0 An easy and cheap dinner, roast chicken

Sometimes buying a whole chicken and roasting it is one of the cheapest meals, containing meat, that you can make. Not only is the chicken itself very reasonable, but you can throw the carcass into a pot and make chicken broth, or if there's enough meat still on there you can make chicken soup.

I made a roast chicken the other day when my mother came over for dinner. We both had a nice dinner that night, I had a chicken sandwich the next day, then cut off a lot of meat and made a pot pie (large enough for 2-3 people), then I boiled up the carcass and made chicken soup (enough for 4 good size bowls of soup). Now I'll admit that this was not an organic chicken, but it was on sale for only $3.50 – that comes to about .39 cents a meal. I would imagine that an organic chicken would probably run about $8 or .89 cents a meal, I don't think that price can be beat.

It might not be as tasty as a Thanksgiving turkey, but it does have a nice flavor and it's super easy to prepare. It does however take longer than picking up a rotisserie chicken at the grocery store. Roasting your chicken will take just a few minutes to prepare, but it will take about 2 1/2 hours to roast. But as with everything you make from scratch – you know exactly what's in it, there is no hidden salt, sugar or chemicals. Try this very basic recipe and start experimenting with new ideas later...

Roast Chicken

4-5 lb whole chicken
1 Tbl butter
1 Tbl olive oil
1 apple, quartered
1 orange, peeled & quartered
½ tsp garlic powder
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp pepper

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees. Remove giblets from the chicken. Rinse chicken, be careful not to splash water onto counter or clean dishes to avoid cross contamination. Pat dry with a paper towel. Stuff the cavity with the apple and orange pieces. Put into a large roasting pan – breast side up, cut butter into small pieces and arrange on top of chicken, pour olive oil over top of chicken, sprinkle with garlic powder, salt & pepper. Roast for 2 ½ hours at 375 degrees, or until the internal temperature reaches 165 degrees. Remove from oven, let sit for 10-15 minutes before serving (remove and discard apple & orange).

While chicken is resting you can make a gravy to serve with it (November 19, 2011). You can also stuff the chicken with home-made stuffing (November 21, 2011) instead of the apple & orange, cut the recipe in half and cook the extra stuffing in a casserole dish to have with left-overs. Or you can roast the chicken with potatoes, carrots and onions around it too, just like the roast pork recipe (February 10, 2012).  By stuffing the chicken (or putting potatoes around it) and roasting it with vegetable you will save preparation time and still be able to serve a delicious and nutritious home cooked meal.

Serve chicken with stuffing, mashed potatoes, baked potatoes or baked sweet potatoes, a salad, and a steamed vegetable or two, like broccoli, asparagus, brussels sprouts, spinach or green beans.

Don't forget that you can make a pot pie (November 28, 2011) and/or soup (January 23, 2012) too! You will have a lot less meat left over to make the pot pie, so adjust the recipe accordingly and make it in a small casserole dish or in a regular pie plate.

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0 Chicken Soup, it's not just for when you're sick...

Ok, the other day I had a friend over for dinner and I made a whole roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, broccoli, string beans and fresh whole wheat sour dough bread. We had a great time, enjoyed the dinner – but what to do with the leftovers? Well, I could have made chicken pot pie, but there wasn't that much left. So I made chicken soup.

Really, making chicken soup isn't that different than making turkey soup. But since I didn't have all of the leftovers that I had at Thanksgiving, I changed it up a bit. For your basic chicken soup, you would just boil the carcass, pick off the meat, add some veggies, poultry seasoning, salt, pepper and maybe some barley, rice or lentils. But this recipe is tasty and has a little zip to it. If you're at all familiar with Bisbee, Arizona this soup is very similar to the Chicken Tortilla Soup served at the historic Copper Queen Hotel.

Mexican Chicken Soup

1 ½ lb chicken, diced
1 onion (white, yellow, brown or red), chopped
½ green pepper, chopped
2 Tbl garlic, crushed
2 Tbl jalapeno, chopped
2 c tomatoes, diced
2 c corn
2 c kidney, pinto or black beans
1 Tbl cumin
2 Tbl cilantro, chopped
salt & pepper to taste
4 c water or chicken stock

If you're using a chicken carcass, uncooked thighs or whole breasts, put in large pot, cover with water and boil for 20-30 minutes. Remove from heat. Remove bones, set aside to cool. If you are using boneless raw meat, chop meat up and put it in a large pot with water or stock. Add remaining ingredients to the pot and simmer. After the bones have cooled, pick off what meat you can (only what looks appetizing, if it looks tough or grizzly throw it away), discard bones. Add this meat and the meat you cut off the carcass before boiling it to your soup. Cook about 20-30 minutes.

