs. Sometime I also cut chicken breasts into tenderloin/strip-size pieces, depending on the recipe and where I plan to cook it (grill or oven). Another cut is to slice the breast in half horizontally to make thin, flat pieces, which are good for broiling or stove-top cooking. Marinating these different 'cuts' of chicken in the same marinade is easy, and you will end up with more variety when serving the meats for dinner.

• 

  This 'messy' double breast is at least ten ounces, and has little pieces hanging off the underside all over. Best to cut it up!

• Save the largest, 'messiest' pieces for cutting into bite size pieces for stir-fry. Somehow my packages of chicken always contain at least one piece that is either falling apart or has shreds of meat hanging off in every direction. These pieces would be tough to grill, slice, or chunk into even-size pieces, so they work best as bite-size pieces for a stir-fry.

I bagged everything up and stored it all together in a large plastic container. Now I just need to dice some onion and grate some fresh ginger to finish preparing for the big day.

Freezer Cooking Day: Meat Marinades

Freezer Cooking January Inventory

My friend and I are planning a big, exciting freezer cooking session for tomorrow, using a number of recipes from Fix, Freeze, Feast: The Delicious, Money-Saving Way to Feed Your Family. Our focus is on marinated meats, and we expect to assemble 16-18 meals apiece. This supply will keep us grilling for the next two months!

We decided to focus on meat so that we could make bulk purchases and do a lot of meat processing all at once. If we eat 2-3 of these meals per week, they'll last for 6-8 weeks, and we can focus on preparing side dishes and fresh vegetables. I'll most likely focus more on vegetarian meals for other nights of the week, and perhaps do some vegetarian freezer cooking when the freezer starts to clear out a bit.

Here are the recipes we've selected:

• Molasses Glazed Chicken Thighs (2 meals per family)
• Cashew Chicken Stir Fry (3 meals per family)
• Sweet Asian Chicken (3 meals per family)
• Mustard Oregano Pork Chops (1-2 meals per family)
• Turkish Pork Loin Chops with Bacon (1-2 meals per family)
• Shrimp Curry (2 meals per family)
• Sesame Sirloin (2-3 meals per family)
• Roasted Chicken-some carved, some shredded (1-2 meals per family)

Here is our game plan:

1. Roast Chickens (2 in one pan, one per family) (Carve and shred after cooling.)
2. Make sauce for Shrimp Curry--allow to cool before assembling with cooked frozen shrimp.
3. Prepare 3 marinades for the three chicken recipes. Because of advance prep work, all that is left to do is pour/measure the mixtures over the chicken, which is already bagged. Freeze.
4. Prep marinade for Mustard Oregano Pork recipe. Bag and freeze.
5. Wrap bacon around boneless chops for Turkish Pork Loin Chops. Prep marinade. Bag and freeze.
6. Prep marinade for Sesame Sirloin, which is already bagged. Freeze.
7. Assemble Shrimp Curry.
8. Carve roasted chickens as desired, then shred remaining meat. Bag and refrigerate/freeze for future use, or serve some for dinner.
9. Reserve chicken carcasses and vegetable trimming from recipes to make Bone Soup (if there is any room left in the freezer!) This will be done after the freezer cooking session.

Can we do all of this in the three hours and live to tell about it?

Menu Plan Monday Feb 28th

15-Bean Soup with Homemade Cornbread

• Monday: Mom's Chili with homemade cornbread in my cast iron skillet (with steamed broccoli)
• Tuesday: Chicken fajitas, using the Sweet Asian Chicken marinade from Fix, Freeze, Feast: The Delicious, Money-Saving Way to Feed Your Family (this chicken is delicious!) and Sesame Baby Bok Choy
• Wednesday: Leftovers
• Thursday: Pizza Night (Parents out)
• Friday: Salmon cakes, roasted potatoes, steamed green beans

• Saturday: According to Fix, Freeze, Feast: The Delicious, Money-Saving Way to Feed Your Family, you don't need to cook your lasagna noodles before assembling IF you freeze the lasagna before baking it! I assembled my lasagna recipe the other week, and I am anxious to defrost it, bake it, and see how it turns out. It would be a great time saver if I could avoid boiling the noodles when assembling lasagnas. I hope to serve this with salad and bread if it's edible. I'll report my results next week.
• Sunday: Leftovers
• Monday: Whole Wheat pasta with turkey meatballs and sauce, served with steamed broccoli. (My son's favorite meal which is why we eat it so often!) 

Find more meal planning ideas at orgjunkie.com!

Stockpiling Strategies: One Extra

The number of items I stockpile feels about right, both for keeping track of in my mind, and for the amount of storage space available in our house for stockpiling.

Still, I really hate having to run out to the store at the last minute when I run out of a crucial ingredient. I have had several traumatizing experiences dragging young and crabby children through the store halfway through dinner prep!

The compromise for me is to keep One Extra of most of the non-perishable items in my pantry. When I use up the mayonnaise, or the hoisin sauce, or the brown rice, I pull out the One Extra from the pantry, and add the item to the grocery list on the fridge, one of the little things I do to keep myself more organized.

Typically these items are condiments and cooking items, and for the most part, it's not worth the savings to buy a bunch of them on sale, and anyways I don't have a lot of space to stockpile items unless they are used frequently. Some of these items cost pretty much the same amount no matter when I purchase them (such as groceries from Trader Joe's).

For example, I recently made Chicken Adobo with bok choy in the crock pot. I used up my apple cidar vinegar, the opened my One Extra one. I promptly added cidar vinegar to the grocery list--this system works better when I'm not cooking in a hurry. I'll buy just a small bottle on the next grocery trip because I don't use it very often. I'm not stressing about getting to the grocery store in time because I still have a mostly full bottle.

I also saw that my paprika was getting low, so I added that to the grocery list too. I dont keep One Extra for spices and flours, because I like my spices to be relatively fresh, and some take a long time to use up. Instead I add them to the list when I see that the quantity on hand is running low.

This system has been working really well for me for several years now. I love that I can reach into the pantry and pull out whatever I need! The system would work even better if I didn't have to spend precious minutes finding things in the pantry. I'm hoping to deal with that problem soon!