Use thighs next time. Cheaper and tastier, and harder to overcook

geez at least make it difficult for us to pipthread you

Yeah. Luckily I didn't over cook them, so that's good. Overall not bad, but definitely think next time a fattier cut of chicken would be better.

Made chicken and dumplings tonight. So damn good. I made it once before without realizing that apparently there are lots of different types of dumplings. What I remember fondly from my childhood is pillowy-soft dumplings but the recipe I made resulted in very dense, noodle-style dumplings. Not my cup of tea. This time I made drop buscuit dough and gently placed lumps of it in the soup (which was at that time in a large casserole dish) and cooked it in a hot oven to brown the tops of the dumplings.

Soup:

2 lb boneless, skinless chicken thighs
4 qt chicken stock, preferably homemade
1 tbsp plus 8 tbsp (1 stick) butter
1 medium onion, diced
3 carrots, diced
2 celery stalks, diced
6 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp minced fresh thyme or 1 tbsp dried thyme
1 tbsp minced fresh rosemary or 1/2 tbsp dried rosemary
1/2 c flour
Salt & pepper
2 tbsp minced fresh parsley or 1 tbsp dried parsley

In a stockpot over medium-high heat, melt 1 tbsp butter, then add chicken thighs. Saute undisturbed 5 minutes, then turn and saute 5 more. Add stock, bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer. Simmer 20-25 minutes or until chicken is cooked through. (If using canned chicken stock, you can add some chopped onion, carrots, and celery along with the stock to boost flavor.) Remove chicken pieces and set aside to cool.

In a saute pan over medium heat, melt 8 tbsp butter. Add onion, carrots, celery, garlic, thyme and rosemary, sprinkle with salt & pepper, and cook, stirring frequently, until vegetables soften slightly, 2-3 minutes. Add flour and cook, stirring constantly, until raw flour smell subsides. Add stock to mixture gradually. When all stock has been added, bring to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer. Cook, stirring occasionally, until mixture thickens somewhat, ~15 minutes.

While stock and vegetables are cooking, shred and roughly chop chicken. Add to thickened stock. Make dumplings (recipe below).

Preheat oven to 475F. Place large casserole in the oven while it's heating.

Dumplings:

2 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1 cup chilled buttermilk
8 tbsp melted butter (I actually used mostly chicken fat that I skimmed from my homemade stock)

Whisk together dry ingredients in a bowl.

Stir melted butter into buttermilk in a small bowl until small clumps of butter form as the buttermilk cools the butter.

Pour buttermilk/butter mixture into the dry ingredients, and using a rubber spatula, stir just until combined.

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Stir parsley into soup. Take casserole out of the oven and pour soup into it (be careful because this will boil madly at first). Pull small handfuls of dumpling dough and gently place in the soup. Return to oven and cook 15 minutes or until dumplings are golden-brown.

I'm a fan, I'll give it a try this weekend.

funny you should mention you prefer the pillowy dumplings as Cook's Country this month has a recipe for that called Chicken and Pastry that I'll be making this coming weekend

(side note: when I got to visit there back in July, this dish was in development and they brought out 3 versions of the dish made from various recipes they find in cookbooks and magazines, everyone then tastes the dish and makes comments on what they like and don't like and from there they figure out the best way to combine what's liked about the dishes. My family and I got to taste them and add our comments into the mix.)

Why this recipe works:

This hearty Lowcountry take on chicken soup features tender shreds of chicken and chewy strips of pastry in an ultrasavory stock. Browning the chicken before simmering it in store-bought chicken broth provided a flavorful base. We opted for chicken thighs rather than lean breasts because they stayed tender throughout the long stewing process. Rolling the “pastry”—which we made from just flour, butter, milk, and baking powder—to ⅛ inch thick before adding it to boiling broth made it fluffy and soft. And cutting the dough into diamond shapes rather than squares added just a little flair to this homey dish.

Serves 4 to 6

Keep the root ends of the onion halves intact so the petals don’t separate during cooking and the onion is easy to remove from the pot.
Ingredients

1 1/2 cups (7 1/2 ounces) all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
Salt and pepper
1/2 cup Milk
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, plus 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
2 pounds bone-in chicken thighs, trimmed
4 cups chicken broth
1 cup water
1 onion, peeled and halved through root end
1 celery rib, halved crosswise

Instructions

1. Combine flour, baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper in large bowl. Combine milk and melted butter in second bowl (butter may form clumps). Using rubber spatula, stir milk mixture into flour mixture until just incorporated. Turn dough out onto lightly floured counter and knead until no flour streaks remain, about 1 minute. Return dough to large bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and set aside.

