Chicken Casserole

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Recently a friend asked me if there were any recipes I had discovered in the Recipe Box so far that I've made more than once. I thought hard about it- there aren't a lot of recipes I've made more than once (always new things to try, you know?), so it's not really a question of whether I've found any good recipes. After considering, I realised that yes, I now have a chocolate fudge cake I adore, a pound cake I've accidentally made twice (ha!) and a banana caramel cake I can't get enough of.

And now I also have this chicken recipe, which I've already made three times (and haven't even told you about it until now! I know!). The first time, I made this for myself when Judson was out of town for work and loved it so much I re-made it the day he got back so he could enjoy it too. The third time was this week when, suffering from the jetlag that comes from visiting Southeast Asia and then returning to Europe, and the culture shock that comes from hanging out in 38 degree-Celsius weather drinking out of coconuts for two weeks and then returning to a city in the throes of Christmas preparations, I couldn't think of a better way to warm our freezing-cold flat up.

I really thought I was in for another 'chicken in chicken sauce' type of event when I started this (which is why I made it when poor Judson was out of town), but it hasn't let me down yet, and I daresay you'll have the same results.* This recipe lends itself to the simple: you can make it with only the three required ingredients and it will be amazing, or you can add in whatever you have to hand, like half an onion, a leek or two, a rib of celery, some chopped bacon lardons or even a handful of roasted chestnuts. I think you could even swap the rice for quinoa for a whole-grain improvement, but I haven't tried it yet.

*Read the original recipe and you'll see why- it was written on a torn-off piece of receipt paper and it looks like a haiku written by someone who doesn't understand syllables:

cream celery or chicken SOUP
water & extra
brown on 1 sine
on top of rice
pipert 1 hr
salt

The verdict:

5 spoons out of five. No matter how you make it, this is a cosy, one-pan dish that will warm up your kitchen and have your entire house smelling like a home in no time. The best part? The leftovers heat up like a dream, so you're off dinner duty tomorrow night, too. It's not a classy recipe, but when you're jetlagged, cold, or just ready for an easy, warming dinner, this will definitely do the trick.

One year ago: Crazy Crust Apple Pie
two years ago: Chocolate Chiffon Cake

 

the recipe:

Chicken Casserole

the directions:

Preheat oven to 190C/375F.
Heat oil in an oven-proof skillet over medium heat.
Add chicken thighs, face down, and brown for 5 minutes until golden (more browning will occur in oven).
Flip over and cook for an additional 5 minutes.
Check one thigh for doneness by poking into thickest part and checking the colour of the juices. If juice is still red, continue browning for an additional 3-5 minutes (chicken should be JUST done when you remove it).
Remove chicken from pan, drain all but 1 tbsp of liquid and spoon rice evenly into the pan.
Pour soup over rice, then any additional ingredients you're adding, finishing by adding chicken to the pan last.
Pop into preheated oven and bake 15-20 minutes or until heated through and well-browned.

the ingredients:

2 tbsp oil
1 package chicken thighs (as many as will fit in your pan)
3 cups rice, cooked
1 can or 2 cups homemade cream of chicken or cream of celery soup
optional: lardons, leeks, onion, chestnuts, celery, garlic cloves, or anything else in your fridge that needs to be used up.

Fried Chicken & German Potato Salad

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Tomatoes not included in either recipe, but we ate them with the fried chicken in lieu of the tomato juice recommended by the recipe card, and i couldn't help but include them because of how beautiful they are this time of year.

When I was a kid, I always thought I hated potato salad. Generally it includes mayo, it never stays cold enough at picnics in Florida to make me feel safe, often there are bits of raw onion hiding in there… all of which were super off-putting to a wee Blair growing up.

Since then, I’ve expanded my palate (quite a bit, in fact), and I’ve learned to appreciate it when it’s homemade or a particularly good restaurant-style. But I never would have called myself a ‘fan,’ per se, until one night last November.

As previously discussed, Judson surprised me with the absolute best 30th birthday I could ever have dreamed of, in the company of three of my best friends in Paris and Berlin. The night we arrived in Berlin, we took naps after our late afternoon arrival and then took off to wander around the city. It was cold and dark, and Berlin is a city that does cosy well. So we wandered past restaurant after restaurant that had blazing fires, dark wood furniture, and hearty plates of food being served to rosy-cheeked diners. But everywhere we stopped was full to capacity even though it was just a random Wednesday night. We wandered farther and farther from our rented flat until we stumbled upon a place called Henne, which, we found out later, is literally just German for ‘chicken.’

We walked in and sipped (giant) steins of beer next to a woodstove while we waited for our table to open up, and when we sat down, we found out that their entire menu was: fried chicken, either a half or a whole, served with sauerkraut or potato salad. Naturally we ordered a few chickens and some of each side, then chowed down like there was no tomorrow. I don’t think in the entirety of my 30 years on this planet I have ever smelled anything that smelled as delicious as that restaurant. I don’t know that I will ever be as contented or as cosy as I was that night, and I don’t know if I will ever taste better fried chicken or potato salad. So recently when I realised that I have recipes for both fried chicken and ‘german’ potato salad in the box, I got excited. It’s my time to re-create the perfection of that night!

