Green Chile Chicken Casserole

Soooo, it's been awhile since I've posted!  Summer has been busy!  Here's an easy favorite that feeds our family these days.  

For this recipe, you'll need:

• 1 10 oz can green chile enchilada sauce
• 1 4 oz can green chiles (I usually use MILD, but if you're brave - go for it!)
• 4 oz block of cream cheese (half of the block)
• 2 cups (or so) chopped cooked chicken
• 1 cup shredded cheese (I used colby jack this time, but monterey jack or anything would work, choose what you like)
• tortilla chips

Mix first 4 ingredients in a pan on stove and heat through.  Sprinkle a layer of crushed tortilla chips in greased pan, top with half of chicken mixture.  Repeat the layers and top with tortilla chips and cheese.  

Bake for 10-15 minutes at 400 degrees or until a nice crust forms on the top - then you'll know it's ready!

Tastes like a yummy enchilada, without so many steps!  Great for weeknight dinner with corn - easy dinner for the family.  Enjoy!

Oven Baked Chicken Nuggets

Here's another recipe from my Everyday Food magazine - and another super easy one that my family gobbled up! I doubled the dry ingredients from the original recipe & added my favorite garlic powder (bc that just makes everything better, no?), and it worked just great for us.

For this recipe, you'll need (quantities have been doubled, so if using less chicken, cut dry ingredients in half):

• about a pound of boneless, skinless chicken (I used almost 2 lbs of boneless, skinless, tenders, which is why I upped the dry ingredients, to coat all the chicken)
• 2 cups Panko (japanese breadcrumbs)
• 2/3 cup grated parmesan
• 1/2 tbs garlic powder
• coarse salt
• 2 tbs vegetable oil
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 3 large eggs, lightly beaten
• cooking spray

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Spread panko on rimmed baking sheet and bake until golden brown (6-8 min). Immediately put in a separate dish and add parmesan, garlic powder, and salt. Add oil and mix to combine. Increase oven temp to 450 degrees.

Organize your food prep station: cut chicken into 2 inch pieces, place flour, eggs, and panko in separate dishes. This is easiest for me when I have everything in order and it ends up at the baking sheet, ready to pop in the oven!

Set up a wire rack on a rimmed baking sheet, coat with cooking spray (I used olive oil again), at the end of your assembly line. Then coat chicken with flour, dip in egg, coat with panko, place on rack.

Here's what my nuggets looked like before I put them in the oven.

Bake chicken at 450 degrees until cooked through, about 12 minutes (two 6 minute increments), but flipping halfway through. This step is somewhat annoying, but I used tongs & it was relatively easy, then I popped it back in the oven for the remaining 6 minutes.

And here's a quick picture before we ate! Good food enjoyed by all!

Roma Chicken

We have been enjoying this recipe since we were first married.  It's been a staple, consistently good, easy, & tasty dish.  It's evolved a little over the years and this time around may have been my favorite!

For this recipe, you'll need:

• 1 tbs olive oil
• 1 tbs butter
• 4 boneless, skinless, chicken breast halves
• 1 onion, sliced
• 2 garlic cloves, pressed
• 1 can petite diced tomatoes
• 1 cup chicken broth
• italian seasoning grinder
• 1/2 cup sliced green olives
• Hot cooked rice

Brown chicken in pan with olive oil and butter.  Season chicken.  I seasoned mine with salt, pepper, and, of course, garlic powder!  After browning chicken, remove chicken from skillet.

Add onions and garlic and cook until softened.  Then add chicken broth and return chicken to skillet.

Add tomatoes and green olives.  Cover, reduce heat and simmer 20-25 minutes or until chicken is no longer pink in center.  When it's finished cooking, I cut the chicken up into smaller chunks before serving with rice.

This makes a lot, so I usually pour the leftover chicken over the rice to keep and the next day it tastes just as good with the tomato-y rice!  Yum!

We had it this night with our favorite green beans - Enjoy!

Chicken and Dumplings

This was my first attempt ever at chicken & dumplings.  I will admit I love Cracker Barrel chicken & dumplings and I wanted to see if I could make something comparable.  I found this great recipe here

and thought it would be a good starting point.  Next time I will make my own dumplings (per the recipe), but this time I already had dumplings on hand that I wanted to use.  I also added salt, garlic powder (of course!!) and pepper, to taste, to my batch at the end.  This got the Mister's stamp of approval so I believe I did good!!

