Chicken Pasta

A few days ago, my aunt shared a recipe with me, and I wanted to try it.  It turned out great, so here is my version of the chicken pasta.  It's incredibly easy, and you can even cook it in the slow cooker! 


First, bake and cube two large boneless, skinless chicken breasts.  Also, cook a box of pasta (I used bow-tie) to al dente.  In a bowl, mix the chicken, pasta, half a block of velveeta (chopped up), a can of rotell, half a bag of shredded taco flavored cheese, and a can of cream of mushroom (or cream of chicken).  Mix it all together.  Cook it in a casserole dish at 350 degrees Fahrenheit until the top begins to brown and then add some shredded cheddar cheese on top, continue cooking until the cheese  melts.  You can also cook it in the slow cooker on low for several hours.  The end result looks something like this, and tastes delicious! Enjoy!

 

Herbed Chicken Bites

I stumbled across this recipe for Herbed Chicken Bites from www.cooks.com.  First, I cut the three pieces of boneless, skinless chicken breasts into bite-sized pieces.   I then mixed together a 1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese, 2 tbs of Italian seasoning (the recipe called for thyme and basil, but I didn't have thyme by itself, so I just used the Italian seasoning) and 1 cup of crushed stuffing.  (Instead of stuffing, the recipe called for crushed bread crumbs or crackers, which I didn't have either.)

I melted 1/2 cup of butter, and then dipped the pieces of chicken into the butter before coating them in the dressing mixture.  After laying the chicken on a cookie sheet (with foil in the bottom), I placed them in the oven at 400 degrees F for about 25 minutes.  It's important to watch that the chicken is cooked through, but it's also easy for them to get too dry. 

My end result was some rich tasting chicken bites, which I served with garlic potatoes.

Chicken Ravioli

On Valentine's Day I was kicked out of my kitchen!  What kind of a person would do such a thing?  Well, my husband would.  However, he did so with some great intentions.  He decided to make me a surprise Valentine's meal.  I heard a lot of loud noises and soon some wonderful smells were coming out of there.  When I was finally allowed to see the end product, this was what it was.

 

He had made homemade ravioli for me!  What a guy!  So, I learned the secret of making this delicious dish, and just had to share it with you. 

First, you make the pasta dough (you can find the recipe here.)  Then you roll out the dough.

While this is being done, you can also start on the filling for the ravioli.  My husband decided to use chicken as the filler.  First he cooked then minced two boneless, skinless chicken breasts with a good chopper.  (A food processor would work great too!)  He then placed the chicken as well as a chopped garlic clove, chopped red and yellow peppers salt, pepper, and grated Parmesan cheese into a skillet.  You can cook this mixture on low, while stirring occasionally.  This mixture looks a lot like scrambled eggs when you are cooking it.

 

 

When the filling is done, place spoon fulls of it on the flat pasta dough, in a circle about 1-2 inches in diameter.  You can really make the ravioli whatever size that you want, but we enjoyed large raviolis.  When the filling is placed, lay the other rolled out pasta on top of the first that is now covered with filling.  My husband used a tart press to cut and seal the ravioli.  If you don't have one of these, you will want to coat the edges of the ravioli with some egg whites or butter, to make the edges stick together.  Then cut out the ravioli with a pasta cutter (or a pizza cutter if a pasta cutter is not available).  Make sure the edges of the pasta are pressed tight. (You can use a fork to help seal the edges as well.)  Cook the ravioli in a pot of boiling water for 8-9 minutes, until the pasta dough is limp.  Be gentle with each piece, as they are somewhat prone to breaking open.  Place the ravioli on a plate and top with some marinara sauce that has been warmed in a sauce pan.  Then enjoy this delicious meal!

      

 

 

Chicken Fettuccini

With my husband's current interest in making homemade pasta, we decided to have some fettuccine.  It may sound intimidating, but it's really not that hard.

First you make the pasta itself.  Take 2 cups of flour, a tbs of basil, and a 1/4 tsp of salt.  Mix these dry ingredients together.  Next, mix the wet ingredients.  This includes 2 eggs, 1/3 cup of water, and a half tsp of oil.  When both the wet and dry ingredients are mixed thoroughly, mix them together.  When the ingredients are all mixed together, cover the dough and let it rest for 10 minutes.

After the dough has rested, split it into four equal parts, and roll each part out into a 12x12 inch square.

  At this point you can cut the pasta into whatever you want.  My husband has made fettuccine, bow ties, and ravioli.  Either cook the pasta in boiling water then, or let it dry to store it in the fridge (to be used in the next couple of days) or in the freezer (for storage up to several months).

