Something Comforting: Chicken & Biscuits

Welcome to the first new recipe in AGES! I could apologize for days for my absence, but that wouldn't be as effective as just posting a recipe again.

I made this one for Chase one day (ages ago) when I was home and he was on campus all day. He came home to the smell of delicious chickeny goodness. I found the recipe in the Gooseberry cookbook Chase's mom gave me for Christmas. It's full of good, easy recipes, and this was the first I tried.

I made a few modifications to the recipe, mostly to add more layers of flavor, but also because the biscuits were overwhelmingly salty. I like salty, but this was a bit ridiculous. Modifications below, as always.

Happy cooking!

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Chicken & Biscuits

Ingredients

2 chicken breasts, cut into cubes

2-3 Tbsp vegetable oil

6 strips of bacon, cooked and crumbled

1 can cream of chicken soup (10 oz)

2 cups chicken broth

1 cup flour

1

½ tsp baking powder

1 cup buttermilk

½ cup butter, melted

½ tsp salt

½ tsp pepper

¼ tsp dry basil

¼ tsp dry parsley

pinch of dry rosemary, crumbled

2 Tbsp green onion, chopped

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

2. In a large skillet over medium-high heat, add vegetable oil and cook the chicken through.

3. Meanwhile, combine cream of chicken and chicken broth in a greased casserole dish until well blended.

4. Stir bacon, basil and parsley into the mixture.

5. In a separate mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, pepper and rosemary. Then mix in buttermilk and melted butter. This will make a very thick biscuit batter.

6. Add fully cooked chicken into the broth in the casserole dish.

7. Spoon the biscuit batter on top of the broth, making about 5 large biscuits.

8. Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes, until the biscuits are golden.

9. Serve garnished with green onions.

The recipe, plus some.

Cooking the chicken (a wok works even better than a skillet for this!)

Broth, bacon and chicken, looking delicious even in dull light.

Biscuit batter into the broth.

Golden and delicious after a hot half-hour.

Happy cooking!

Something Simple: Oven Stew

This recipe is so easy, I almost feel silly for posting any pictures of the process.

Now, I will say, while this recipe is easy, it requires that you make a Pot Roast first. The leftovers of that meal are used to make this one. That's exactly the beauty of it. It's is two meals in one!

My mom said that she came up with this recipe years ago. She had made a pot roast for herself and my dad, and because she had used her mom's recipe (which was meant to serve 5-7 people), she had oodles of leftovers. So she turned the leftovers into a stew. This very stew below.

You'll be amazed at how different it is from the original Pot Roast, even though the foundational elements are the same.

Happy cooking!

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Oven Stew

Ingredients

1 cup leftover pot roast, cut to bite-sized pieces

1 cup leftover potatoes

, cut to bite-sized pieces

½ cup leftover carrots, cut to bite-sized pieces

1 can corn

1 can green beans

1 packet Au Jus mix

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Place the roast, potato and carrot pieces into a casserole dish (9x9 or 9x13).

3. Mix in corn and green beans.

4. Prepare Au Jus according to package directions. If you have leftover juice from the pot roast, use it in place of the water called for on the Au Jus packet.

5. Pour prepared Au Jus into the casserole dish.

6. Bake in the oven for an hour. Serve.

Vegetables and meat mixed together in the dish.

Covered with Au Jus.

Baked until bubbly and extra flavorful.

Happy stewing!

Something Savory: Mom's Pot Roast

Oh man, the house smelled so good when this was cooking. I think I found excuses to leave the house just so the smell would be that much more intense when I got back. Even if it was only going as far as the mailbox.

Chase and I had a roast in our freezer for at least a month or two before I finally called my mom for her recipe. I had bought the roast on sale, but never got around to cooking it and eventually forgot about it. Mostly because Chase and I only get in the freezer if there's ice cream in there, and we've been trying to be good about not buying ice cream. Probably because it's winter.

Anyway, I rediscovered the frozen roast and decided that a big ol' pot roast would hit the spot. And it did.

And then two days later I used the leftovers to make an Oven Stew that also hit the spot (and will hit the blogspot later this week).

My mom never put fresh onion into her pot roast, and this time I didn't either, but Chase noted that some thick-sliced mild yellow onions would add a great extra texture to the mix. So that's included in the recipe below, and will likely be part of our roasts in the future.

I'm going to put a caveat on the serving size: A roast should serve about 3 people per pound. However, if you want to be sure to have enough leftovers for the Oven Stew recipe (coming this Thursday), make a roast that's about three-quarters of a pound larger than what you need for the initial serving. Chase and I made a two-pound roast, which gave us enough for 4 servings plus leftovers for the stew.

Happy slow cooking!

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Mom's Pot Roast

Ingredients

2 lb beef roast

5-6 medium potatoes

1 lb thick baby carrots; or 2 cups carrots, cut into large chunks

1 cup thick-sliced yellow onion or pearl onions (optional)

1 packet dry onion soup mix

1 ½ cups water

Directions

1. Peel and half potatoes, and trim excess fat from roast.

2. Place the potatoes at the bottom of a large crock pot, the carrots and onions on top of the potatoes, and roast on top of the vegetables.

3. Pour the water into the crock pot over the vegetables.

4.

Pour the packed of the onion soup mix directly on top of the beef roast.

5. Cover and cook on low for 8-10 hours for a two-pound roast (increase to 10-12 for a three- or four-pound roast).

6. Carve the roast, and serve the roast, potatoes and carrots topped with the extra liquid in the pot.

Vegetable layer.

Our two-pound roast.

Topped with oniony goodness.

Slow-roasted and ready for eating.

Happy cooking!