 

For this you'll need:

• 4 quarts chicken broth
• about 3 cups shredded chicken (I used as much chicken as I could peel off the fryer)
• 1 bag dumplings
• 4 tbsp flour
• 5 tbsp water
• salt (to taste)
• pepper (to taste)
• garlic powder (to taste)

Bring broth to a boil and add dumplings.  Cook per package directions.  Mine took about 7 minutes.

Mix flour and water thoroughly in small bowl.  Pour into broth.  Add chicken.  Add salt, pepper, and garlic powder.  Mix and heat through.

Doesn't it look yummy??

**It's important to note that if you use the bagged dumplings, you need to add some salted butter at the end of this recipe (trust me on this, friends, it makes it PERFECT!).  I'd say about 2-3 tbsp depending on taste for a large batch like this.

Perfect fall comfort food!!  Seriously, so good!!  I'll let you know when I make the dumplings from scratch, it will be soon!

Chicken Stock 101

I wanted to do a post devoted solely to chicken broth bc I feel like I've made a cooking breakthrough and I wanted to share it with you.  I know it sounds silly, but I always thought it was too hard to make stock.  It's like the cookie dough thing, now that I realize how easy it is, I may never buy canned chicken broth again!  I made my broth on Tuesday night after dinner while we were watching our Rangers beat the Tigers.  Anywho...  

For this stock I used:

• 1 whole fryer chicken (about 5 lbs)  - giblets removed
• 2 celery stalks (cut in three pieces each)
• 2 carrots (cut in three pieces each)
• 1 onion (chopped in large pieces)
• water

I just threw everything in the stock pot, covered it with water, brought it to a boil over medium/high heat, covered it and turned it to low, and let it simmer for about an hour.  Easy!

I tend to think that it's done when the chicken is floating.  Gross, yes, but that's how I roll.

Then took the chicken out and let it sit (and the broth, too) for 30 minutes.  

Then I strained the broth and put it into two containers, covered with foil, into the refrigerator.

The next day my first batch looked like this - gross, again, don't you think??  Yes!

But here's where you get to skim the fat off and throw it away - something I found surprisingly satisfying.  I'm a cooking nerd, what can I say?

After skimming the fat, I started to divide my stock into containers for freezing.

I got this great idea from my friend, Ashley :) I poured the chicken broth into ice cube trays to freeze and use as needed.  Each tray holds about 2 cups of broth, so it's perfect for many recipes that call for just that.  Also, if I'm making a side dish, I can just pop in a couple cubes of broth for added flavor.  I love this idea!

This is the reserve broth ready for freezing.  I kept about 2 and a half quarts out for a recipe and this was what I was going to freeze.  I figured that all in all, I made about 20 cups of chicken stock.

I covered each tray with wax paper, foil, labeled it, and into the freezer it went.  This kitchen staple will be a regular at our house starting now!

Awesomely Yummy King Ranch Chicken

Let me explain this recipe.  This recipe turned into quite a journey for me.  I made King Ranch Chicken a few years ago and my husband & I were not liking the recipe.  The flavor was all off.  Bland.  Boring.  If you were ever lucky enough to have King Ranch Chicken from Celebrity Bakery, back when they were still around, I wanted it to taste like that.  A little kick, just enough, but not too much.

So I took a few years off, then found this recipe in my Southern Living Best Fall Recipes, so I thought it was time to try it again.  Now, this time the recipe had me making my own chicken broth, using a whole chicken, things I wasn't used to and thought I was crazy for attempting!!  I was cursing this recipe from the beginning, thinking "why did I think this was a good idea??!?"

Well, I'll tell you why!!  BECAUSE IT'S AWESOME!!  After I tasted the final product I thought, "Totally worth it"!  The boiling the whole chicken, making my own stock, shredding my own chicken. Totally, awesomely, worth it.  This stuff is good, friends!!  Like me, you'll thank yourself when you're done!!