For the rest of the meal, cut some boneless skinless chicken breast into strips.  Place some oil in a skillet and heat it up.  Add some salt, pepper, and Italian seasoning to the skillet, and place the chicken breasts in to cook.  Cook them until they are cooked all the way through.

 

When the chicken is cooked, add some Alfredo sauce (we just used the plainest Alfredo sauce from the store.)  I added some more seasonings to get the flavor I wanted.  

  
 As the sauce continues to cook (set it to a low heat), place the pasta in a pot of boiling water.  Cook for 5-6 minutes or until the pasta is limp.  Drain the pasta.

  
Then, pour the Alfredo sauce, with the chicken, on top of the noodles.  Enjoy!

BBQ Chicken Bites

Although the loss of the Colts was a bit bitter, the great food that we had at our Super Bowl gathering helped make up for it.  It was my first chance to host people in my "new" apartment, and any chance to make some food is a fun one.  So, I decided to try something new.  BBQ Chicken Bites were a tasty addition to the evening, and they are pretty easy to make.

First, cut up the boneless skinless chicken breasts into cubes.  Dredge the pieces in flour and place in a skillet that has hot grease in the bottom.  Fry the chicken, letting it get a golden brown on all sides.

 

The crispier you get them in the pan, the crispier they will be after all of the bbq sauce.  Next, either place the chicken bites into a sauce pan, skillet, or slow cooker.  I've used a skillet and a slow cooker both.  Add the bbq sauce. 

My bbq sauce consisted of regular sauce, a bit of a honey sauce, salt, pepper, parsley flakes, onion powder, garlic powder, ketchup, and Worcestershire sauce.  Let the sauce simmer and soak onto the chicken bites.  You want the bites to be hot, but if you soak them too long, they will just become soggy.  

There you go, some nice bbq chicken bites for you to enjoy!

Chicken Enchilada

After the recent chicken toasting fiasco, I was left with some, well, less than succulent pieces of meant.  However, meat is too precious to throw out, but what could be done?  After a few minutes of racking my brain, I remembered that there was a can of green chilies in the cupboard.  Chicken enchiladas were the perfect thing to make!

These are incredibly easy and taste delicious.  All you have to do is cover the bottom of a cake pan with pieces of tortilla shells.  I use about 5-6 medium shells. Next mix the rest of the ingredients into a mixing bowl.  Use a handful of chopped onions, two cans of cream of chicken, shredded or cubed cooked chicken, half a can of chicken broth, one can of green chilies (partially drained) and garlic to taste.  Mix it all together and pour this into the pan with the shells.  Cook the enchiladas at 350 degrees until the top begins to turn a golden brown, and the rest is hot all the way through.  Enjoy!

    

Secret Sauce

What's better than some chicken, pasta, and a secret sauce?  One evening I wanted to make some chicken pasta, but I didn't have the sauce I needed.  Instead I decided to make my own sauce.  It's pretty easy, and something different. 

First cut boneless, skinless, chicken breast into medium to large size chunks.  Throw them in a skillet with two tablespoons of margarine, and cook until the chicken is cooked through. 

 

Add some salt, pepper, and Italian seasoning.  While the chicken is cooking, cook a box of pasta, I used bow tie. Next start on the sauce.

Take a can of cream of chicken and add about 20 cubes of velveeta, and a little milk.

 
 

Keep the sauce on low, stirring so that the cheese won't stick.  Add a little parsley.  When the cheese is melted and the sauce is hot, it's ready!

 

Place the chicken on top of the pasta and cover with the sauce.  Eat and enjoy!

Chicken Pasta

There is a delicious frozen meal that my marvelous friend, Sandee, introduced me to.  It was a three cheese chicken meal, and we loved it.  That was exactly what I wanted for dinner the other night, but much to my annoyance, I can't find this meal anymore.  So, there was only one thing to do.  Make it myself.

If you want to try the meal, it's pretty easy.  (Sandee, try it, and see if you think it tastes close to the frozen stuff.)

Take cubed chicken, chopped broccoli, red, green, and yellow peppers, and onions.  Cook them all in a skillet until the chicken is cooked. 

While this is cooking, cook pasta (I used rotini) in a pan, and drain.

When the pasta and the chicken is finished, add half a can of cream of chicken, the pasta, and about 16 small cubes of velveeta cheese. 

Keep the food on low heat, and mix while the cheese melts.  When everything is hot, and the cheese is melted, sprinkle shredded mozzarella on top.  Eat and enjoy!

