A Tale of Two Chickens.

Canned tuna, canned salmon, canned shrimp, canned clams, canned crab, canned chicken, canned beef; are you seeing the trend here and has convenience just gone too far?  Or you go into the deli area of your market and see a "salad" in a plastic container; but where are the edible ingredients?  Usually there is so much mayonnaise, you wonder if that is exactly what is in the container and nothing else.  Mayonnaise for any type of "salad" should be a coating, a simple binder for ingredients, NOT the main ingredient.

Chicken salad - do you like it with shredded chicken or chunky?  Roy and I prefer chunky style; biting into a piece of chicken, knowing how it tastes combined with all the added ingredients.  The best way to prepare chicken for salad making is either Rotisserie or Boiled; yes I said boiled. Boiling the chicken does not diminish its flavor; it’s simply a quicker way of removing any excess fat while ensuring the chicken is thoroughly cooked. You want to use either boneless, skinless chicken breasts or chicken tenderloins; nice and meaty! For a serving of two, use four tenderloins or one large breast half (anatomy lesson: chickens have two breasts, so you only need one); place in a small saucepan and add enough water to cover the chicken. Using high heat, boil the chicken until a thick layer of scum forms on the top; skim it off; then place the chicken under running water to rinse off any residue still hanging on. Put the chicken on a plate, cover with plastic wrap and let it cool down in the refrigerator; this will also help draw out any excess water the chicken may have absorbed.  Why get rid of the water?  To keep your mayonnaise from getting runny; nothing is unappetizing as scooping up salad just to see watery residue at the bottom of the bowl.  Yuck!

When making the salad, don't get over complicated with ingredients as you want to taste that chicken.  I don’t add salt immediately, most mayonnaise brands already have enough in them. After making your salad, taste it and then decide if you'd like extra salt; remember, you can always add, but not take away. Diced red onion is sweeter than the regular white onion, less harsh on the taste buds. Diced celery will give you some color and added crunch, as will the red onion; two tablespoons of each will be just right. Ground black pepper is a flavor enhancer, but use it sparingly (a half teaspoon for two servings) as it can make your salad on the "hot" side of spicy. When cutting the chicken, first cut strips with the grain, then cut your chunks; otherwise the chicken meat will shred apart, unless you want shredded chicken that is.  Place the chicken, onion, celery and black pepper into a medium mixing bowl; add four tablespoons of mayonnaise and gently fold together. This is when you can now decide if you would like more mayonnaise or is it just right as it is. If you want more, only add one tablespoon at a time; you want to coat and bind, not overwhelm.

 

 

When it comes to making a sandwich with freshly made chicken salad, well that's really up to personal preferences. Depending on mood, and what’s in stock, the bread could be a Kaiser roll, sub roll, pita pocket, or two nice thick slices of bread. Fresh, crispy lettuce is the bedding between the bottom piece of bread and the salad; thin slice of cheese like Baby Swiss, Provolone, mild Cheddar or Colby Jack.  Slice of tomato, maybe a pickle or two; if that is what you'd like, but personally I don't add so many extras that I lose the essence of the chicken salad itself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now here’s a bonus, Rotisserie chicken salad, made straight from your own oven.  We've seen the oval shaped containers in the supermarkets, better yet, we've smelled the contents and started to drool. Rotisserie chicken is placed on a spit and rotated in a special oven, so the dripping fat can basically baste and moisturize the chicken. Besides selling the chicken as whole or in pieces, many places will shred the meat, mix it with mayonnaise and sell it as chicken salad at a high price per pound. Is it worth it? Not always; there might not be enough seasoning, or too much; same goes for the mayonnaise; and the extra benefits of veggies is iffy, or not even added in.

Besides the local supermarket, a rotisserie chicken can be done on the home barbeque. Just purchase the rotating spit, set it up, plug in; yes you'll need an electrical source, and start cooking. Not everyone wants to do this though, but there's another alternative...your own oven.  While the recipe focuses on boneless, skinless chicken breasts, bone-in chicken breasts can also be used, but you just have to up the cooking time to 55-60 minutes, or until the internal temperature reaches 165F. Coating the chicken with mayonnaise and covering with foil ensures that the chicken will stay moist inside as well as outside.  For the veggies, I use diced onion and celery, but a little shredded carrot or diced bell peppers work too.

