Chicken dinners continued

Quesadillas for dinner yesterday with the kids. The one with filled with sriracha sauce was mine.

Chicken Marsala for dinner tonight.

Still have to make the stock and there is a little meat left over for a soup. I thinking it would be good for lunch on Saturday.

Chicken dinners

Now that I have the pressure cooker and it is easier to make stock, I started buying whole chickens again. I like that I can do this with a half-assed plan. Chicken is chicken. There is no one way it needs to be cooked.

Prior to the Sunday grocery shopping trip, I checked the weather and saw that today was going to be pushing 40 degrees. Perfect winter grilling weather. The report, however didn't say anything about the precipitation was luckily dodged between 5 and 6 this evening. I've grilled in the rain and/or snow before and it isn't that big a deal. The hardest part is trying not to track up the house going in and out. Anyhow, upon seeing a 40 degree Tuesday and knowing that I have more time to get dinner ready on Tuesdays because of gymnastics - grilling was happening.  During the Sunday shopping trip, I picked up two fryers from Fresh Market. When they aren't on sale, two of these chickens will cost about $15. A sale drops the price closer to $11. I like getting two chickens because I get a minimum of three dinners out of them, plus a lunch or two and stock.  Plus, I think the chicken tastes better than buying pre-butchered chicken. Especially boneless breasts. Maybe it's my imagination.

After a little bit of handiwork (I'm actually getting pretty good at this), each chicken is broken down into 2 boneless breasts, 2 thighs, 2 drumsticks and I break up the wings. A boning knife helps, but a chefs knife will do. Here's a good video on breaking down a chicken (there are 3 videos in the series - 1, 2 and 3). To make life easier in the future, I also remove the tenderloin from the breast and take out the piece of sinew that runs through them.

The breasts and tenderloins get wrapped up for the future. I'll probably remove the skin before I use the breasts. I leave them on in case I end up grilling them.I used to freeze the wings and save them until I had enough for a wing dinner. Lately I've just been throwing them on the grill.

The carcass and wingtips get packaged to make stock. This can easily get frozen. So can any of the chicken you don't plan to use this week.

Light up a chimney full of charcoal. I've been using Royal Oak lately. Sadly, I have the phone nymber to the Phillips Hardware store on Central in my phone. I also have the product SKU in there too...for easier ordering. There' no shipping charge if you pick it up at the store.

Got my chicken spice rub together. I'll give you a hint: one of the six ingredients is salt.

Apply the rub liberally and go grill.

It was a little to dark for outdoor photography at 5:30 this evening. I set up an offset fire in the Weber, put all the chicken on the cooler side and flipped everything after about 10 to 12 minutes. They were out there for about 25 minutes. I checked some pieces with a thermometer to make sure they were done and had to use a flashlight (the joys of winter grilling). Dinner is served.

Tomorrow, I'm on my own with the kids for dinner. I think I'm going to use one breast and the tenderloins to make tacos or quesadillas. Thursday will either be a slightly easier one pan take on chicken parm or chicken Marsala. Whatever is left will probably go into some chicken noodle soup. All plans are subject to change. Like I said, it doesn't matter. It's just boneless breasts of chicken. Except, these are fresher and I believe they will taste better than if I had bought them already off the bone.

First Pressure Cooker Run

Tonight was a Girl Scouts night. So I did what every guy with a 90 minutes of tranquility in their own house would do: I made chicken stock in the new pressure cooker.

I followed the Modernist recipe that was part of the New York Times review of Modernist Cuisine. You boil a bunch of cut up chicken wings and then drain it. I think cutting the wings would be much easier with a big butcher's block and a cleaver. I used a pair of hand-me-down kitchen shears (Thanks Mom) and they kind of worked. The recipe also calls for ground chicken thighs. I added the bones from the thighs in with the wings. The rest is pretty straight forward. Onion, leek and carrot in the pot with some peppercorn and parsley. Mix everything together and cover with water. Pressure cook on high for 90 minutes.

Here's the leek, onion and carrot softening.

