Monday, October 13, 2008

Chicken and biscuits

I love chicken and biscuits! I'm forever trying to find a perfect recipe although I'm sure there is no such thing. I was inspired to make this because we'd invited friends over for dinner and then Ben informed me that there might be two people or possibly four people and I just didn't know if the chicken would go that far so I decided to change the menu plan. I baked the chicken in preparation for the rest of the work but alas, instead of eating at our house they invited us to their place. And I had cooked chicken all ready to be made into various dinners.


Baked Chicken with Vegetables

1 large roasting chicken
5 white potatoes, skins washed and halved
1 onion cut into eight pieces
2 stalks celery
handful of fresh thyme sprigs
3 large carrots, peeled
Salt
3 T Butter
pepper

Place the carrots in the roasting pan to act as a rack for the chicken. Place the potatoes, cut side down, in the pan. Rub the cavity with salt and stuff with the thyme, onion, and celery. Rub butter on the skin and put any remaining butter into the bottom of the pan. Salt and pepper generously.

Bake at 375 until done - depends on the size of the chicken.


Later remove all the chicken from the bones, dice pieces, and make stock with the carcass. I used a two hour simmer time this time around and I think it made a nicer stock than I get with my usual 45 minutes although I'm not sure if it's due to the quality of quality of the bird or to the increase in time. I got about 5 c of very flavorful stock from this.

Cut all the veggies from the bottom of the pan into bite size pieces.


Chicken and Biscuits

2 T butter
2 T flour (more if you like thicker sauce)
1/2 diced onion
4 cups chicken broth
2 to 3 cups diced chicken
3 to 4 cups diced cooked carrots and potatoes
1 c frozen corn
1 c frozen peas
Salt
Pepper

Saute the onion in butter until soft. Add the flour and cook until flour is lightly browned. Stir in chicken stock and heat to a simmer. Add chicken and all the veggies and bring to a simmer. Cook until flavors have combined nicely. Adjust seasonings. With the cook method above and a condensed stock additional seasonings weren't needed.



Biscuits

I don't have any southern in me and I never seem to make great biscuits. Since that's my history, I decided to try something very basic, Betty Crocker's standard buttermilk biscuits and I wanted to make them drop biscuits because at this point I was on day three of making this dinner. Of course I didn't have buttermilk in the house so I added a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice to make a cup of milk for the recipe. The dough tasted awful and the biscuits were light and tender and wonderful although a tad flat. I think a little less milk might have been helpful.

1/3 c shortening
1 3/4 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 t baking soda
1 c buttermilk

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Cut shortening into dry ingredients until mixture looks like fine crumbs. Stir in milk. Drop by large tablespoons onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake until lightly browned, about 15 minutes.

Verdict: How could it not be wonderful? We all ate too much. Sam finished the biscuits today.


Of course I've got leftover chicken and leftover stock as well. Those are now residing in my freezer awaiting my next need for comfort food.

I used some of the chicken to make a chicken salad that was simple and very good. I didn't measure anything but here are the ingredients:


Chicken Salad with Craisins and Pecans

diced chicken
Sliced green onions
Craisins
Pecans
Mayonnaise


Mmmmm

2 comments:

Kimberly said...

This sounds so good!

Anonymous said...

I just cooked a whole chicken in our crockpot using up even more onions from the share and sliced fennel (from the share) as a bed. The skin and bones just fell off and the chicken was delicious. Now with the leftovers I think I will make your chicken and biscuits. Yummy