Ok, so I finally had a reason to make my peach chicken again which of course gives me a reason to blog about it! My wife was off to a jewelry party and then a girls afternoon so I was tasked with making dinner. We have chicken, we have peaches...duh-duhda! I made this once before in such dire circumstances but it didn't turn out quite as good. I have learned from my mistakes and now I share it with you in all it's modified glory! For the original recipe click Here.
First off you need a lightly greased 9x13 pan. Second, they recommend 8 chicken breasts but I'd go with around 6, cut in half and/or filleted in that the thinner they are, the better. This recipe is also nice and simple.
Ingredients
8 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
1 cup brown sugar
4 fresh peaches - peeled, pitted and sliced
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
Now, I have yet to make this with the lemon juice and it turned out just great last time so I'm not sure what that does. But it does call for it so it's up to you. Also, if you don't have fresh peaches, you can substitute canned peaches but I suggest you go to the original recipe and read the reviews to find out what people did to adjust for the sugary aspect of canned vs. fresh peaches. Ours were frozen fresh and defrosted.
I sprinkle roughly two tablespoons or so of brown sugar in the bottom of the pan before putting in the chicken breasts. I'm all about uniform flavor. Put in the chicken and hopefully it fills most of the bottom of the pan. If you do lemon juice, this is probably where I'd do it. Take 1/2 cup of the brown sugar and sprinkle it over the chicken breasts. Then put on the peach slices.
Add the other spices to the remaining 1/2 cup of brown sugar and mix together with a fork. This allows for that nice uniform flavoring. Sprinkle the brown sugar/spice mixture over everything.
Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. They recommend basting occassionally with the juices. I don't usually pay enough attention to an oven-baked item to do that.
Whilst that was baking I prepped for rice and decided to make some of my garlic potatoes. This time however, I left some of the skin on the red potatoes because I can and it makes peeling them go faster. Then I sliced and started cooking them with 1/4 of a cup of butter. I put in two cloves of garlic soon after. I added 1/2 a white onion as well this time and it cooked up pretty good. However, for the amount of time you have to cook the potatoes in a frying pan, I might suggest prepping the potatoes before putting the chicken in the oven. Stir them often to evenly distribute the butter and flavor. I also added some taragon near the end for color.
And that's what was for dinner!
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
Stroganof
Well, Thursday was boiled potatoes, nothing spectacular and Saturday was tacos. If you don't know how to make tacos, you need some serious kitchen help. Sunday we ate at my parents house. On Friday however, we had stroganof. It's a recipe I had never had until I got married. It's simple and pretty quick to make but always a crowd pleaser.
Rice:
Since this is a bulk portion of the meal you will want to make a fair amount. For my family of 7 I make 2.5 cups of rice and 5 cups of water.
Frozen Veggies:
We do frozen because they taste better than canned. Typically corn or peas. Dump some in a Pampered Chef Microcooker, add water, microwave on high for 3 minutes. Drain, add butter and serve.
Stroganof
Of course this is the flavor of the whole meal. I'll give you our portions for my size of family. You can cut it in half for smaller families or allow some leftovers because it re-heats rather well.
Brown 1 lb of ground beef with salt and pepper to taste while you are cooking. It usually doesn't take a ton of salt or pepper but it definitely adds something to the end product. Remove excess grease and add in one family-size can of cream of mushroom soup and roughly 14 oz of sour cream. Stir the meat, soup and sour cream together over medium low heat until the soup and sour cream are a nice uniform color. Remove from heat and serve.
We scoop the rice on to the plate and then scoop some of the stroganof on top. We let our 3 older kids mix it together if they want but we mix it for the twins because they eat it better that way.
And that's what was for dinner.
Rice:
Since this is a bulk portion of the meal you will want to make a fair amount. For my family of 7 I make 2.5 cups of rice and 5 cups of water.
Frozen Veggies:
We do frozen because they taste better than canned. Typically corn or peas. Dump some in a Pampered Chef Microcooker, add water, microwave on high for 3 minutes. Drain, add butter and serve.
Stroganof
Of course this is the flavor of the whole meal. I'll give you our portions for my size of family. You can cut it in half for smaller families or allow some leftovers because it re-heats rather well.
Brown 1 lb of ground beef with salt and pepper to taste while you are cooking. It usually doesn't take a ton of salt or pepper but it definitely adds something to the end product. Remove excess grease and add in one family-size can of cream of mushroom soup and roughly 14 oz of sour cream. Stir the meat, soup and sour cream together over medium low heat until the soup and sour cream are a nice uniform color. Remove from heat and serve.
We scoop the rice on to the plate and then scoop some of the stroganof on top. We let our 3 older kids mix it together if they want but we mix it for the twins because they eat it better that way.
And that's what was for dinner.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Barbeque chicken, rice and potatos
Last night was another one of those nights. My wife had intended to start dinner but decided to straighten her craft room a little first. Then I got home and her 15 minute cleaning session had stretched to an hour. I asked what she wanted me to start on for dinner. At this point we are looking at almost 6pm so it has to be simple. She suggests BBQ chicken like that kind I made a week or so ago. Off I went.
For reference, when I say BBQ chicken, that mean chicken with BBQ sauce. Food cooked on the BBQ is referred to as 'grilled' or 'on the grill'.