2. Pat chicken dry with paper towels and season with pepper. Melt remaining 1 tablespoon butter in Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add chicken, skin side down, and cook until golden brown, 3 to 5 minutes. Flip chicken and continue to cook until golden brown on second side, 3 to 5 minutes longer.

3. Add broth and water, scraping up any browned bits. Nestle onion and celery into pot and bring to boil. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for 25 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, roll dough into 12-inch square, about 1/8 inch thick. Using pizza cutter or knife, cut dough lengthwise into 1-inch-wide strips, then cut diagonally into 1-inch-wide strips to form diamonds (pieces around edges will not be diamonds; this is OK).

5. Remove pot from heat. Transfer chicken to plate and let cool slightly. Discard onion and celery. Return broth to boil over medium-high heat and add pastry. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer, stirring occasionally, until pastry is tender and puffed, about 15 minutes. While pastry cooks, shred chicken into bite-size pieces, discarding skin and bones.

6. Stir chicken into stew and cook, uncovered, until warmed through and stew has thickened slightly, 2 to 4 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve.

Now I'm kind of curious how the noodle-style dumplings would turn out with the addition of some leavening.

By the way, I put my leftovers in the outdoor fridge (aka the table on the deck) and it froze solid overnight, unsurprisingly. The texture of the thawed soup is now more like a porridge than chicken and dumplings but it's still really tasty.

starches in soups are not great for freezing

we usually put enough noodles/potatoes/etc for what we will eat for dinner and then freeze the broth and veggies/meats, add in fresh starch when you thaw and cook/heat

made a short rib ragu in the pressure cooker the other night. came out pretty great. took longer that i'd want but that has its bonus'. my pressure cooker can only max out at like 11psi(think stovetop go to 15psi?). so it ended up taking almost 90minutes in the pressure cooker to really break down. The bonus of the lower pressure is that there wasn't a chance my sauce would burn since it heats up slower. Fiance made some really good thick pasta to hold the sauce.

The next day we used that sauce and some of the short rib meat and made Eggs in Purgatory(Shakshuka). The sauce was so thick that the eggs didn't have a chance to expand so they just grew vertical. Might be my favorite breakfast.

In preparation for my Whole30 starting tomorrow, I made the following items:

Toasted pine nuts (for topping salads, using in pesto)
Tahini (for making baba ghanoush and using in salad dressings)
Baba ghanoush for snacking (why didn't anyone tell me this was so good?)
Mayonnaise (for coating shrimp prior to coating in shredded coconut, or making chicken salad, or in salad dressings)
Diced assorted veggies for salads (like, a lot - I have a full quart ziploc each of cucumbers, yellow peppers, tomatoes, and red cabbage [actually have half a gallon of this])

Currently have chicken marinating for a non-dairy version of tikka masala. Plus diced onion.

My feet are tired.

Fiance wants to do whole 30 real bad. We agreed on april

Fried up 3lbs of chicken fingers tonight and some spirals of sausages. Chicken came out great. Used a bon appetit recipe

Made Cannoli filled Chocolate Dipped cupcakes.


Delightful

Wow, been a while for this thread.

Question: I had a 5lb brisket frozen in vacuum pack since December, which I'm sure is fine on that front but I asked my brother to start defrosting it last night for use Sunday and he just took it out of the freezer and left it out on the stove. It was out for about 12 hours but probably didn't thaw completely and I threw it back in the fridge this morning. I guess my mistake for not clarifying. I assume this is fine, right? It was in the fridge for about a day in December before being frozen. Note, you will not be held accountable for any food poisoning should that occur.

you'll be safe to eat. the quality of the meat may be suspect though. usually a thaw like that will toughen the meat up if you re-freeze it.

i re-freeze stuff all the time, though.

thanks dr. lecter

jamiethekiller wrote:you'll be safe to eat. the quality of the meat may be suspect though. usually a thaw like that will toughen the meat up if you re-freeze it.

i re-freeze stuff all the time, though.

yeah, i'm not gonna refreeze but just keep it in the fridge until sunday morning. i wanted it to long thaw so it would be ready sunday.

i'm just doing a long braise http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2016 ... ecipe.html so hopefully that'll take care of any iffy meat quality.

had the fiance make this recipe for ribs the other night. came out incredible. We did it in the oven instead of the grill. The base we used was Stone Smoked Porter BBQ Sauce with a mix of half vinegar/half water. she basted every 10/15 minutes. Took almost 2 hours to do 'em. Top 5 rib in my life probably.

http://amazingribs.com/recipes/porknogr ... hurry.html

love ribs. we did serious eats' sous vide ones the other week with a homemade sauce and they were delicious. think i prefer dry rubbed tho.