Serve hot, garnish with tortilla strips or chips, a sprig of cilantro, or a wedge of lime and a dollop of sour cream.

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0 Home made gravy vs Bottled Gravy & Dry Gravy Mix

It's the start of the holidays and I'll spend the rest of the year talking about different foods that we cook during the holiday season. I'm starting with gravy, primarily because it's one of those things that people waste a lot of money on, kind of like the rubs, marinades and premixed spices. Now, don't get me wrong gravy is far from healthy, whether it's from a mix or from scratch. However, I still believe making it from scratch is better for you, it's certainly cheaper, its very simple and easy to make. Advertisers have convinced people that they can't make gravy and if they do make it from scratch, it will be lumpy. Well, in all the years I've been cooking, about 30 years, I've never made lumpy gravy and I don't think you will either.

The easiest gravy to make is when you have meat drippings but if you don't have drippings you can still make home made gravy.

Home made gravy

1 - 1 1/2 c water (depending on how much gravy you need)
meat drippings
1 Tbl flour
1-2 tsp corn or potato starch (if you've added extra water)
dash of salt and pepper

Mix the flour, starch (if you don't have the starch just increase the flour by a tablespoon), salt and pepper together. Put into a glass jar that you have a lid for. Add water, put lid on and shake. If you don't have a glass jar, use a 4 cup measuring cup and stir vigorously with a fork. *If you've roasted meat and the drippings are still in the roasting pan, remove meat, place the roasting pan on the top of the stove, over low to medium-low heat, add the flour mixture to the pan. Stir continually with the fork until well mixed, raise heat to medium to medium-high stirring continually, gravy should the bubbling. When well mixed and thickened, remove from heat and serve.

*If you don't have drippings it's a little more complicated. You want to put even amounts of butter and olive oil in a frying pan, about 2-3 Tbl of each. Add a little chopped onion, garlic and carrot (about 2 Tbl of the onions and carrots, 1-2 cloves of garlic) to the pan and saute until onions begin to brown. Strain vegetables from the pan and then proceed as above.

I like to add about ¼ cup of wine to my gravy too – add it before you put in the flour/water mixture, it will deglaze the pan, removing bits of burned meat, fat and veggies from the pan and it adds a nice flavor to your gravy. Try a dry white, like a chardonnay, with turkey or chicken, use a burgundy or merlot with pork or beef.

Comparison

Price of home made gravy: about .08 cents, unless you add wine – then maybe .40 cents
Price of McCormicks dry gravy mix: $2.19
Price of Heinz Homestyle Gravy: $1.79

Ingredient in home made gravy: Water, meat drippings - fat (or butter and oil), flour, corn or potato starch, salt and pepper – presumably you've also flavored your meat with garlic, onion, parsley, etc.

Ingredients in McCormicks dry gravy mix: Flour, wheat starch, beef fat, hydrolyzed soy, wheat and corn protein, onion, caramel color, corn syrup solids, sodium caseinate, garlic, wheat protein, disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate, extractives of paprika, yeast extract and citric acid

Ingredients in Heinz Homestyle Gravy: Beef stock, water, modified cornstarch, modified wheat flour, beef fat, butter, hydrolyzed soy protein, soy sauce, caramel color, whey powder, yeast extract, corn maltodextrin, sugar, dextrose, garlic powder, soy lecithin, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate, onion powder, natural flavoring, cornstarch, black pepper, soybean oil, milk

Preparation time for home made gravy: About 5 minutes
Preparation time for McCormicks dry gravy mix: About 5 minutes
Preparation time for Heinz Homestyle Gravy: About 3-5 minutes

Ok, well it seems that they all take the same amount of time to make. Home made costs between $1.71 and $2.11 less to make. You can always add a little milk, as McCormick and Heinz have done if you want to. Anyway, you won't be consuming all of that salt, hidden salts (soy sauce and disodiums), sugar and hidden sugar (dextrose, maltodextrin, etc) that's in the mixes – you also won't be eating all of those chemicals either. Give it a try, it's really not that hard to do.

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