Chicken Archives - Zest Blog

Moo Shu Chicken

Alison — Fri, 01 May 2020 18:43:14 +0000

Moo Shu Chicken

We are almost 8 weeks into this Covid-19 Quarantine and we’re starting to crave some of our favorite foods that we normally dine out for! One of the biggest cravings has been Chinese food. With our favorite take out place closed, I decided to try my hand at Moo Shu. My normal order is Moo Shu Chicken, but this recipe can be done with pork, beef and shrimp too. The great thing about making this dish at home, is using about 1/8 the oil that a normal restaurant would use. This recipe came out to be about the size of an order of Moo Shu, would feed 4 or 2 for dinner with breakfast leftovers (how we ate it!)

ENJOY!

Moo Shu Filling

Ingredients	Amount
Chicken or pork loin, julienned	1	LB
Sesame oil	1	Tbsp
Soy sauce	1	Tbsp
Corn starch	1	Tbsp
Olive oil	3	Tbsp
Eggs, beat lightly in a small bowl	4
Minced Garlic	2	Tbsp
Minced Ginger	2	Tbsp
Napa or Green Cabbage, shredded	1
Carrot, shredded	4
Shiitake mushrooms, julienned	1	Cup
Scallions, thinly sliced	3
Moo Shu pancake (recipe below)	12	Pieces

In a medium bowl combine sesame, soy and corn starch. Add the julienned chicken or pork and marinate 15 minutes.
Coat a cast iron or non stick skillet with oil. Over medium-high heat, add the eggs and quickly scramble until they puff up and are cooked through. Set aside
Add 2 tablespoons oil to cast iron or non stick skillet over medium-high heat. Add the chicken or pork and cook for 10 minutes. Remove from heat to paper-towel lined plate. Slice cooked meat into strips once cool enough to handle.
Add 1 tablespoon oil, garlic, ginger, scallion whites to the pan. Cook for 3-4 minutes.
Add the mushrooms, cabbage, carrots. Cook for 5 minutes until cabbage starts to turn clear. Then add in scrambled eggs, meat and 3 tablespoons of the scallions.
To Serve: Place a cast iron pan over medium-high heat. Heat the Moo Shu wraps in the dry cast iron pan until they start to get a couple of brown spots. Remove to a plate, top with a spoonful of hoisin sauce, 1-2 teaspoons of fresh scallions and a large spoonful of the moo shu filling. Fold up and enjoy!
Hoisin Sauce: 1 tablespoon oil 1 cup hoisin 1/2 lime, juiced Place the oil in a small saucepan. Add hoisin and let simmer 2-3 minutes. Finish with lime juice.

Moo Shu Pancake

Ingredients	Amount
Flour	8	oz
Boiling Water	3/4	cup
Toasted sesame oil	1	tbsp

In a bowl, mix the flour and the boiling water with chopsticks or a wooden spoon to combine. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured board, gather it into a heap, and knead it until smooth, about 3 min.
In a stand mixer, mix the flour and the boiling water with paddle attachment. Once flour and water are combined, changed to dough attachment and knead about 3 min on medium.
With dough on a lightly floured board, cover with a towel and let it rest for about 1 hour.
Roll the rested dough into a 12-inch log. Cut the log into 12 pieces.
With a floured rolling pin, roll each pair into a thin pancake about 7 inches in diameter, flipping the pancake over now and again to roll evenly on both sides. Stack the pancakes as you finish rolling them.
In an ungreased cast-iron skillet or nonstick pan over medium-high heat, cook the pancakes one at a time. Heat one side until it becomes less opaque and starts to bubble slightly, and just a few brown spots appear, about 1 min. Flip it over and cook it until a few light brown spots appear on the other side, about 30 seconds.

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Chicken Stock

Alison — Mon, 11 Jun 2018 20:42:50 +0000

Chicken Stock

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So you made your Roast Chicken, now what? Chicken stock of course! As I mentioned, we make roast chicken regularly and one of the biggest benefits is homemade stock. While there are some good options out there now for canned stock, nothing beats homemade. It really is a simple process with simple ingredients and really worth the time and effort. We use stock in everything, especially soups and sauces. When you keep some on hand in the freezer, you always have the start of a quick meal on hand. It is also a great way to clean out the fridge: you can use all kinds of vegetables, herbs and aromatics to flavor your stock. Don’t be afraid to experiment with flavors; just know that different ingredients can change the color of the stock as well as the flavor. My great grandmother’s secret addition was a few cloves stuck into the onions, just a little something special. This is a good basic stock recipe that I fall back on; it always produces a good flavorful stock.

