Recipe Tryouts #2: Rosemary Chicken

[cjsmith]

Recipe from erisian_fields. Mmmm, rosemary!

Lesson Number One: It is much easier to separate a chicken breast from the little pantiliner it sits on when it's not frozen. Often I repack such things, but this time I had the space and wouldn't have them in there long. Oops.

I put a big pile of chicken breasts in the crock pot. Then it said to sprinkle with salt, pepper, and rosemary. Oh, maybe I should have sprinkled each layer? But the meat had started to fuse. It had been in the freezer only overnight in a big stack and thus some wasn't fully frozen. I pried the layers apart to do the sprinkling. The rosemary smelled so good!

Liquids in -- and all the stuff I'd sprinkled on the topmost piece washed off. Duh! As the hours went on I stirred the top ones under.

Many hours later I pulled the meat out and tried for sauce. I strained some of the fat off, the stuff that wasn't liquid at crock temperatures. There was an awful lot of that floating around and I probably halved it. I poured all the rest (rosemary and all) into a pot on the stove. I stirred a couple tablespoons of cornstarch into cool water until it was smooth, then poured that in the pot too. I boiled it, and boiled it, and boiled it, and boiled it... and then gave up 'cause guests were coming! I poured the still-very-thin "sauce" onto my single-portion bits of meat and popped them all in the freezer for the future.

This morning I took one portion out, opened the lid a crack for heating, and mmmmmmmmm did it smell good. Even frozen! I adore rosemary, have I mentioned? I noticed the sauce did have little spots that looked like they had tried to become thick. I made some rice with that broth/sauce.

The kitties followed my every move. BOY were they interested.

It was good! Rice with the broth was a good idea. Next time, a tinch less lemon (I kinda went on the high side for that) and a bit more rosemary and pepper. The chicken breast was falling apart at a touch, and was a tad dry, so maybe also cook it less long?? And if I want a sauce, maybe more cornstarch.

Comments

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

Looks like you're getting into the progressive refinement thing in cooking. If you make large batches, you can do two or three things a week and cover most of your entree needs. We often do 12 chicken breasts at a time, marinating then grilling outside, and use that for half our dinners for a week. When you have a repertoire of 6-8 main courses you can do without thinking, you're suddenly considered a good cook. :-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I definitely like the progressive refinement concept. Any recipe I get I futz with. (When I'm particularly clever, I futz with it only after I've already tried it once.)

I've easily got six to eight main courses I can do without thinking -- they're just all really basic. Well, basic to ME. Meatloaf, fondue, lasagne... The problem is when I do something, anything, ELSE. ;-) I don't have breadth of knowledge. My readers have certainly seen that this weekend!