 

Rotisserie Chicken Salad

 Ingredients:

6 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves; trimmed of fat
3 Tbsp. mayonnaise

Seasoning Mix

2 Tbsp. paprika

1 Tbsp. onion powder
1 Tbsp. garlic powder
1 Tbsp. crushed dry thyme
1 tsp. ground black pepper
1 tsp. fine sea salt
1 ½ Tbsp. brown sugar
pinch of ground cayenne pepper

Salad Mix

¼ cup diced red onion

¼ cup diced celery
¼ cup mayonnaise

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 400F; line a roasting pan with aluminum foil and place rack on top of foil.

Mix together seasonings and spread out on large plate. Using a pastry brush, lightly coat both sides of the chicken breasts with the 3 tablespoons of mayonnaise; lightly press both sides of chicken onto seasoning mix. Place chicken on rack; cover pan with aluminum foil. Bake for 30 - 35 minutes, or until chicken reaches an internal temperature of 165F.

Let chicken cool before cutting into one inch pieces. Place in large bowl; add onion, celery and mayonnaise; mix completely. Serve on rolls, breads, inside pita pockets, rolled in tortillas or as the center piece of a green salad.

Makes 6 servings.

Need to bring a dish to the next get-together?  Wow them with chicken salad; just don’t be surprised if it will be expected every time.

 

Mary Cokenour

Hellmann's Parmesan Crusted Chicken Done My Way.

You know the commercial, mom makes a dish with chicken slathered in mayonnaise, some type of coating added, baked and her kids go ga-ga over it.  I finally decided I was going to try it out.  I printed out a copy of the recipe and looked it over; I didn't understand why the seasoned Italian bread crumbs.  Then at the bottom there were options mentioned, and one was, ""Omit Parmesan cheese for magically moist chicken".  Now I'm really confused, how can it be named "Parmesan Crusted Chicken" without the Parmesan cheese?  Or was the name now, "Magically Moist Chicken" because the cheese was omitted?  You have to love advertising people and the things they come up with to confuse the heck out of us.

First off, I'm going to post the Hellmann's recipe with the options; then I will post my recipe which is straight forward and without confusion.  I call my recipe simply "Parmesan Chicken" as these are the two main actors; the other ingredients are the supporting cast.

Hellmann's Parmesan Crusted Chicken

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup Hellmann's or Best Foods Real Mayonnaise
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves
• 4 tsp. Italian seasoned dry bread crumbs

Directions

1.Preheat oven to 425°.
2.Combine Hellmann's or Best Foods® Real Mayonnaise with cheese in medium bowl. Arrange chicken on baking sheet. Evenly top with Mayonnaise mixture, then sprinkle with bread crumbs.
3.Bake until chicken is thoroughly cooked, about 20 minutes.

SMART TIP: For the Hellmann’s taste you love with the goodness of olive oil, substitute Hellmann's or Best Foods Mayonnaise Dressing with Olive Oil.

Time saving Tip: Try making this dish with thin-cut boneless skinless chicken breasts! Prepare as above, decreasing bake time to 10 minutes or until chicken is thoroughly cooked.

TIP: Omit Parmesan cheese and have "Magically Moist Chicken" on the table in less than 30 minutes.

Now for my recipe:

Parmesan Chicken

Ingredients:

1 (6 oz.) bag shredded Parmesan cheese
1 tsp. ground black pepper
1 tsp. garlic powder
3/4 cup mayonnaise with olive or canola oil
6 (4 oz.) portions of boneless, skinless chicken breasts

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350F; spray baking sheet with nonstick cooking spray.

On a large plate, combine cheese, black pepper and garlic powder.  Brush mayonnaise on underside of chicken, press onto cheese mixture.  Turn chicken to skin side up, brush with mayonnaise, press onto cheese mixture; lay on baking sheet with underside down.  Repeat with remaining chicken.


Bake for 30 minutes.

Makes 6 servings.

Side Dish:  Prepare 2 (4.4 oz.) packages of Knorr Pasta Sides - Pasta Alfredo; decrease
water needed by one cup.  Instead, add one (8 oz.) package of frozen broccoli cuts; cook according to Knorr directions.  The moisture from the frozen broccoli will substitute for the one cup not added.

Mary Cokenour

Chicken Salad Should NOT Come Out of a Can.

Canned tuna, canned salmon, canned shrimp, canned clams, canned crab and canned chicken; has convenience just gone too far?  Or you go into the deli area of your market and see a "salad" in a plastic container; but where are the edible ingredients?  Usually there is so much mayonnaise, you wonder if that is exactly what is in the container and nothing else.  Mayonnaise for any type of "salad" should be a coating, a simple binder for ingredients, NOT the main ingredient.