I boiled the bones in a different pot.  I also threw in some chicken skin. I think it was Chef Bob Del Grosso that talked about skin enhancing a stock.

Put everything into the pressure cooker.

Which is prettier: the pot or the tile backsplash? Two red bars bars on the pop-up thingy means there 15 psi inside. I didn't want to mess around with this thing so I read the book. Not sure if you can see it, but the dial for the pressure cooker burner is turned pretty low.

After 90 minutes at 15 psi plus the time it took the pressure to naturally drop, the vegetables and chicken look pretty spent. Hopefully it all went into the water.

Here it is after going through some cheese cloth. Looks like it needs to have some fat taken out of it. The fat should solidify overnight. Tastes pretty good. Needs some salt, but that will get added later.

A good first run. Not sure I'd follow the recipe to the letter again. I think it would be cheaper to buy a whole chicken, use the breasts for dinner, and put the rest of the bird in the pot. I'll have to try some variations as I gear up for Thanksgiving.

And so it begins

If I am counting correctly, this is the 10th year we are hosting some Thanksgiving festivities. Last year, I fell behind in the prep work and never really caught up. This year is going to be different. I've already looked and updated the all powerful Thanksgiving spreadsheet. Still have a few tweaks, but the preparations have already begun. First thing on the prep list was making more stock. I hit the Asian Market on Central up for two packages of chicken feet. Let them simmer in some water for 3 hours or so then I added onion and a lot of carrots.

I skipped the celery this time around. I was recently flipping through the French Laundry cookbook (which by the way is full of things I would love to eat but will never cook for myself), and Thomas Keller thinks the celery adds bitterness to the stock. It could be the lack of celery or it could be the overload of carrots and I suppose it could be both, but this stock was very sweet. Although it is probably closer to an aspic than a stock. Once it chilled it was chicken flavored jello.

I could have held this bowl upside down and nothing would have happened. The chicken jello was scooped into 2 bags and frozen. The larger bag is for gravy and the smaller bag will get a little water added to it before going in the dressing. Tomorrow, I have to try the Tuscan Salami and Saturday I'll hit the Troy Farmer's Market. I think I might want to try and smoke a chicken in the smoker before I do the turkey. Or at least fire it up and try to manage the heat. This year's cooker is different than in years past. I bought this one with the winning from a good day at the track.The last time I used this smoker...it was before I hosted a Thanksgiving. It has been resting in a garage in Rotterdam for over a decade. Through the magic of my brother-in-laws pickup truck, it made the trip to our house.

I also have to come up with one more dish featuring Chacutepalooza techniques. The final challenge is to host a meal featuring at least 3 of the techniques practiced during Charcutepalooza. I've got the smoked turkey and Tuscan Salami lined up. I've got to come up with one more. Right now, I'm leaning towards a grilled kielbasa appetizer. I'm going to think that one over. A week is still plenty of time. Plenty.

For now, I am enjoying the euphoric, totally ready for preparing Thanksgiving buzz. I am seriously so far ahead of last year it is sick. I'll let you know how I feel Wednesday night. But for right now, piece of cake.

Charcutepalooza Project #6 - Continued

I kind of feel like I am handing in a homework assignment three days late...maybe I'll just think of this as extra credit since the Italian Sausage was made on time.

I tried the chicken sausage out of Charcuterie with a few changes. I cut back on the pork fat since it seemed like too much. It is a 30% meat/fat ratio but I didn't think the chicken thighs needed that much help. I skipped adding the wine, olive oil and vinegar. I had tried something similar with the original Italian sausage recipe and didn't like it. I also skipped the remixing after the grind. I prefer the coarser grind in the final sausage. All that being said, here's what happened in the kitchen:

Got all the ingredients out. I was thankful for the mise en place routine earlier in the week when I realized I had no sun dried tomatoes.  Here the re-hydrated sun dried tomatoes and basil.

Chicken thighs and back fat. Would you believe I am actually starting to run low on back fat?

Diced, seeded tomatoes with minced garlic on the left and the salt/pepper on the right.