Simple Sunday

On Sunday's I like to have something fixed ahead of time, but this doesn't always happen.  I just like to get my food, clean up, and head to watch football and take my Sunday nap.  Well, last Sunday, nothing had been fixed in advance, and I was more than ready for that nap.  Thanks to a new magazine, courtesy of my husbands grandmother, I had noticed an interesting new recipe.  Of course, I didn't follow it exactly, I never do, but what came out of it was a quick, easy, and delicious meal!

 

First, cube some boneless skinless chicken breast, uncooked, and toss it into a pan with frozen broccoli.  (I cooked both the chicken and the broccoli in the microwave for a little bit, so they weren't frozen hard.

When the chicken has cooked add a box of stove top stuffing, a cup of milk, and a can of cream of chicken.

Mix it all together, while the meal continues to cook.

When the food is all warm, sprinkle cheese on top, then eat and enjoy!

BBQ

I noticed the other day that I have a tendency to make what I called, "girly foods."  Well, I'm a girl, so that's easily explained, but I realized that my stupendous husband might want something a little different.  In a word, I'm talking about Bar-B-Que.  Now, real BBQ is not to be had at our house.  We don't own a grill, and even if we did (according to our contract) we would have to carry the grill downstairs and outside, 10 feet away from our apartment, cook on it, clean it, and then carry it back up to store it on our deck.  (It's not really worth it.)  I decided to see what I could come up with using my oven.

Here is the final product.

Well, what do you think?  Ok, the food is really more than it looks.  We have really big plates.

For the chicken I thawed out the boneless, skinless chicken breast.  When it was thawed, I put them in a pan and soaked them bar-b-que sauce with a little bit of water in it.  It soaked for a couple of hours, and every once in awhile I would turn them and use a baster to coat them more.

Make sure to cover the pan with foil before you put anything in it, because it will be really hard to clean out the baked sauce.  After soaking the chicken I baked it slowly, staring at a low oven heat, turning the pieces of chicken over every once in awhile.  The sauce bubbles up around the chicken nicely as it is cooking, and gives it a good flavor.  Make sure to not overcook the chicken, or it will be dry.

 

With our chicken we had some green beans, yummy!

I wanted something else with the meal, so I tried something new.  I took some instant potatoes and made them according to the instructions.  Then I added chopped green peppers, chopped onions, bacon bits, cilantro, and shredded cheddar cheese.

After mixing it all together, I put it into a pan, and sprinkled shredded cheese on top, and cooked it until the cheese was melted.  It was delicious and super easy!  The meal was really easy, and something that we thoroughly enjoyed.

Pop It In The Oven

Sometimes, "pop it in" meals are my favorite.  You make a casserole or other dish in advance, and when the time comes all you have to do is "pop in in" the oven.  I especially like doing this on days that my husband is gone.  I can out everything together, and when he gets home and ready, it's easy to just pop the meal into the oven.

It's always fun for me to "create" a new casserole recipe.  Tuesday's was exceptionally tasty, in my opinion.

First, bake two boneless skinless chicken breasts.  When they are cooked, cut them into little pieces and line the bottom of a casserole dish with them. 

While the chicken is cooking, cook a box of macaroni according to the instructions.  When the noodles are cooked and drained, add 1/5 of a box of velveta (chopped), a can of cream of  mushroom soup, and broccoli.

Stir the mixture until everything is melted and warm.  (You might add some milk if it looks like it is getting too dry.)  I also added some mushrooms, because, I LOVE mushrooms!  When it all gets mixed and melted together, it looks like this.

Then pour the macaroni mixture over the chicken.

Not all of my cheese got melted in the pan, and it still tasted ok, but it would have been better all melted and mixed in.  After watching Emeril that day (one of my new favorites) I decided to try making a bread crumb topping.  It was delicious!

Simply tear bread (I used 3 pieces) into little bitty bits.  Then mix in parmesan cheese and parsley.

Sprinkle the crumbs on top of the casserole and then bake until the crumbs start to get crispy and the middle of the casserole is hot.

Enjoy!

Missing Maya

There's a Mexican restaurant near home that I love to go to.  It's called Maya, and my family visits it often.  I have a tendency to order the same thing whenever I got to a restaurant.  (This is a habit that my husband is trying to break me of.)  So, whenever I got to Maya, I almost always order their Nachos con Pollo.  The homemade nacho chips topped with shredded chicken, peppers and then covered with queso is delicious!

Seeing as how Maya is now about a 7.5 hour drive away, I have to supplement my desire for chicken nachos with something else, so I decided to try and make my own.