For this recipe you'll need:

• 1 tbsp butter
•  1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 medium sized green bell pepper, chopped
• 1 garlic clove, pressed (I smashed and chopped mine - and used 3 cloves :)
• 1 can cream of mushroom soup
• 1 can cream of chicken soup
• 2 (10 oz) cans diced tomatoes and green chiles, drained
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp ground cumin (I didn't have any cumin on hand, i.e. I forgot it the two times I went to Target this week, but it was just fine without it)
• 1 tsp chili powder (original recipe called for Mexican style chili powder, but I used regular)
• 3 cups grated sharp Cheddar cheese
• 12 (6 inch) fajita size corn tortillas, cut into 1/2 inch strips

You'll also need:

• (4 1/2 to 5 lb) whole chicken
•  2 celery ribs, cut into 3 pieces each
• 2 carrots, cut into 3 pieces each

Okay, this is the part that threw me for a loop.  I was not prepared for dealing with the "whole chicken".  But, I put my big girl pants on and did what I had to do.  "Remove giblets" apparently means sticking your hand in a freezing cold chicken carcass and taking out whatever you can pull out.  Yuck.  I did that.  But I didn't like it.  

I rinsed my sad little bird and put it in a stock pot (original recipe called for a Dutch Oven, but again, don't have a Dutch Oven so stock pot it was).  After bird was in the pot, I covered it with water and added my carrots and celery, brought to a boil over medium high heat; covered, and reduced heat to low.  Simmer for 50 minutes to an hour or until chicken is done.  It took me longer than an hour for mine to cook, just keep checking until it's done.  I didn't take an after picture bc I honestly thought it wasn't going to be edible.  That's the zero confidence I had in my chicken stock/chicken experiment.

But I continued to follow the directions, let it cool for 30 minutes, removed the chicken from broth, reserve 3/4 cup cooking liquid (I ended up using about 1 cup instead).  Strain any remaining liquid; reserve for another use - does anyone have any good ideas about how to store chicken broth?  Because this made a ton.  More on that later...

Okay, so I wasn't feeling super confident about my broth/chicken, but I decided to soldier on...

Melt butter in large skillet over medium heat.  Add onion, saute 6-7 minutes or until tender.  Add bell pepper and garlic, and saute 3-4 minutes.  Stir in reserved broth, soups, rotel, and spices.  Cook and stir for 8 more minutes.

Then it will look like this.  I have to admit, it was starting to smell good and I was starting to have a little bit of hope for this recipe.  Not a lot of hope, but some, nonetheless.  So I began shredding the chicken.  Whole chicken yield A. LOT. of chicken!  This was another teaching moment for me.  I bought the whole fryer chicken for 4 dollars this week.  That's a ton of chicken for 4 dollars!  Totally cheaper than buying chicken breasts or tenders or whatever!   If I can just get past the whole "this whole raw chicken grosses me out" thing, I'll be good.

Layer half of the chicken in a 13x9 baking dish - I greased mine with olive oil.

Then top chicken with half the soup mixture and a cup of cheese

Then top with half of the tortilla strips.  Repeat the layers once more, topping with one more cup of cheese.  Cover and put in 350 oven for 50 minutes... 

then uncover and bake for 10-15 minutes more.  It was smelling GOOD at this point!!  I was hoping it was as good as it smelled!!

It came out looking bubbly and yummy!  Let stand for 10 minutes before serving.

For a side, I got out a can of pinto beans, rinsed and drained them, and put them in a pan.  Then, since I had a BOATLOAD of chicken broth in the fridge, I poured some chicken stock in with the pinto beans, added some season salt, pepper, and sea salt, and presto!  Yummy side!

Totally worth every minute!!  Next time I will make this on the weekend, but be assured, I will make this again!!

My Favorite Tortilla Soup

I started making this tortilla soup when we first got married.  It started from some recipe I found in a magazine and evolved over the years.  All members of the family will eat it so that's always good around here.  My husband is not super enthused about soups, but this is one that he eats without complaining.  In fact, he was just warning our son this morning that the arrival of fall would be Mommy putting more soups on the menu - then he asked me what was for dinner - haha!!  It's the first day of fall so Tortilla Soup, of course!  Viva la fall and viva la soup!!

For this soup, you'll need:

• 2 cups cooked chicken (chopped - you could use rotisserie chicken for this - I baked several chicken breasts in the oven with olive oil, season salt, pepper, and garlic powder)
• 2 tbs olive oil
• 1 can MILD chopped green chiles, drained
• 1 can petite diced tomatoes (usually I use 14.5 oz can, but only had the 28 oz can today, so I halved it bc the Mister isn't crazy about so many tomatoes :)
• 2 cans Mexicorn, drained
• 1 can black beans (drained, but not rinsed - but if you'd rather rinse, then rinse away)
• 1 can tomato paste
• 4 cans chicken broth
• 1 green pepper, seeded, diced
• 1/2 onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 tbs chili pepper (use less if you like, we like chili pepper around here)
• pepper, to taste

Saute green pepper, onion, and garlic in olive oil

Add chicken and one can of chicken broth.  I like to add the chicken at the beginning because I feel like the chicken gets some of the extra flavor from the onions and pepper.  Heat through.

