chicken broth – Ali Does It Herself

One Dish Chicken, Tomatoes, and Rice

I’m trying to eat more rice these days, and it’s been easy so far with delicious and simple dishes like this one. I then froze a chunk of this and it was oh-so-good, even leftover!

I had picked up some pre-seasoned chicken thighs from Farm Boy a while back and that was my base of things to go with. You can use unseasoned skinless chicken thighs, if you want: this is just what I had. I also had a litre of chicken broth, a 14oz can diced tomatoes, a 244g package of wild rice, a large sweet onion, and some pearl barley.

One Dish Chicken Rice Tomato 1 — Photography tip: never photograph food in the full harsh light of the afternoon sun.

I also grabbed a healthy handful of pre-mixed Italian seasoning. While I was grabbing these things I preheated my oven to 350°F.

One Dish Chicken Rice Tomato 8 — Clearly I am not very good at photography.

So I cut the onion in half and because it was so huge I only diced up half of it.

One Dish Chicken Rice Tomato 2 — Or in following my own instructions.

One Dish Chicken Rice Tomato 3 — More’s the pity.

On to my grains.

I wanted about two cups of the grains so that I could use all 4 cups of my chicken broth.

There was some math that needed to be done – I only hoped the juice from the tomatoes didn’t make things mushy.

So first I softened the onions in my big skillet with some butter and olive oil.

Then I tipped in the tomatoes and the broth.

Then the uncooked grains.

I added a tablespoon or two of the Italian seasoning. Then I gave it a good stir.

Then I slid in the chicken thighs so they were as on the top as possible. I could definitely have doubled the amount of chicken I used, considering how much leftover rice I had.

Then I hucked the whole thing in the oven for about an hour. You don’t even need to stir it.

And then this gorgeousness was born. Holy moly is it good!

Wingin’ It Wednesday: Chicken Soup with Rice

This is a “quick” soup in that I didn’t spend all day simmering it on the stove, but it still took a little bit of time, as all good soups do. I was cleaning out the freezer when I found a bag of 5 chicken drumsticks that needed something done to them, so I dragged them out, defrosted them, and dusted them with salt and pepper in a baking dish.

I roasted them at 350°F for about 40 minutes.

Make sure that the juices are running clear and the flesh is cooked all the way through. Soup that gives you salmonella is not good soup.

I let them cool, then pulled all the meat off the bones and set the meat aside in a bowl for a while.

I took all the skin and bones and chucked them into a large pot with some concentrated chicken broth and about 8 cups water and I let that simmer for about an hour.

Then I used a slotted spoon to remove the skin and bones from the pot.

I grabbed myself some vegetables. You always need vegetables in soup.

I also had about 2 cups cooked brown rice leftover from a canine digestive issue that needed getting rid of.

Chicken Soup with Rice 8 — Flickr would not let me upload this picture until I cropped it and added contrast and vignetting. Apparently an unedited picture of leftover rice does not count as a valid photo to the Flickr Uploadr people.

All the goodness in your carrots is in the skin, so if you’re putting them in a soup, consider just giving them a good scrubbing instead of peeling them, then slice them up. Three carrots went under the knife for this recipe.

Green onions, on the other hand, are cleanest if you remove all the outer layers and wash them thoroughly. I used 2 green onions here.

I only used half an onion in this recipe, because I wasn’t making that much soup. Did you know that an onion is less likely to make you cry if it’s come out of the fridge? The cold slows down the chemical reaction that releases the eye irritant into the air.

I chucked all the vegetables and rice into the steamy broth and then diced up the chicken meat before chucking it in as well.

My compost bin earned some new additions.

Let the soup simmer for about 20 minutes, until the vegetables are softened, and then serve it hot. Possibly with biscuits. It’s up to you.

Spinach and Mushroom Stuffing

We made this for our Canadian Thanksgiving celebrations, but maybe the next time you cook up a turkey (say, for American Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or various other turkey-related feast days), you could try this stuff(ing) out. You can make it all the day before and chuck it together at the last minute, which is awesome for big dinners. It’s also the kind of stuffing that doesn’t actually go into the bird, so you can feed it to vegetarians, too!

Start with your bread. You can buy bags of pre-cut, pre-toasted bread chunks specifically for making stuffing, but I kind of like to make them myself, because I can decide what kind of bread I’m going to use in my stuffing. Here I used a loaf of Italian sourdough.

I ripped each slice up into bite-sized chunks and spread them out across two baking sheets. Shove them in your oven and bake them at 350°F until they’re dried out and lightly toasted, about 12 minutes. Make sure to stir them occasionally.

Dice up about a pound of fresh mushrooms. The wilder the better. Unfortunately all we had around were some oyster and regular white mushrooms, but feel free to experiment. You should have about 9 cups diced mushrooms when you’re done.