That said, having only made fried chicken once in my life, in the company of a seasoned expert in—I kid you not—Kentucky, I wasn’t super excited about attempting it on my own. I’ve never deep-fried anything on my own, and I’ve definitely never bought a 2 litre bottle of oil before. But, here we are, in a kitchen with no exhaust fan and a wall of ceramic plates above the stove that are now a little more coated in grease. Luckily, the weather has finally turned around here in Edinburgh, so when we made this chicken on Sunday night, we shut ourselves in the kitchen and threw the kitchen window open to air it out. I’d be lying if I said the kitchen didn’t smell like fried food for the rest of the night, but by the morning it was fresh and clean-smelling, and the house was none the worse for wear.

But I’m getting ahead of myself: making fried chicken wasn’t nearly as traumatic as I thought it would be, despite the very vague directives provided in the recipe. I did some additional research just to be sure I wasn’t going to start a grease fire, and despite checking with Alton Brown (king of all things) and Paula Deen (queen of all fried things), the best guidance I got was from a Jamie Oliver recipe, which replicated more or less what was included in the recipe but in further detail and with enough safety precautions to make me feel certain I wasn’t going to burn down my flat. It definitely took longer than I thought (I guess I’m used to ‘things I make on the stove’ being quicker than ‘things I make in the oven), but the result was so thoroughly satisfying that I regret nothing, I won’t be buying myself a deep-fryer anytime soon, but it’s nice to know that I at least have the capability to fry things. (Full disclosure: Judson was the one deciding when things were ‘done’ enough to remove from the oil, as well as the one who chopped up the chicken. But it was ALL ME who figured out the best way to finish the chicken in the oven without having a grease fire to contend with).

Honestly, though: the main memory I have of the first time I made fried chicken is getting burned like crazy from the popping oil, because we made it in a skillet. This time around, with the aid of my trusty Staub cocotte, neither of us got splattered even once (though we both had on aprons, just in case). It may not be the healthiest meal that we’ve ever eaten, but I can’t tell you the last time I had fried chicken (I KNOW it was before I moved to Scotland), so I’m not holding onto a lot of guilt about this one. Pair this with this impeccable (and mayonnaise-free!) German potato salad for the ultimate in picnic fare. Bonus points for eating it outside in the sunshine!

The verdict:
Fried chicken:

5 spoons out of five. This is a relatively simple way to celebrate spring (ok, ok, the start of summer if you live anywhere outside the UK), and it’s seriously just so tasty—plus, unlike chicken nuggets or fried chicken from restaurants, you know exactly what goes into this batch so at least it’s a little less unhealthy than the store-bought alternatives!

German Potato Salad:

4 spoons out of five. It's delicious, super easy, and perfect for this time of year. Enjoy!

one year ago: Oatmeal Toffee Lace Cookies (still an all-time fave in the Cowan kitchen!)

The recipe:

Fried Chicken

the directions:

Blend flour, salt, and pepper in a zippy bag.
Place a few pieces of chicken into the bag at a time and shake it up, pressing the flour into any non-coated parts.
Gently tap the chicken pieces as you remove them and set them aside while you heat the oil.
Pour oil into a skillet to the depth of 1-inch and heat over medium heat until shimmering.
(If you have a piece of bread handy, you can toss a bread cube into the oil to test the heat-- if it starts sizzling immediately, you're good to go!)
Once oil is hot, begin by putting the meaty pieces of chicken into the oil, a few at a time, making sure to not crowd the pan..
They'll sizzle and pop a lot, so it's worth wearing an apron or at least a t-shirt you don't care about.
While the chicken sizzles, preheat the oven to 160C/325F and place an oven-safe cooling rack on top of a cookie sheet.
Once chicken is golden-brown on the bottom, turn it over and continue to cook until cooked through-- this will take 8-10 minutes.
Remove chicken from oil using tongs, and place chicken on cooling rack positioned over cookie sheet.
Place the cookie sheet/cooling rack combo in the oven (DO NOT omit the cookie sheet or the chicken will drip oil into the oven and catch fire) and allow to cook while you finish the remaining chicken pieces in the oil, adding each piece to the tray in the oven as you finish it.
By the time you finish frying all of the pieces, the chicken should only need another 2-5 minutes in the oven. Check for doneness by pricking the thickest part of the leg with a sharp knife-- if juices run clear, you're good to go!

the ingredients:

½ c flour
4 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 chicken, cut into pieces
Vegetable or Peanut oil (a fresh bottle, as you're going to need a lot)

The recipe:

German Potato Salad

the directions:

Combine flour, sugar, 2 tbsp of the bacon drippings, salt, pepper, water, and vinegar.
Stir and cook until thickened.
Add mustard and onions and mix well.
Pour mixture over potatoes, and stir gently just until potatoes are coated.
Sprinkle with pancetta or lardons and garnish with the hard-boiled egg slices.

the ingredients:

1 ½ tbsp flour
1 tbsp sugar
6 oz pancetta or lardons, pan-fried until crisp, drippings reserved
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
½ c water
1/3 c cider vinegar
4 tsp mustard
3 tbsp onions, minced
3 c potatoes, sliced, boiled, and drained
2 eggs, hard-boiled and sliced

Battle of the Asian Chickens, or, Asian-Chicken Two Ways

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Today I present to you two different recipes for Asian-inspired, bone-in chicken… one delicious, and one so caustically salty that you probably should stay away from it unless you are either a goat or just want to know what it feels like to live inside a salt lick.