Chicken salad - do you like it with shredded chicken or chunky?  I prefer chunky myself; I like to bite into a piece of chicken and know how it tastes combined with all the added ingredients.  The best way to prepare chicken for salad making is either Rotisserie or Boiled; yes I said boiled. Boiling the chicken does not diminish its flavor; it simply is a quicker way of removing any excess fat while ensuring the chicken is thoroughly cooked. You want to use either boneless, skinless chicken breasts or chicken tenderloins; nice and meaty! For a serving of two, use four tenderloins or one large breast half (chickens have two breasts, so you only need one); place in a small saucepan and add enough water to cover the chicken. Using high heat, boil the chicken until a thick layer of scum forms on the top; skim it off; then place the chicken under running water to rinse off any residue still hanging on. Put the chicken on a plate, cover with plastic wrap and let it cool down in the refrigerator; this will also help draw out any excess water the chicken may have absorbed.  Why get rid of the water?  To keep your mayonnaise from getting runny; nothing so unappetizing as scooping up salad and seeing watery residue at the bottom of the bowl.  Yuck!

When making your salad, don't get over complicated with ingredients as you want to taste that chicken. You're looking at my photo and saying, "Where's the salt?"; most mayonnaise brands have salt already as an ingredient. After making your salad, taste it and then decide if you'd like extra salt; remember, you can always add, but not take away. Diced red onion is sweeter than the regular white onion, less harsh on the taste buds. Diced celery will give you some color and added crunch, as will the red onion; two tablespoons of each will be just right. Ground black pepper is a flavor enhancer, but use it sparingly (a half teaspoon for two servings) as it can make your salad on the "hot" side of spicy. When cutting the chicken, first cut strips with the grain, then cut your chunks; otherwise the chicken meat will shred apart, unless you want shredded chicken that is.

 
Place the chicken, onion, celery and black pepper into a medium mixing bowl; add four tablespoons of mayonnaise and gently fold together. This is when you can now decide if you would like more mayonnaise or is it just right as it is. If you want more, only add one tablespoon at a time; you want to coat and bind, not overwhelm.

When it comes to making a sandwich with your freshly made chicken salad, well that's really up to personal preferences. Depending on my mood, and what I have in stock, it could be a sesame seed kaiser roll (as in the photo), a sub roll or two nice thick slices of whole wheat bread. Fresh, crispy lettuce is the bedding between the bottom piece of bread and the salad; I prefer a mild, thin slice of cheese like baby Swiss or Provolone.  Maybe you'd like Cheddar or American;  tomato or pickles; if that is what you'd like, but personally I don't want to add so many extras that I lose the essence of the chicken salad itself.

Basically, when it comes to buying canned chicken or premade chicken salad at the deli counter, consider buying fresh chicken and creating your own salad.  You'll thank yourself later on.  Enjoy!

Mary Cokenour

It's Beefy, Eggy and Good Anytime.

Recently I enjoyed an adventure in making a Prime Rib for the first time. Then I did a bit of thinking, yes I do that on occasion, and wondered if the roasting technique I used on the prime rib could be done with other types of beef roasts. Instead of buying cold cuts at the supermarket, I usually roast my turkey and chicken breasts, glazed ham or roast beef; then thin slice them for sandwiches or chopped up for salads.

This time I had a lovely, lean eyeround roast waiting for its turn in the roasting pan.  Leaving out the rosemary and thyme, I only seasoned the meat with the salt, ground black pepper, garlic and onion powders; but cooked it the same way as I had done with the prime rib.  Again, I relied on my meat thermometer to tell me when it reached medium-rare.



Now one morning hubby wanted breakfast and he was thinking along the lines of eggs, bacon and cheese on a toasted roll.  Well he got more than he bargained for, as I like to think and cook outside the box.  You see, I had forgotten to take the bacon out of the freezer for defrosting, but the container holding that lovely roast caught my eye....and the cheddar cheese slices, and the mayonnaise, and the butter.  I never said this was going to be a heart healthy sandwich, but you can always tweak what I'm telling you here to your own needs.  Back to the story....

After slicing open the Kaiser roll, I buttered up the outside top and bottom of the roll, just like I was going to make a grilled cheese sandwich.

Heating both my griddle pan and 8 inch skillet, I opened up 2 eggs which went into the 8 inch skillet.  The Kaiser roll went butter side down on the griddle pan with a smear of mayonnaise on both face up sides.  A slice of mild cheddar cheese also went down over the mayonnaise; while several very thin slices of beef sat on one roll half.  I flipped the eggs over as hubby likes them over easy, let them cook a bit before sliding them on top of the beef.  Now here's the important part, place the cheese only side of the roll over the eggs and press down lightly; you don't want to break the yokes.   Let the sandwich fry for about another minute before moving it to a plate.