Chop up as well 2 large onions, so you’re left with about 3 cups chopped onions in total.

And while you’re at it, go to town on 4-5 stalks celery, ending up with about 2 cups chopped celery in total.

Find yourself some herbs. These were all growing in our fall garden: sage, parsley, and thyme. I thought about adding some rosemary to add to the “Scarborough Fair”-ness of the whole thing but managed to restrain myself.

Chop up a couple bunches of each. You can never have too many fresh herbs in your stuffing, so just go with what feels right.

Dump 1/4 cup of butter and a tablespoon or so of olive oil in a large skillet and melt over medium heat.

Plop in your mushrooms and sprinkle them lightly with salt and pepper. Sauté those suckers until they’re all squishy and starting to brown, about 8 minutes. Dump them in a large bowl for now.

Slide another 1/2 cup butter into that skillet and let that melt.

Add in your onions and celery and cook, stirring, until the veggies are tender, probably 12 minutes or so.

Sprinkle in your herbs and cook for another minute.

Then plop in a whole package (5oz) fresh baby spinach. Toss in the skillet (maybe use a lid) until the leaves are just wilted.

Chuck all that stuff into the bowl with the mushrooms. If you’re making this ahead of time, this is where you stop. Let the stuff cool, cover it, and bung it in the fridge overnight.

When you’re ready to get this on the go, preheat your oven to 350ºF and butter a large casserole dish or 9″ x 13″ baking pan. Whisk 2 eggs and some salt and pepper in a bowl.

Pour in 1 cup low sodium chicken broth (you may need more if you find it dry) and stir that around.

Toss your bread bits with your vegetable mix and pour your broth/egg stuff over top, stirring to make sure it makes it all the way through.

Jam that into your baking dish and bake without covering until it’s brown and crusty on top, about an hour. Let it stand a few minutes before serving (like, take it out when you start to carve up your bird and you’re set).

Wingin’ It Wednesday: Butternut Squash Soup

I had a craving for a roasted vegetable soup, and my parents picked up a variety of squashes from the local farmer’s market, so I grabbed the nearest butternut and I got started. I love any excuse to roast vegetables, so preheat your oven to 450°F and get some pans ready.

I sliced up a butternut squash and set it on a baking sheet. Actually, it took two baking sheets (butternut squashes have a lot on them). I also cut the tops off 4 heads garlic and chucked them on a sheet as well.

I had about 4 or 5 parsnips that I scrubbed and cut up as well to be roasted. They’ll add sweetness to the mix. This is gonna be a sweet soup.

Drizzle all yo’ roasty goodness with olive oil and salt and pepper and roast everything for about 45 minutes, or until they’re nice and crusty on the outside and you can jab a fork in them easily.

The parsnips should be squishy in their innards as well.

Told you there was a lot to a butternut squash.

You’re going to want to wait until the garlic has cooled before you pop the sticky cloves out with your fingers.

While that’s roasting or cooling or whatever, chop up about 2 large onions and plop them in a frying pan with some butter and some olive oil and cook them on medium low until they start to caramelize. This will make them lovely and sweet.

Peel the roasted squash (or use a big metal spoon to scoop it out of the skin, like I did) and plop it in a big mother of a pot, together with your caramelized onions, your roasted parsnips, and your roasted garlic.

Top the pot up with some stock. I ended up using 3 cartons (at 900mL each) of chicken stock.

Bring that to a simmer, stirring to break up the squash a bit. Season with salt and pepper while you’re waiting for it to bubble.

Once it starts to bubble, leave it for a few minutes, then remove it from the heat and have a go at it with the immersion blender. BRRRRRRRZZZZZZZZZHT! Season with a bit of nutmeg to taste.

Serve with more sprinkled nutmeg, a dash of plain yogurt or sour cream, some chives, or just plain Jane like this!

Roasted Tomato and Red Pepper Soup

This warm bowl of rosy goodness reminds me a bit of my winged red soup from ages ago (which I may try to recreate in the future) and it’s just as easy. I made a heckuva lot of this, mostly to freeze for Krystopf and Atlas for after the baby comes, so feel free to cut this recipe into thirds for more reasonable servings.

You’re going to need 3 heads garlic;

3 red onions;

24 ripe roma tomatoes;

and about 18 large red peppers.

Preheat your oven to 450°F. Peel the garlic and cut each clove in half. Chop up the onions as well and chuck them in a roasting pan (I divided them between three roasting pans).

Chop up the tomatoes and red peppers and put them in the pans as well.

Drizzle with olive oil, dust with salt and pepper, and toss to coat.

Roast the vegetables for 25-35 minutes, or until they are soft and starting to char.

Meanwhile, bring a pot with about 2 litres stock (chicken, vegetable, whatever) to a boil.

