Slow Cooker Sticky Chicken!

More slow cooker recipes!  You asked for them, so I am trying to oblige you!  I am taking a few of our family favorites, that I never used a slow cooker for, and use the slow cooker for quicker, hearty meals that families and especially kids will love!!

This "sticky chicken" as we call it, is DELICIOUS.  I am not sure why we started calling it that, but we did, and the name has "stuck". 
Hardy har har......  
Sometimes we eat it over rice, sometimes over egg noodles.  The awesome thing about this recipe is, it will feed an army, AND the leftover options are endless.   I have taken leftovers, added more stock, carrots, celery, and whatever rice or noodles are left for soup, I have added carrots, peas, potatoes, celery and slapped it in a  pie crust for pot pie.  I have also added chili powder, cheese, and cumin, and turned it into chicken enchiladas.  I mean, you get my drift, you don't have to have the same leftovers again the next night.

On a side note.  This whole "shredding" thing, really REALLY sends me over the edge.  I know I could use my fingers however, usually I am not patient enough to let things cool enough for that.  By the way, as I type this, my mouth is watering and I have chicken skin (goose bumps) just thinking about it.  If I use two forks, and the tines get stuck in each other, it almost sends me into shock.  I am the woman who can't put silverware away in a drawer because it touches each other  (now my teeth hurt) and the sound, OMG the sound.  OK, I can't talk about it anymore.

Here is this easy recipe that is probably one of the most versatile recipes on my website as far as leftover remakes!

4lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 can cream of celery soup
1 cup chicken stock
1 T. onion powder
1 tsp. garlic powder
salt and pepper to taste
parsley to sprinkle on top if you choose

Place chicken breasts into your slow cooker.  In a bowl combine, soups, stock, onion powder, garlic powder and salt and pepper.  You may want to wait on the salt since the canned soups are fairly sodium laden (hangs head in shame).  Mix ingredients until completely combined.  Pour over chicken, flip chicken around in the mixture, cover, and set your slow cooker on high for 3-4 hours or low for 6-7 hours.  When it is done, remove chicken to a plate and shred.

When it is all shredded, add back into your creamy gravy-ish mixture and stir. 

Serve over rice or egg noodles.  We love both but did egg noodles this time!

I know this photo isn't the greatest, sometimes that just happens, but trust me when I tell you, it is comforting, filling and plain old good for the tummy!

ENJOY!

Hearty Ham and Bean Soup

Haven't we discussed this before?  Me, enjoying cooking things I don't care to eat?   Is anyone else that way?  I love cooking everything even if I don't always feel like I would put it in my mouth for love nor money!  I love this way this smells cooking, just LOVE it.  I don't do beans, we all know this from Chefwannabe secret #3044 or something.  Maybe I am odd.  But I don't think I can be the only one!

 

 

This is a dish that was an old standby growing up.  If we had ham, which was afforded only on holidays, my mom never threw the ham bone out.  She always made a huge pot of ham and bean soup.  Yuck!   My mom was never big on lots of seasoning, and this is one dish, I agree with her on.  Basics my friends, just the basics.  Let the ham and chicken stock do the work.  My mom of course used all water, but I decided to add that little extra element of flavor by trading out half with chicken stock.  I tasted the broth, and it was awesome!

 

Some of you are wondering if you can do this with canned beans, and the answer is yes.  You can.  But if you have the time, do dried.  Do not salt your soup, your ham and stock should take care of that.  Let anyone who wants to raise their blood pressure a couple of hundred points add their own!  (btw that comment comes from a salt fanatic working hard to not use AS much)  Anyway if you use canned beans, you don't need to cook it as long, just long enough to infuse beautiful ham flavor into them.  I would say an hour, on a low simmer. 



Enjoy this dish friends!  Good old home cookin'!

 

2 cups dried white northern beans
1 lb ham bone or ham hocks
2 cups chicken stock
2 cups water
1 small onion diced fine
1 small carrot grated
1 cup dice ham (optional)

The night before.....

In a large bowl, add in dried beans.  Add water, until they are covered plus about 3 inches.  DO NOT SALT.  Let sit overnight. 

After a long rest......

In a large pot, add in onions, carrot, ham bone, beans, water, ham (if using) and stock.  Give a good stir and simmer for 2 hours, or until beans are tender, stirring every 30 minutes or so.  The more you stir, the thicker your soup will be. Roughing up the beans will smoosh them and allow the soup to thicken more. Simmer with the lid off the last 30 minutes.  I served up a bowl that was more soupy and then thickened up the rest!

Slow Cooker Method:
Add all ingredients to slow cooker and cook on low for 8 hours.  You will have a more soup like consistency so using an immersion blender, blend your soup slightly.  You can do this by adding about 1/3 of your soup into a food processor or blender and adding it back in as well!