 

...and there you have it, the Beef and Egg Anytime Sandwich. Why did I name it "Anytime"? Hubby enjoyed it so much, he wanted one for dinner that night; and then again for lunch on another day.

Be warned though, you will need lots of napkins for this sandwich. Pick it up whole, bite into it and you'll get a gush of egg yolk all over your face and hands. Cut it in half, pick it up and the egg yolks will still get on you. However, once you taste it, you won't care the slightest. The crunch of the butter fried roll, the smooth melty cheese, seasoned beef enriched with the mayonnaise intertwined with yolky goodness. Yes, you will think, this is nirvana!!!

Enjoy!

Mary Cokenour
January 3, 2013

Palette for a Food Artist - Potato Salad

Though food preparation can be considered an art form, there are certain recipes that can be changed so often, they can be compared to an artist's palette. As the artist would mix colors and use different brushes for texturing, so would the cook with ingredients and kitchen gadgets.

A perfect example of this is potato salad; a side dish that can be served warm or cold, with or without mayonnaise, and, well the list of ingredients that can be added in is close to nameless. What is the origin of potato salad? Well that depends on what country you're in, for any country that has potatoes as a staple has some form of salad associated with it. My grandmother's salad is a version of German potato salad, but without the addition of bacon; I still make it the same as she did to this day.

Basically any type of potato can be used and they are normally peeled and boiled until tender (not firm, but not falling apart). Once it became known that the skin of the potato is loaded with nutrients, leaving the peel, or parts of it, became popular. Then came the question of "what to do with leftover baked potatoes?" and making them into a salad became an option. Baked potatoes tend to become very dry and starchy as they cool, but cutting them up, adding moisture such as mayonnaise, Miracle Whip, sour cream, butter and/or oil gave them new life.

So what exactly can be put into a typical potato salad; the one where the potatoes are boiled or baked, peeled or unpeeled, cooled or left warm? Sorry, but I don't have enough room to list it all, but here are a few choices: diced celery, onions, jicama, radishes, pickles. Seasonings such as paprika, ground black pepper, ground or crushed cayenne pepper, dill, rosemary, thyme, chives, mustard (yellow, spicy brown, Dijon), horseradish (ground or creamy). Bacon and/or chopped hard boiled eggs for protein.

Potato salad is the palette, ingredients are your colors; be the artist and create your own masterpiece.

Mary Cokenour

Thick or Thin, It's Bacon!

There is just something about the smell and taste of bacon that makes whatever it's put on, or in, simply delicious. Bacon is a pork product; a salt cured and smoked part of the pig which comes from the sides or the belly of the beast. The many varieties of bacon depends on the parts used and the techniques to preserve it. Bacon itself has very little meat to it; it's the fat that gives bacon products most of the flavor and richness; also its crispness after frying. Before frying, some of the fat can be removed, frozen and saved for later use. The fat left in a fry pan solidifies at room temperature and can be used like lard or vegetable shortening to flavor biscuits, cornbread, and dressings.

In America, the typical bacon product used is either thin or thick strips. The thin strips, depending on brand quality, can almost be paper thin; frying up very quickly and leaving behind more oil than a cook knows what to do with. One batch I made recently started out as ten inch strips and quickly whittled down to crispy, melt in the mouth, snack pieces of three inches.

The cut of bacon for my household is thick; more meaty than thin, less fat which makes more for the eating. The typical ten inch pieces only shrink down to about seven inches; they don't take longer to fry up either. In a 12 inch skillet, high heat, I was able to cook 6-7 pieces in each batch; each batch took only 8 minutes to fry up to delicious crispiness.

While bacon is often used as a sandwich addition, the most popular is the "BLT" or "Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato". I'm not a fan of the tomato part as I believe the juice of the tomato simply takes away from the crispiness of the bacon, lettuce and toasted bread. For moisture, I slather on a generous dose of mayonnaise on both slices of bread; while my husband prefers using Miracle Whip.

Use the Search function on this blog page and you'll find I've used bacon as an ingredient from grilled cheese to meatloaf to even baking up cupcakes.

Other cuts of bacon popular in, or finding its niche in, USA cooking and baking are Canadian which comes from the back center (or eye of the round). It is more similiar to a traditional ham product than bacon; and if you've eaten an "Egg McMuffin" from McDonald's, than you know what I'm referring to. From Italy, Pancetta is a nonsmoked, cut extremely thin bacon which will add the mild taste of pork without the smokiness of smokedbacon; sometimes it comes flavored with herbs and spices.

No matter how you like your bacon, well what can I say, "It's Bacon!!!".

Mary Cokenour