When the vegetables are ready, chuck them in the broth and give it a good stir. Add several dashes of Tabasco Sauce and remove it from the heat.

Have a go at it with an immersion blender and then season with salt, pepper, and more Tabasco as desired. Serve hot (or cold). The flavour intensifies over a couple of days and it freezes great.

Wingin’ it Wednesday: Oliver’s Stew

Sometimes things don’t always work out exactly how you want them to. But that’s okay, because you can learn from what you’ve done and move on. So while this recipe was a little bland for my liking, I’m sure with the right combination of spices it would make a great mid-winter slow-cooker bowl of comfort. I called it “Oliver’s Stew” because it has a gruel-like consistency that reminded me so much of the musical based on Charles Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist, specifically, this song. Nonetheless, I know some of you out there like your stews to be on the mushy side, so maybe this one is for you.

I started with some chicken thighs, and pulled the skin off them. There are only a few people in the world I will handle raw chicken for. The Pie is lucky to be one of them.

Then I quickly browned them in a cast iron skillet.

Cut up an onion and some garlic.

And gathered some herbs: mustard, rosemary, and savoury.

A red pepper.

Some chick peas.

Some rice.

And some chicken broth.

I hucked that all in the slow cooker with some salt and pepper and let ‘er rip. I ended up adding more liquid later on as it all got sucked into the rice.

Shortly before serving I added some frozen corn and peas for colour.

And there you have it — the chicken has fallen off the bone and lays in these lovely strips and the peas and corn and pepper add a nice pop of colour.

Pumpkin Soup

Right. So. In my effort to effectively use all the pumpkin purée left over from our Pumpkin-Off, all 14 cups of it, we are starting to get sick of pumpkin (though the amount of fibre that has been added to our diet is extraordinary).

The solution? SOUP. Most pumpkin soup recipes call for a single can (a little less than 2 cups) of the stuff, but I’m just gonna giv’er and dump in the rest of what I got. BLAM. It came out to about 2 1/2 cups.

I don’t really feel like blending this soup, because the pumpkin is pre-puréed, so I’m just going to cut everything else up really small. It’s a really quick recipe, too, no need to simmer for a long time, so you can make it, say, just before lunch, and then eat it right away.

First I got my spices ready: minced garlic, a little bit of cumin, some curry, and a bit of chipotle.

And the incidentals: lemon juice (don’t mock my plastic lemon, it’s the best I can do in Newfoundland), chicken broth, and coconut milk.

Then my vegetables: three carrots, an onion, and a red pepper.

The carrots I scrubbed and grated with the skins still on. That’s good vitamins for ya.

The red pepper and onion I diced up.

In a large saucepan, then, heat up a bit of olive oil on medium-high and toss in your onions. Cook those until they’re softened.

Then add in your cup o’spices, and stir that around for a minute or so.

Chuck in your grated carrot and diced pepper and stir that around as well, spritz it with lemon juice, then add in your coconut milk and stir until fully incorporated.

Add in the pumpkin finally (it was already cooked, so I didn’t want to overcook it), and pour in the chicken broth until you’ve reached a consistency that you like. Let that simmer for about 20 minutes and that’s it, you’re all done.

Season with salt and pepper, and a little more lemon if you like. At the eleventh hour I added a teaspoon ground cloves to boost the pumpkin.

This one came out a bit spicy, because I guess my curry was hotter than I had previously thought. I would recommend serving with a bit of yogurt or sour cream.

Butternut Bisque

I’m not the biggest soup fan (I prefer to drink my hot liquids), but I’m starting to acquire a taste for them. I’m especially fond of blended soups (because then it’s like a savoury pudding and I’m less likely to burn my tongue on the hot broth). This one comes from Martha Stewart and is a good match for a nice late-summer lunch or a good accompaniment to a fall comfort meal. It’s quick and easy, which I like in a soup. You can also freeze it and enjoy it at any time.

First, do your chopping. In this case, chop up 1 medium onion, 2 cloves garlic, and 1 large butternut squash. Peel the squash, cut it open and remove the seeds, and then hack it into smallish cubes.

Then, get your spices ready to go. You’ll need 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme, 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon, and 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper. Also, not shown, is a pinch or two of coarse sea salt. Feel free to add more or less, according to your own taste. It’s only soup, after all.

Melt about 3 tablespoons butter into the bottom of a large saucepan. Add in the onion, garlic, and the spices and cook until the onion is tender and translucent, about 7 minutes.

Dump in the squash cubes, as well as about 15oz chicken broth and 1 cup half-and-half (you could use plain milk if you wanted to be healthier, but do you really want to do that?), and then about 3 cups water. Bring that whole thing to a boil and reduce it to a simmer for about 20 minutes. Your squash should be squishy at this point. You should be able to squish your squash with the back of a spoon.