Your "me no likey beans" Chefwannabe

Wienerspaetzle Soup

Clever name huh?  I know.

You know what time of year it is, don't you?  Cooler weather, FINALLY.  Leaves falling off the tree.  Chilly breezes at night, rain and clouds.  You are right, it is SOUP season!  Some people call it fall or autumn, I call it soup.  Soup weather, soup season, soup, soup, soup.  I especially like soup with noodles.  TONS of noodles.  BUT, have you ever had leftover soup and the noodles soak up all the broth and get mushy and overcooked and, oh what a pot of gross it becomes.  Well, I found something that won't do that. 

OK, my 4 year old great niece is laying here by me.  The rest of the Husker fans are in the living room, we choose NO Husker game.  So I just said to her, "What do you have to say about soup Leyana"   Here is what she has to say, "Chicken noodle soup, chicken noodle soup, chicken noodle soup with a soda on the side".

I love spaetzle.  I am seriously like....addicted!  Have you ever used it in place of noodles in soup?  I wanted to combine Wienerschnitzle and Spaetzle into a soup, but you can use them as noodles in any soup!  They never get mushy, never bloat.  They freeze and store beautifully!  Give this soup a try, it is so good, nice texture and flavor.  Make sure to salt and pepper to your taste!!

4 cups beef broth/stock
4 cups chicken broth/stock
1 lb pork, cut into strips or chunks.
1 large carrot, chopped
1 batch of Spaetzle
1/2 cup of parsley (minced fine or just ripped)
salt and pepper to taste

In a large pot, bring beef and chicken stock to a boil, add in carrots and pork.   Let simmer, covered for 15 minutes.  Prepare spaetzle dough and after the soup has cooked 15 minutes, make your spaetzle right into the pot.  Gently stir, and when all spaetzle is made, let cook for 5 minutes covered.  Add parsley just before serving. 

Enjoy!

Your "soup-izing everything"

Homestyle Beef and Noodles

Good Evening everyone!  I hope that the day brought you happiness and all things good!  I was just telling all of you on Facebook how I was listening to the song of nature.  I still am while I type this blog up.  (I am a little behind).   It reminded me of how cluttered life can be.  With sounds, with nonsense, with negativity and with chaos.   I threw it all away today!  It kinda of feels refreshing!

Anyway, as I try and relate that first random paragraph to the dish I am sharing with you.  I think about how cluttered our food lives can be.  How over the top thing can get.  Sometimes we just feel like getting back to basics.  You may notice that is kind of how I roll with food.  Oh, of course I love my share of fancy food, but real families, real lives, and real budgets don't always allow for buying fancy ingredients or going to fancy places to eat your luxuries in food. 

When my husband and I were first together and I would cook things like mashed potatoes and gravy or roast or fried chicken he always say it was "farm food".  Ironically I grew up in a tiny town, but not a farm.  It just was homecookin' in my world.  This homestyle beef and noodles is just that.  Good ol' home cookin'!  You know I love all things that involve the word "noodle".  It is my greatest culinary weakness.  But this is a one pot dish that will warm you from the inside out.  It is creamy, hearty and so good, you will be glad this recipe will feed an army.  Leftovers are just as fabulous.  (although you may want to add a splash of stock when you reheat the next day to get more of the gravy feel).  Like I mentioned this recipe will feed an army and you may want to half it.  OR you may want to put some in the freezer for a later meal.   I also took some help from the store tihs time.  Normally I would make homemade noodles, they are easy peasy and no problem at all.  BUT, some of you may or may not know about my recent pasta roller/kitchenaid mishap.........*grrrr*.  So I did use the homestyle pasta from the freezer section of the grocery store because I think dried egg noodles are great, but not my first choice for this dish!  If you decide to use egg noodles it is still going to be fabulous, because let's face it, I wouldn't share bad food with all of you!  Just a personal preference for this particular dish.  Btw, your store will likely have a store brand of these noodles which are exactly the same, so save yourself some moola if you buy them! 

So let us get down to the nitty gritty of it all (is that a farm term?) 

You will need:
1 tsp olive oil
1 T butter
2-3  lbs of beef, cubed (any amount between there, I used 2.5)
8 cups beef stock, divided (2 standard size boxes, leave 1 cup set aside)
2 cups water
3 pkgs of frozen noodles or 2 large bags of egg noodles. 
4 T cornstarch
1 T black pepper

In a LARGE pot, add in olive oil and butter.  When it is melted, add in cubed beef.  Salt and pepper.  Toss for 3-5 minutes in the pan until cooked through, or very close to cooked through. (if you like rare beef, cook less).  Remove from pot unto a plate.