The most time consuming piece of this was defrosting the chicken and peeling the red potatoes.
BBQ Chicken:
I made 4 chicken breasts for our family of 7(5 kids, age 8 and under). Normally this gives us some leftovers but not with this recipe.
Cut the chicken into roughly 1 inch x 2 inch pieces. Pour 2-3 tablespoons of veggie oil into the pan and add the chicken. Then cook the chicken on a little more than medium heat. Right around 7:30 on the stove dial. Let it cook until about half of a medium-sized piece is done and then sprinkle 2-3 tablespoons of packed brown sugar over the chicken and flip them. Let it cook for a while until you figure it's almost done.
At this point add 1/2 cup of packed brown sugar and stir it around. Then pour in 1 cup of Kraft Original BBQ sauce. Other brands might work as well but these were on sale for 50 cents and we stocked up.
Stir around the sauce and chicken and let boil. Frequently turn your chicken or baste with the sauce in the pan. You can turn the heat down to medium if you want but the main idea is that now we are making a glaze and cooking it on to the chicken. I figure it's done when everything else is ready or when I turn the heat down the sauce is quite thick and the chicken has a dark red color to it due to the glazing.
Rice:
We get the inexpensive rice that has to cook for 20 minutes so I usually get that started just before I start cooking the chicken. Make enough for your family. 4 cups of water and 2 cups of uncooked rice is just about perfect for us.
Red Potatoes:
We were given a 50 lb bag of red potatoes from my in-laws and I figured we had better start eating. I'm not a big fan of potatoes of any kind but less of red potatoes usually because they taste like they dirt in them. Hands down, this was the best I have ever had them.
I peeled like 8 of them because they were small. Enough to fill a 9 inch skillet half way would be fine. I put 4 tblsp of butter in the pan and turned it on low while I sliced the potatoes and put them in. Then I added two cloves of garlic(pressed) and mixed everything around. I turned up the heat to medium and covered it. You need to stir every couple of minutes at the beginning to spread the garlic and butter over everything. Here's the other trick. I added 2-3 tblsp of water about every five minutes once I felt the butter was fairly evenly distributed. I believe this helps soften up the potatoes but I'm not sure. It's just what I did in hopes of speeding up the process and helping the potatoes to not burn. When they are soft enough to cut with the spatula edge and little to no effort they are done.
It took a little over an hour from pulling the chicken out of the freezer to done. I started the rice too early but that didn't kill the meal. My son loved the potatoes and I could put the leftovers from all three dishes in a small tupperware container. It was so good my 1-year old twins both asked for seconds and devoured them.
And that's what was for dinner.
For reference, when I say BBQ chicken, that mean chicken with BBQ sauce. Food cooked on the BBQ is referred to as 'grilled' or 'on the grill'.
The most time consuming piece of this was defrosting the chicken and peeling the red potatoes.
BBQ Chicken:
I made 4 chicken breasts for our family of 7(5 kids, age 8 and under). Normally this gives us some leftovers but not with this recipe.
Cut the chicken into roughly 1 inch x 2 inch pieces. Pour 2-3 tablespoons of veggie oil into the pan and add the chicken. Then cook the chicken on a little more than medium heat. Right around 7:30 on the stove dial. Let it cook until about half of a medium-sized piece is done and then sprinkle 2-3 tablespoons of packed brown sugar over the chicken and flip them. Let it cook for a while until you figure it's almost done.
At this point add 1/2 cup of packed brown sugar and stir it around. Then pour in 1 cup of Kraft Original BBQ sauce. Other brands might work as well but these were on sale for 50 cents and we stocked up.
Stir around the sauce and chicken and let boil. Frequently turn your chicken or baste with the sauce in the pan. You can turn the heat down to medium if you want but the main idea is that now we are making a glaze and cooking it on to the chicken. I figure it's done when everything else is ready or when I turn the heat down the sauce is quite thick and the chicken has a dark red color to it due to the glazing.
Rice:
We get the inexpensive rice that has to cook for 20 minutes so I usually get that started just before I start cooking the chicken. Make enough for your family. 4 cups of water and 2 cups of uncooked rice is just about perfect for us.
Red Potatoes:
We were given a 50 lb bag of red potatoes from my in-laws and I figured we had better start eating. I'm not a big fan of potatoes of any kind but less of red potatoes usually because they taste like they dirt in them. Hands down, this was the best I have ever had them.
I peeled like 8 of them because they were small. Enough to fill a 9 inch skillet half way would be fine. I put 4 tblsp of butter in the pan and turned it on low while I sliced the potatoes and put them in. Then I added two cloves of garlic(pressed) and mixed everything around. I turned up the heat to medium and covered it. You need to stir every couple of minutes at the beginning to spread the garlic and butter over everything. Here's the other trick. I added 2-3 tblsp of water about every five minutes once I felt the butter was fairly evenly distributed. I believe this helps soften up the potatoes but I'm not sure. It's just what I did in hopes of speeding up the process and helping the potatoes to not burn. When they are soft enough to cut with the spatula edge and little to no effort they are done.
It took a little over an hour from pulling the chicken out of the freezer to done. I started the rice too early but that didn't kill the meal. My son loved the potatoes and I could put the leftovers from all three dishes in a small tupperware container. It was so good my 1-year old twins both asked for seconds and devoured them.
And that's what was for dinner.
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