First I put two frozen chicken breasts in the oven to bake.  Then, when they were done, but not getting dry yet, I shredded the two pieces of chicken and put them into the skillet.  I added chopped onions and green peppers to the mix.  The juice that was in the bottom of the pan from the oven was just enough to make it so things didn't stick, and helped to add to the chicken flavor.  While the chicken cooked, I added some crushed red peppers.  (I have never liked crushed red peppers, because they are spicy and I think they are pointless on pizza.  That's the only thing that I had ever seen them used for.  Pizza is not supposed to be spicy!  Now, I love them, because they add some great flavor as I am cooking things!)  Here's how the chicken looked as it was being cooked.

Doesn't it look delicious!?!?!  While the chicken was cooking, I melted the cheese.  I was able to find a chunk of the mexican cheese dip at Wal-Mart.  I had always wanted to see if it tasted the same as in the restaurants.  Well, it was pretty close.  I then put the chicken on the chips and covered it all with the melted cheese.

 

Wa-La!  It was pretty good, not as good as Maya, but I'm going to have to let it work for now.  

Chicken and Noodles

I had never cooked a whole chicken before. Now I know why. The plan was to make a pot of delicious homemade chicken and noodles. First, I put the chicken in the pot of water. Well, what I immediately learned (this being my first experience and all) was that, unlike other meats that I've cooked, the chicken needed to be cleaned. I thought the point of cleaning a chicken in the first place was to clean it! I'm just saying that when I've cleaned chickens, I made sure the feathers were gone, and those birds were clean!

Imagine my frustration when I had to pluck the rest of the feathers off of my chicken. Much grumbling was heard coming from the kitchen, and my lack of patience caused me to to just grab a knife. Instead of plucking each feather, I just skinned the rest of the chicken.

Finally I got my cleaned chicken into the pot of water, and let it start cooking. I had to get those noodles going. I love the simplicity of making egg noodles. I used 4-6 eggs, and then put as much milk into the mixture as I do eggs. If I use 4 eggs, I put 4 egg fulls of milk into the mixture. The only other thing to add is flour. I added enough to make it doughy.

The fun part came next as I rolled out the dough nice and flat. The problem starting rising again, though. See, I do not have counter space. It's just non-existent in my kitchen. My only option was to roll out the dough on my table.
Well, let's just say that it took many more mistakes before I finally got the dough to do what it needed to do. When it was flat, I rolled it up and sliced the noodles up.I spread the noodles out to dry, and left them there all night.
After the chicken was finished cooking, I put it in the fridge. On Sunday I put the pot of chicken back on the stove. I added some chicken bouillon cubes, salt, and pepper for more flavor. Then I added the noodles and cooked it until the noodles were limp. It smelled delicious. Now, for the faults...(In case you were starting to believe that I was a cooking genius!)

The noodles, were still a little doughy, needing to have dried some more. I rather like my noodles a little doughy, but not everyone does. Also, the whole meal was a little bland. Even though I had put in the bouillon cubes and seasonings, it was still a little plain. Adding some more seasoning would have probably helped. All in all, I think the experiment was ok, although, I will never choose to cook with a whole chicken again.

I wish that every day were Saturday...

My great intentions for last Saturday had been to spend the day cooking. Instead, I wrote and wrote. Finally, at seven in the evening, I started cooking. This is not the time of evening to start cooking, especially when you have to get up the next morning. However, my wonderful husband helped me so much.

After fighting with a chicken, suffering from the lack of counter space, and a limited amount of time, I was able to complete the three recipes that had been on the agenda. I'll share more later, but today we are enjoying the homemade chicken potpie.

To enjoy this amazingly delicious recipe,

This recipe makes two potpies, one to cook and one to freeze!

Use the store bought frozen pie crust. There are lots of kinds to buy, but I choose the kind that is already in the pan. The pie crust often comes in twos, but make sure to buy two. One crust will be the bottom, and the other will be the top of the potpie.

While the pie crusts are frozen, take two of the crusts out of the pie pan. When the crusts are thawed, it will be too difficult to try to take it out of the pan. The pie crusts that are out of the pan will be the top of the pie. Let all of the crusts thaw.

Cook a bag of frozen mixed vegetables. While that is cooking chop into chunks and cook, two to three pieces of the boneless, skinless chicken breast. (I cooked mine in the microwave.)

When the vegetables and chicken are cooked, mix together with two cans of cream of chicken soup. Add a bit of sage and mix.
Cook the bottom part of the pie crust until it begins to turn golden brown. Then divide the mixture between the two pans.
Add the second crust to the top, and poke some holes in the top. There will probably be a little extra dough from the top crust, which we used for a fun design.
Place the pie on a cookie sheet, in case it bubbles over, and place in the oven at around 400 degrees. Cook until the top crust is brown and a little crisp. We cooked one pie that night, and then covered and stuck the other one in the freezer for later. It was delicious!