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.
Monday, October 27, 2008
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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