P.S. Don’t forget when you are done with your Thanksgiving turkey to save the carcass for turkey stock. Turkey soup is one of the best parts of Thanksgiving after all!

Kelly

Chicken Stock

Ingredients

1 roast chicken carcass

1 large onion, quartered

4 carrots, cut in 1/2

4 ribs celery, cut in 1/2

Small bouquet fresh herbs including thyme, parsley, etc.

2 bay leaves

Tablespoon whole black peppercorns

2-4 cloves, stuck in the onion pieces

2 whole cloves garlic

2 gallons cold water

Place chicken, vegetables, and herbs and spices in 12-quart stockpot. Cover with cold water so the chicken and vegetables are submerged.

Cook on high heat until you begin to see bubbles break through the surface of the liquid. Turn heat down to medium low so that stock maintains low, gentle simmer. Skim the scum from the stock with a spoon a couple times for the first hour of cooking and as needed each hour for the next 2 hours. Add hot water as needed to keep bones and vegetables submerged. Simmer uncovered for 3-5 hours until you have a rich colored stock.

Strain stock through a fine mesh strainer into another large stockpot or heatproof container discarding the solids.

Allow to cool then place in refrigerator overnight. Remove solidified fat from surface of liquid and store in container with lid in refrigerator for 2 to 3 days or in freezer for up to 3 months. Bring to a boil before use.

P.P.S. If you don’t have an already roasted chicken, you can buy some chicken bones and pieces and roast them with a little olive oil at 450° for 30-40 minutes before making your stock.

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Kitchen Staples: Frozen Chicken Stock

Alison — Fri, 17 Feb 2017 19:06:50 +0000

We all have things that we always have on hand. The things that we can’t imagine cooking without. For me, I always have good olive oil, multiple kinds of salt, fresh pepper, balsamic and red wine vinegar, and homemade chicken stock. In fact, I even made stock one day when we were in the middle of moving just so I wouldn’t waste the bones and veggies I had in my freezer saved for stock. My BF loves to tell the story of the day I lost it making stock surrounded by boxes. 😉

I really can’t imagine being without homemade chicken stock. It is one of those things that does not even resemble canned stock. But, keeping it fresh is impossible. So, what do you do? Chicken stock freezes very well. I have tried it in many kinds of containers: take out containers, Ziplocks, etc. I always want to know what serving I have frozen, so I can throw it in to a recipe without thinking. I recently found a great solution for this. We have all seen silicone ice cube trays that are made for fancy big ice cubes for cocktails. It is the perfect thing for stock! Mine holds about 1/2 cup of stock and I ended up with a gallon Ziplock full of them for my freezer. I still like a gallon Ziplock to give me the option to make soup at a later date, but smaller portions make a difference for things like quinoa, sauce, or adding depth and flavor to anything. Try it out!

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Cilantro Lime Quinoa

Alison — Tue, 26 Aug 2014 03:40:22 +0000

If you are like me, you are always looking for a healthy option you can make ahead for lunch. Quinoa always seems like a good healthy choice, but I haven’t really found a way I liked it…until now! This is light and fresh with lots of healthy additions. Bonus, it holds up really well all week! I like to make this on Sunday and it is just as good on Friday as it is on Monday. I love that I can eat it cold at my desk which makes life so easy. Let me know what you think!

Kelly

Cilantro Lime Quinoa

Ingredients:

2 cups uncooked quinoa

2 cups chicken stock

2 cups water

Juice and zest of 4-5 limes

2 Tablespoons honey

1 cup fresh cilantro, chopped

Kosher or sea salt

Pepper

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

6 scallions, thinly sliced (white and green parts)

2 red or yellow bell peppers, chopped

3 carrots, chopped

1 can black beans, drained and rinsed

2 grilled chicken breasts, chopped

Rinse quinoa 3 times to remove the bitter outside layer. Cook the quinoa with chicken stock and water (I add a little extra liquid because we are at high altitude). Bring the liquid to a boil then reduce to simmer for 30 seconds, bring back to a boil for another 30 seconds then reduce to a simmer for about 20 minutes until cooked through and tender. Allow to cool.

In a large bowl, whisk the lime juice with the zest, honey, a pinch or two of salt & pepper, and olive oil, until the dressing comes together. Add the cilantro and mix.

Add the chopped scallions, peppers, carrots, black beans, chicken, and quinoa and gently toss in the dressing.

Garnish with additional cilantro and lime zest, if desired. Eat immediately or pack up for lunches for the week. Great hot or cold!