Mix it all up then grind.

Into the stuffer and out come sausage. The chicken stuffs easier than pork. I ran out of rinsed casings at the end. Just meant a larger late night snack for the cook.

One thing that is more noticeable with the chicken sausage is that the flavors change significantly as the sausage ages. I'd argue it improved with some time. I tasted a little bit before stuffing to see how the seasonings were. I thought it tasted pretty good, maybe a little heavy on the salt, and the sun dried tomato flavor was pretty strong. After the stuffing, I fried up the leftovers. The sun dried tomato flavor was not as strong and it seemed a little less salty. A definite improvement from the original taste. Tonight, I grilled up a bunch of the sausages and froze the rest.

The wife was surprised that this is what I had made the night before. Got her rating "best chicken sausage she's had." The older daughter liked them too. The younger daughter was not impressed. She's not that into dinner in general and the sausage was no competition for the diced cantaloupe that was also on the table. Two out of three ain't bad. This will have to be made again. I'd cut back even more on the pork fat and reduce the salt a bit, but definitely a very tasty sausage.

Next month's challenge is blending. I haven't had the best luck with emulsified sausage. I blame my lack of ice maker. I guess it could be operator error too. I thinking about trying hot dogs but I've got to go through a few books before I start cooking.

Charcutepalooza Project #3 - continued

First a flashback to Project 2 - that pancetta is the best I have ever made. Fantastic stuff.

Returning to Project 3 - We had corned beef sandwiches for dinner last night. I thought it came out pretty good. There are probably a few things I would change. First, I think I'd cut back on the red pepper flakes. I was surprised how easy it was to feel their heat. It was good, just not something I was expecting in corned beef. Corned beef is supposed to be salty but I thought this was a little too salty. I'm going to blame that on not enough water in my cooking method. Here's how the corned beef went:

I rinsed the cured brisket and put into my slow cooker and filled it with water. Added 2 more tablespoons of the pickling spice and put it on low to simmer.

Here's what it looked like when it came out.

My younger daughter wasn't too into it. My older daughter liked it, but then I think some of the heat from the red pepper caught up to her. All in all, I thought the project was a success. It's all gone...Next time I would scale back some of the red pepper (maybe only use it in either the brine or the cooking liquid but not both). I'd also try to cook the beef in more water. I have a few bottom round roasts that I have never had success cooking. I think I might try to turn them into corned beef and see how they turn out.

Just under the wire, I thought I could get a chicken into the poultry brine and roast it for dinner tonight. Back to back brine projects. Started with weighing out salt and sugar in the white bowl next to the lemons. The rest of the ingredients, except some peppercorns are on the plate. There's parsley, tarragon, garlic, onion and some bay leaves. They all went into half a gallon of boiling water.

 

Once the salt ans sugar were dissolved, I poured the half gallon of brine into a bowl with a half gallon block of ice to cool.

The chicken ( a 4 pound bird) went into a ziplock bag and then got filled with the completely cooled brine. This went into the fridge for about 15 hours. The chicken got rinsed this morning and went back into the fridge uncovered to dry.

I put the chicken in the oven and waited. When I thought it was done (i was getting good temperature readings in the breast and thigh), I put the broiler on to crisp and brown the skin a little more. I took it out and let it rest. Then I cut it up. The thigh joint was still a little pink. I finished breaking down the bird and put it back in the oven. Dinner was now officially late. The breast meat was very juicy, tender and had a very nice flavor. The dark meat seemed to be a little more flavored by the brine. The tarragon flavor was much stronger. Lesson learned: I'm not really a tarragon fan. I also need a better roasting pan. This one kind of sucks.

Challenge Number 4 is out: Hot smoking. I've got to get started on that because I think I'm going to be busy around the 15th of April. No time for last minute charcuterie.

And Still More Chicken Stock

I was just about out of chicken stock. I like having 1 cup containers of stock. A little good stock tends to improve a dinner. I made a variation of my cavetelli with sausage and broccoli last week. Usually it is all tossed in a bowl. This time, I made a quick roux, thickened the chicken stock, tossed everything together with some mozzarella cheese and put it in the oven to melt. It was pretty good.