Add in 7 cups of stock, 2 cups water, 1 T of pepper and salt to taste.  You want your broth seasoned well before the pasta goes in, so it will flavor the pasta well! While you are waiting for it to come to a boil, add cornstarch to your reserved cup of stock.  Mix thoroughly.  Set aside.  When stock boils, add in noodles.  Let cook 3 minutes short of time directed on the package.  At this time add beef back in, and let it cook the last 3 minutes with the lid on and turn down to low heat.  When it is done, take your cornstarch/beef stock mixture, you may need to stir it again and add into the pot stirring slowly, it will start to thicken into a gravy almost immediately.  When all combined, turn the heat off, put the lid on and let is sit 5 minutes.  Then serve! 

Cooking the meat first leaves you great flavor to help flavor your stock!  If you want a stronger beef flavor, through in a couple of beef bouillon cubes.  I did just that myself.  Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't.  I don't feel like I got the BEST quality stock, so I wanted to bump it up just a hair.  This can be added anytime, just make sure the cubes or granules are dissolved.  I don't typically use bouillon because of the salt factor.  I figured in a pot of food this big, a couple would not kill anyone and they really made just the right amount of difference.  I would just watch the amount of salt you add, because there is so much in the bouillon. 

I hope on some chilly, rainy, snowy, or windy night....  No wait, on ANY night.  You feed your family this belly warming dish!

This is the official end of my "break".  I should have had this typed up for you 2 days ago, but, I got lazy!  Back to work my friends, enjoy your evening and thanks so much for being part of FoodThoughtsOfaChefWannabe!

 

Your "use a fork, not a spoon..."chefwannabe

 

To:George, Love, Chris - Food Memories, Scotch Eggs

 

 

I am so glad to see Friday!!  My husband took a 3 day weekend for my birthday so I am hoping we get to do something fun!  We always have taken each others birthday's off of work to spend with each other.  We celebrate a birthday pretty big at our house, every single year.  We have a blast!  

My husband grew up a bit of a military brat.  He lived many places and occasionally when the mood strikes I ask him about his favorite dishes from places he has lived and I try to recreate them.  I enjoy trying new things and I enjoy the happiness it brings him when I bring back a memory for him.  I think it has something to do with all that mushy love stuff, but not sure.  His opinion is, people love these or hate these.  I was positive I would be the latter, but....no, I love them!  

Now, regarding the sausage...
Let me just settle the score for my British friends.  I used sausage that I thought would work for what was available.  Truth be told, I didn't look into it very far or look very hard for a closer match with the sausage traditionally used.  I do not know exactly what kind of sausage is used but, I know it looks like the inside of an American hot dog and I almost lost my lunch when I saw it.  

So though the sausage will not be the traditional or proper kind that should be used, it is what I thought was most readily available to most Americans.  HOWEVER, in hindsight and hindtaste (another non word), I would have used regular ground pork.  The sage in the sausage, I am told, is what took away from how it should have tasted.  You choose, but I used just an original pork sausage.  

The consistency was also all wrong with the pork sausage so I put it to my food processor, put in about 1 tbsp of flour and let it whirl for a good minute or better.  It ground it down further and gave it this creepy texture that my husband says was perfect.  So before you start, make sure to do that if you have a food processor.  

That being said, we better get started.  I can't wait to make these for a brunch!

1 lb ground sausage or pork (prepared in a food processor if you have one)
1/2 cup flour
1 cup bread crumbs (I always use fresh)
1 egg, beaten
4 eggs, hard boiled and peeled.
veg oil or oil of your choice for frying
Salt and Pepper for breadcrumbs to taste

You will need to sprinkle a little flour down on your counter or board to keep the sausage from sticking.  It is going to be a nightmare if you don't. Divide sausage into 4 equal parts.   Roll or press it out until it is about big enough to cover the egg.

You can wrap the egg in it and then kind of smoosh it around to make it work.

Dredge your egg in some flour before you wrap the sausage around it.  You can push and pull and squish until it is covered. 

Try to keep it in a little bit of an oblong shape.  When the egg is completely covered in sausage dip in the beaten egg, and then cover in breadcrumbs that you have salt and peppered to taste.  Make sure to set them on a plate when you are done.  Do this with each egg and refrigerate until oil is hot.

Bring your oil to about 300 degrees. You want the oil hot enough to sizzle and fry but not so hot that the outside will burn before the sausage is cooked.  I used about 2 inches of oil, and just continually moved the egg around gently.  It will take approx 5 minutes.

You want the egg to be moved about every minute to keep from sticking or burning.  Pull out and drain on a paper towel. 
 

You can eat this hot, room temp or cold!!  They are delicious and as you can see, my husband has his own way of eating them.  *he said, "my British friends would be appauled"*.  

With jelly.....he is becoming quite the ham, isn't he?  I think he ROCKS!

Your "scotch eggs were really invented in England in 1851"chefwannabe

Chris