Remove the pot from the heat and use your immersion blender to squish — er, purée — your squash and onions and all that stuff.

Serve with a dollop of sour cream and a sprinkling of cayenne, if desired.

Chicken Cacciatore

Canadian Living always seems to have the best freezer-friendly recipes. I haven’t tried this, but the stuff smelled great and when I licked my fingers to catch some spills I was quite happy.

I doubled the recipe, but the single batch makes 8 chicken thighs and a bunch of red delicious sauce.

Start with your vegetables. Chop up an onion and a pepper. I had some roasted red peppers in a jar so I used those as well to boost my quantities.

Take 8 boneless, skinless chicken thighs. You can use bone-in ones to save money, but they will need to cook for twice as long.

Toss them in a bowl with 2 tablespoons flour and some salt and pepper for seasoning.

In a large skillet or Dutch oven, heat some olive oil and, working in batches, brown the chicken on both sides. You don’t need to cook it all the way through — you just want a nice crispy edge. That’s why I like the skillet.

Transfer the chicken to a plate and drain any fat out of the pan (if you used skinless chicken this shouldn’t be a problem).

Add a bit more oil to the skillet and fry up your onion and pepper, with a little bit of minced garlic and some Italian seasoning (or basil and oregano if you don’t have it).

Pour in 1 can diced tomatoes and 1 can tomato paste and bring it to a boil. Because I doubled the recipe, I ran out of room in the skillet and had to move to a pot, alas.

Add your chicken back in and simmer for about 20 minutes until the chicken is cooked through.

Serve over rice or pasta and sprinkled with parsley, or freeze for later, which is what I did.

Gang Keow Wan (Thai Green Curry) with Eggplant and Bamboo

When I was in Ottawa a couple weeks ago, Krystopf and Atlas got takeout one night from a local Thai place. There was one dish we got, the gang keow wan, that was so good I was determined to see if I could recreate it. So here’s my best approximation, and it turned out pretty close to the original, minus the disposable aluminum serving dishes.

Get everything ready first, obviously. The idea behind this is that if everything is sliced super thin and ready to go, the actual cooking of the curry will take less than fifteen minutes from start to finish. Fantastic for a quick meal, which our Sunday dinners always turn out to be.

Start with your chicken (you can use beef as well, or leave it out for a vegetarian option).

Take 2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, slice them into thirds lengthwise, and then slice them up again into thin little pieces. It’s easiest to do this if the chicken is slightly frozen.

Wrangle yourself a leek. Just one will do.

Chop off all the dark green stuff, and hack it into thirds. It goes without saying that you do this with separate implements than you did the chicken, unless you do all the vegetables first and then the chicken last, which is what I usually do.

Cut each of those thirds up into matchsticks. Remember to rinse off the dirt before you eat them. If you want to know the real scientific way to clean a whole leek properly (which I forgot about until it was too late) then take a lookie here.

Gather up a handful of hot peppers. These ones are of the mildest sort, but you can go with whatever floats your boat and suits your fancy. Cut the tops off, remove the seeds (don’t stick your fingers in your eye, OW OW OW OW OW), and make those into matchsticks as well.

Grab some eggplant. If you have those tiny Asian ones handy, or baby eggplants, use about five of them. These are the long thin Italian ones, and I used three. Slice the tops off and cut them into thin discs.

Bust out some lime leaves (kaffir).

Grab a handful, and, if they’re frozen, let them thaw. If they’re dried, give them a soak. If they’re fresh, then you are a lucky person for living in a part of the world where you can get them fresh and you probably don’t need my instructions on how to make a green curry. Go find something else to do.

When they’re ready, slice out the woody centre stem and chop them up finely.

If you have them handy, like, for instance, you are growing your own indoor herb farm (see tomorrow’s post!), then harvest some fresh cilantro and fresh basil. Chop those babies up as well.

As well, crack open a can of slivered bamboo shoots.

Put them aside with your other fresh stuff.

And you’re going to need an assortment of canned and jarred stuff as well.

In a large, shallow saucepan or deep frying pan, heat up about 3 tablespoons olive oil. Add to that 3-5 tablespoons green curry paste and 4 teaspoons minced garlic and sauté that at medium heat until the kitchen starts to smell really good.

Add in as well 2 tablespoons each ground cumin and ground coriander and 1 tablespoon powdered stock (chicken, beef, or vegetable — this is optional). You can add in some salt and pepper as well, if you like.

If you’ve got it, add some lemongrass in as well. This stuff came in a tube!

Now add in 1 can coconut milk and, if you can get it, 1 can coconut cream (if not just go with two cans of the milk). Make sure your cream isn’t sweetened before you dump it in. I discovered that a little too late, so this curry was definitely on the sweet side, but still good. Now you have this lovely rich greenish brownish soup.