The rest of it is just easy!  Welcome to my nerdy cooking self who thinks pictures like this are fun.  Add black beans, corn, tomatoes.

Add chiles and the other can of corn - isn't it pretty?

Then get out this.  This makes the soup a much prettier color to balance the grayish look that the black beans bring to the soup.   Add to tomato paste and remainder of chicken broth.

Mix together.  Here's what it looked like before I brought it to a boil.  Bring it to a boil, cover, reduce heat and simmer until ready to serve.  I think the longer the better on simmering, but it tastes good whether you have 20 minutes or 45...

I didn't get a pic of what it looked like after simmering in the pan, bc I was busy with the last step...

Grating the cheese to top the soup - we had colby jack and pepper jack this time around

Ladle your soup -

Top with cheese and tortilla chips, if desired.  Usually, I also add a little dollop of sour cream and sliced green olives (that may sound weird, but I love green olives on this soup) - we didn't have either of those tonight, but the soup was still fabulous!  Can't wait to eat some tomorrow bc it's even better on day two.  Viva la soup!!

Chicken A La King

I decided to make this recipe last week bc my mom used to make chicken a la king when I was growing up.  However, this recipe, which I thought was the one she used, I realized was totally different while I was putting it together.  Funny how you don't realize these things until you actually start mixing together the ingredients!  Haha!  So it was a new dish for our family!  And it turned out yummy & everyone in the family ate it so that equals success in my book.  It was pretty easy and fast, but as you will see, being fast made it a little tricky to document for the blog - it got a little crazy at the end!

For chicken a la king, you'll need:

• 1 cup sliced fresh mushrooms
• 1/4 c. chopped green sweet pepper
• 1/4 c. chopped onion
• 3 tbs butter or margarine
• 2 tbs all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 2 1/2 c. half-and-half or light cream
• 3 beaten egg yolks
• 2 tbs dry sherry
• 1 tbs lemon juice
• 2 c. cooked chicken
• 2 tbs diced pimiento

Now I have to brag on my hubby for a minute - he came home last week with new knives for the kitchen and I was beside myself with excitement!!  Our knives were so old and in desperate need of replacing, so I had basically forgotten what it was like to prepare food with knives that actually cut!!  And, Tommy, it came with kitchen scissors so I'm set for my next round with dicing bacon - yay! :)

So my first test into my new knives was dicing the green pepper, onion, and mushrooms.  For this test I used the "chef's knife" - oh, you know I sure felt like Julia Child! :)

Isn't it beautiful??  And it was like cutting butter.  Brazilliance.  I added more green pepper and onion than the recipe called for.  And probably more mushrooms too.  Cause that's how I roll.

Since I added more pepper and onion, I increased the butter slightly as well.  I probably put in about 4 tbs instead of 3.

Isn't that pretty?

Saute veggies until tender, not brown.

Stir in flour, salt, and paprika to make a roux.

Add half and half all at once.  I likened this to making my own cream of mushroom soup, a kitchen staple at our house.  It was really easy and with our new knives, who knows??  Maybe I'll start doing this more often!

Cook and stir until thickened and bubbly.  Then things got a little crazy and I didn't get a picture of the next step :)

Beat egg yolks in a small bowl (I used a pyrex measuring cup).  Stir about 1 cup of the thickened sauce into the beaten egg yolks - this is so the egg yolks don't cook weirdly into your dish - and I had to do it fast so I didn't end up with chicken a la king + scrambled eggs :)

Return mixture to saucepan.  Cook and stir over medium heat till bubbly.  Stir in sherry and lemon juice.  I didn't have sherry bc I couldn't find it at the store (I know, y'all are surprised I couldn't find my way around the wine aisle haha).  I think it would've been extra rich & good with the sherry, so hopefully I'll find it next time :)

Add chicken and pimientos.  I didn't measure my pimientos, just dumped in the whole jar.  And I made my chicken my usual way prior to putting it in the mix.  Heat through.

You can serve it with any sort of bread or pastry shell, so I made cream biscuits, of course!  The family really liked this meal and it was easy!  Yum!