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Work Lunches

Alison — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 04:48:01 +0000

Continuing our healthy eating theme of late, I thought I would share my Sunday routine for making 5 days of lunches in one afternoon. Being well prepared makes life SO much easier for the rest of the week. With BF needing the equivalent of two full lunches every day, it is much easier to have them all done before we get wrapped up in the week. In order to easily accomplish this, I start by making the carbs…usually brown rice, quinoa, and sweet potatoes. All of those things can cook while I work on the other things. Next comes chicken breasts (seasoned and baked for 45min at 375°), flank steak (marinated and grilled or stir fried), and chicken muffins. Finally the veggies…I usually just steam tons of broccoli and green beans. I try to mix things up, but these are the staples for sure! I also love that if I have leftovers, I can use it for easy dinners or freeze things for later. Next, I pull out the trusty food scale and lots of Tupperware. An assembly line makes things super easy and I can do exactly what is right for each of us.

Usually I start with the carbs so it cools while I do others and then add protein and veggies.

By the time I am done all we have to do is grab and go in the morning!

Between this and the egg muffins, you can have most of your day covered. A couple hours of work really pays off later in the week. Do you have ideas you use to make your healthy habits stick? We always need new ideas!

Kelly

PS- You can see my little lunches in the back row. Measuring also helps me to stay on track with what I need to be eating while looking at all that food!

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Happy Homemade Chicken Soup Day!

Alison — Wed, 05 Feb 2014 05:00:30 +0000

Happy Homemade Soup day! A great day for soup in Boulder since we’ll have a high of 16 degrees today.

It makes me sad if I don’t have some homemade chicken stock around. There’s so much you can do with it. Adding to sauces, a base for other sauces, chicken noodle soup.

Of course there are a million recipes for this, but you don’t really need one. Whenever you trim vegies or bone a rotisserie chicken freeze these things in a container or zip lock bag. Then when you get enough trimmings, rinse with water and put in a pot with more quartered onion, a couple cloves of garlic, a bay leave and some black peppercorns add a few cloves if you like that depth.

Bring to a boil and then reduce to simmer. Skim off the foam and keep doing this for a while. The more you do this the clearer looking the stock and the cleaner tasting. If you move the pot a little off the burner, it’ll make it easier. Sometimes I forget and if you do…it’s still better than the canned!

Strain and cool. When the stock is cooled put in the fridge.

The next day, you can skim the fat off the top and use in Chicken & Sausage Bites or Risotto. For a quick and easy dinner get some store bought tortellini and simmer in your stock for Tortellini Soup!

Mary

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Cooking Staples

Alison — Wed, 29 Jan 2014 15:21:51 +0000

We started talking earlier this week about healthy eating and how to make it easier. When you live with someone who eats roughly 4,000 calories a day…all clean…you have to do some prep work to make things practical. On the weekend, we sit down together and make a menu for the week for dinner, but that doesn’t always help with breakfast and lunch. I am getting better at planning leftovers in for lunches, but it is much easier to just pack everything at the beginning of the week and be able to grab and go. I start by cooking about egg muffins, 2 cups of brown rice, 6 organic chicken breasts, 4 sweet potatoes and steaming a bunch of veggies. With these staples always in the fridge, you can make a lot of things happen. Sometimes chicken becomes Chicken Tinga, or enchiladas. Often it gets chopped and sent in lunches. By having a bit of an assembly line with the food scale, I can get through things pretty quickly with already cooked foods. Bonus, whatever we don’t get to, I just freeze and use that in meals down the road. Shredded chicken is awesome to have in the freezer…a great time saver! I try to mix in something I haven’t tried before once a week. It doesn’t always happen (read: the lentils I meant to make still in my pantry) but I try for variety. We usually mix in one fish meal and one lean red meat meal each week. I swear all of this is much easier than it sounds! It really does make the rest of the week go much smoother. Here is an example of a dinner I made from our staples in the fridge. You can see our fully stocked fridge is how we make it without take out for every meal! Chicken and Brussels sprouts with brown rice. MMMM. This was great too because it saved well and became the perfect lunch later in the week. Gotta love multitasking!

Chicken with Brussels Sprouts

2 Chicken breasts cooked and cubed

12-15 Brussels Sprouts, shredded

3 T Dried Cranberries

2 T Sliced Almonds

2 T Honey

2 T Butter

Crushed red peppers

Salt and pepper

Melt butter in a sauté pan over medium heat add Brussels sprouts and sauté about 2 minutes. Add chicken, cranberries, and almonds. Season with salt, pepper, crushed red peppers and drizzle with honey. Cook another 2-3 minutes.

Serve over brown rice.