Instead of just throwing together a stock by feel, I decided to follow Ruhlman's ratio for stock. 2 parts bones, 3 parts water, and then about 20% by weight mirepoix. I had the bones from 4 chickens in the freezer weighing in at just over 6 pounds. A pint is a pound the world around...so I needed 9 pounds of water...9*16=144ouces of H2O. Into the big pot that is really a roaster and not a stock pot.

That's 11:58 in the morning-I'm not crazy enough to start making stock at midnight. Well, I am but I didn't do it. The bones thawed as the water reached a simmer. Then there is the yeeecchhh you have to get rid of.

Once the yeeech had subsided and everything was at a good simmer, the lid went on and the roaster went into a 200 degree oven. This is a great idea. It was around 1:00 when it went into the oven. After 5 hours of completely hands off simmering, I added 2 pounds of rough cut mirepoix and about a tablespoon of tomato paste.

And then back into the oven for 2 more hours. I strained it through a colander and then again through some cheesecloth. I keep an ice packed filled with water (lesson very learned) in the freezer. Once that went in, it kind of created some weird swirls.

Once cold, I put it in the fridge overnight. Skimmed a little fat off the next day and set up small packages of stock. The small ziplocks have 1 cup of stock. The containers hold about a cup and a half.

With this 3:2 ratio, the stock became viscous when cold but did not gel up. I think I was probably closer to using a 1:1 ratio earlier. The stock has a very nice flavor. There is no salt in it, I have to remember to account for that when cooking. I once made a very bland pot of soup. Nothing that couldn't be fixed with a salt shaker though. So currently there is the meat from 3 chickens in the freezer along with a little over a gallon of stock. Should last a little while.

Chickens, again

When I first stumbled into the food blogging world, the first thing I found were some short films on how to use a whole chicken. Since then, I have only purchased chicken parts twice. Once was for a party where I was slow cooking a lot of drumstick and thighs. The other time was on a vacation with a few other families. We bought a really big and cheap package of boneless skinless breasts. The difference in quality of the pre-packaged chicken breasts to meat taken off a $7 to $9 whole bird was astounding.
 
I've tried a few different brands of chickens - Plainville Farms sold at Price Chopper, BJ's all natural brand, Murray's that I got at Cardona's, and the Nature's Select at Hannafords are the brands that come to mind. From these, I prefer the Nature's Select brand.

I'm not kidding myself that these are all natural free range chickens that roamed outside searching for bugs. I'm pretty sure they are all commercial farmed birds, but I believe they are a slightly better class of commercial farm. I might be kidding myself there.  While pricier than the cheapest chickens you can find in a supermarket, they are clearly superior in quality. They smell better, look better, and taste better. I imagine a $20 chicken from a farmer's market is great. Unfortunately, when push comes to shove, I am too cheap to buy a $20 chicken.

I used the last of our chicken last week so I picked up two from Hannafords. The cost was about $18.

When I break the birds down, I start with the legs and thighs. The legs and thighs from both birds get frozen together and usually end up on the grill. The breasts and tenderloins from each bird are frozen separately. I used to save the wings and when I had enough, there would be a wing dinner. The kids wouldn't eat it (I'm not positive they are related to me). The wings, the rest of the bones and skin go in a bag for making stock. Homemade stock will greatly improve anything you cook using a box or can of stock. It is amazing how much better stew gets with some of that stock. If my a visit from my brother is coming up, I save the livers and some fat for chopped liver. Here are the chickens broken down.

Before we butchered our first cows, every family got a FoodSaver. I seal the legs & thighs and the breasts before they go into the freezer. The more I do this, the faster I get. Last night, the time from opening the packaging of the first chicken to all cleaned up with meat in the freezer was just under an hour. Above average meat for three meals for a family of 4 (usually with leftovers) for about $6 a meal. Plus, that stock goes into a lot of other meals. Not too bad.