First of all, let’s discuss the medium: this is really embarrassing, but when I was a broke single girl, my favourite payday treat was buying a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store, and then eating it for three meals a day for three days straight to try to get through it all… but, because I only had ever bought these from the store and don’t (obviously) have a rotisserie in my kitchen, I just always figured I would never be able to make roast chickens as good as the ones from Kroger. (I told you it was embarrassing). Oh well, we all start somewhere.

Consequently, I’m always still amazed when I make a chicken dish that is delicious—but the truth is, it’s hard NOT to make delicious chicken when you’re working with a whole chicken instead of dried-up, flavourless, boneless, skinless chicken breasts. I remain, however, confused as to why every chicken recipe in the box seems to require ‘a whole chicken, cut-up.’ Using our knives, which are fairly decent, sharp, and new, I can’t cut up a chicken and even Judson is always kind of at a loss when it comes to hacking through the breastbone. Are chickens today eating more calcium and thus growing up with stronger bones? Did everyone in the 1950s own a cleaver and butcher block? Did whole chickens used to be sold cut up into their component pieces? Did housewives walk around with biceps like bodybuilders from cleaving chickens every day? These are the questions I just don’t know the answers to, but luckily I have a cooking partner who helps whenever there is knife requirements that my puny arms won’t handle.

Anyway, the more delicious of these two recipes does require you to remember to marinate the chicken—ideally overnight, but a few hours or even less will do if you’re in a rush. Seriously, though: if you have time to marinate this for a night, do it. You won’t be sorry. The acid in the grapefruit juice make the chicken so tender and the soy sauce leaves the skin tight and glossy when it’s done roasting (or barbecuing, if you somehow live somewhere that’s not a frozen tundra wasteland right now). We ate it with roasted green beans, and it was quite possibly the best meal I’ve had all month.

The other recipe requires just as much soy sauce but the chicken is boiled in it instead of marinating in it, and the sauce reduces into a sticky glaze that’s more salty than flavourful. We still ate it, but it wasn’t worth it. Also, in an unrelated funny fact, this recipe was supposed to be for chicken wings only, but the night I decided to make it was in the middle of the floods that are (still) paralysing Northern England, and a weird side effect of Northern England being flooded out is that deliveries can’t make it to Scotland. As an American, it didn’t occur to me that if England was blocked, nothing would be able to get through to Scotland, because I’ve never lived on an island this small. But the day I went to pick up the ingredients, the grocery store looked like the grocery stores in Florida used to look when a hurricane was on the way. So, without access to ‘just wings,’ I ended up with a box of something called ‘thigh tenderloins,’ which did the job well enough but I still wouldn’t recommend this recipe unless you’re looking for a satisfying way to dehydrate yourself.

For previous battle recipes, see Apple Crisps, Macaroons, and Strawberry Shortcakes here and here.

The verdict:
Soy Chicken 1: Crispy, Tender Roasted Asian Chicken

5 spoons out of five. I still have some grapefruit juice leftover and this chicken is so good I’m considering making it again this weekend. Put it in to marinate tonight and you’ll be eating in high-style tomorrow night!

Soy Chicken 2: Soy-Glazed Chicken Tenderloins

2 spoons out of five. These weren’t a total disaster—as I said, we ate them. But they were too salty to impart any other flavours, and the texture was overall a bit too tough for us.

The recipe:

Crispy, Tender Roasted Asian Chicken

The directions:

In a large, shallow dish or Ziploc bag, mix together soy sauce, grapefruit juice, sugar, and ginger.
Add chicken pieces and stir thoroughly to coat.
Cover and marinate in refrigerator for several hours or overnight.
Remove chicken from marinade and brush with oil.
Roast 30 minutes at 200C/400F, then place under broiler (grill for you Brits!) for an additional 5-10 minutes, depending on the strength of your broiler.
Chicken is done when it's glossy on the outside and the juices run clear when it's cut.

The ingredients:

1 c soy sauce
1 c grapefruit juice
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 chicken, cut into pieces
1/4 c vegetable or other neutral oil

The recipe:

Soy-Glazed Chicken Tenderloins

The directions:

Put oil in a cast-iron pan and heat until shimmering.
Add chicken and saute until chicken is yellow.
Add soy sauce until bottom of pan is covered, then sprinkle brown sugar over the pan and stir to combine and coat chicken.
Cook over low heat and allow soy sauce and sugar to reduce into a sticky glaze.
Saute chicken 20 minutes or until done.

The ingredients:

1 tbsp olive or other neutral oil
1 package chicken wings or tenderloins
1 c soy sauce
2-3 tbsp brown sugar