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Chicken and Sausage Bites

Alison — Tue, 22 Oct 2013 03:25:47 +0000

Do you ever rediscover a former love of a recipe? Last weekend we decided to have a freezer cooking day with each of us picking something we wanted to make. I chose an old favorite from Lidia Bastianich. I am sure I have said before how much I love Lidia. Her recipes are unique and always wonderful. I think they always turn out (though I do tend to modify things as I go). This time we made this to be eaten later and miraculously it actually made it to the freezer! I am looking forward to enjoying it some night we have nothing in the house. It is full of flavor both robust and tangy. Served with veggies and bread or brown rice and you have a great fall meal!

Kelly

Chicken and Sausage Bites in Vinegar Sauce

¼ c Olive Oil

1 lb Sweet Italian Sausage, cut into bite sized pieces

2 lb Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts, cut into bite sized pieces

Salt

4 Garlic Cloves, finely chopped

2 T Honey

2 T Butter

¼ c Red Wine Vinegar

½ c Aromatic White Wine

½ c Chicken Stock

Chopped Italian Parsley (for garnish)

In a large skillet heat 2 T olive oil over medium heat. Add the sausage and cook until lightly brown on all sides. Pour off the fat if necessary. Add remaining 2 T of olive oil. Season the chicken pieces with salt and add to the pan. Cook until brown on all sides. When close to done, make a space to brown the garlic. Once golden and aromatic, stir into the chicken and sausage.

Drizzle the honey over the top and cook, stirring often until chicken is a rich mahogany color. Add the butter and stir until melted. Pour in the vinegar and bring to a boil. Boil until the vinegar has almost completely evaporated. Add the wine and bring to a boil, then add the chicken stock. Boil until thick and there is just enough to coat the chicken and sausage.

Sprinkle with parsley and serve. YUMMY!

A Few Notes: This is a recipe where it helps to have all the ingredients laid out and prepped before you start cooking. Everything goes from not ready to done quickly! I like to use sausage out of the casing to save myself some time. I also find that it helps to remove the sausage while you cook the chicken. It helps free up the pan to encourage browning. I almost always use extra honey to get to the right color. Be a little flexible on the liquid amounts. Do what you like!

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Summer Mixed Grill

Alison — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 22:06:15 +0000

One of the things that has always been a staple in our house is the mixed grill. As a kid, I remember my mom shopping on Sunday for the week and picking up veggies, fish, chicken and steak to cook that night. We always ate the fish the first night and set the chicken and steak aside for later in the week. The brilliance of this is that you can use the meat for anything! It could be as is with some veggies, or reworked into something like tacos, or pasta. It makes things so easy for planning and you can save yourself time on work nights. This is also a great thing to do for a group or a party as we did here. Throw in the veggies from the CSA box, and you are good to go. Everyone gets what they like and there are always leftovers! Buy whatever is fresh or on sale and throw it all together on the grill; the perfect summer dinner solution!

Kelly

Mixed Grill

CSA Salad: Fresh lettuce, arugula, herbs, diced tomatoes and radishes, tossed with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper.

Tuna steaks marinated in Soy Vey Teriyaki grilled to medium.

Chicken legs grilled and basted with Grumpy’s BBQ sauce.

Teriyaki and pineapple sausage from Whole Foods…super delish!

Baby CSA artichokes steamed and drizzled with olive oil, pink flake salt and freshly cracked pepper.

CSA root veggies sautéed with onions in butter, then sherry vinegar to deglaze.

YUMMY!

P.S. Up next is our CSA dessert: Strawberry Rhubarb Pie!

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First CSA of the Season!

Alison — Thu, 23 May 2013 03:44:46 +0000

We got our first box of CSA veggies from Red Wagon Farms!

Here’s what our first CSA box looked like after a tiny bit of cleaning…

Included in the pack was Egyptian walking onions, Easter egg radishes, green garlic, spinach, sorrel, and arugula.

So tonight, I’m home alone and decided on a lush salad after working out.

Springtime Salad

Arugula one handful

2-Radishes

½ Green Onion

Green Garlic leaves

From the fridge:

Cabbage

Grilled red and yellow peppers, chopped

Dressing:

1T Lemon Aioli

2T Greek yogurt

Mix the lemon aioli with the yogurt, salt and pepper

Toss in the bottom of a bowl and mix with the veggies. Top with Fried Chicken from Niwot Market and enjoy! I know not exactly the healthiest choice but at least I have the greens to counter act the fried chix. Plus I removed the skin, so it’s not that bad. Next time I’ll prepare better.

I’m happy to have my fridge filled with beautiful veggies and the ones from Red Wagon farms are beautifully trimmed and ready for my attention! Yum.

Mary

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