Filed under “so absurdly easy to prepare it should be criminal,” this totally kickass recipe for chicken will provide you with a low fat meal with explosive, groin-grabbingly good flavor – and a sauce you can put on just about any meat.
Ingredients
1 tbsp. butter or oil of choice
1 large onion
2 chicken breasts, halved
1 cup chicken broth
1/4 cup (or less, to taste) honey
2 tbsp. orange juice concentrate
1 tbsp. chipotle chiles in adobo sauce (La Costeña, comes in cans)
1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes (optional for heat factor)
2 tsp. corn starch
White rice (or corn and beans)
Preparation
Chop your onion and saute in butter or oil until golden brown and caramelized. Set aside.
Cook chicken until golden, while the chicken is cooking combine all remaining ingredients in a small bowl and add to the chicken, stirring constantly until the mixture is thick (a few minutes). Stir in the onions.
Stir fry rules. It’s fast, pretty easy to pull off with a tiny amount of practice, and given the right sauce/marinade is some of the most flavorful stuff around. This particular stir fry is a “dry” stir fry in that it doesn’t have an actual sauce – the flavor comes primarily from tossing the meat in a spice medley prior to cooking, which imparts into the veggies as you toss them while cooking. In fact, if you don’t care about the vegetable portion of the dish itself you can just cook the chicken by itself and go to town. Very curry-esque and D-ricious. Additionally, the veggies I have listed in the recipe are all totally optional; most stir fry standbys like water chestnut, broccoli and white onions can be substituted, it’s entirely up to your taste. I went this route with the recipe due to the crunch factor (except mushrooms) of the ingredients.
Ingredients
1 lb. boneless chicken breasts
1 bunch green onion
4 celery stalks
1 red pepper, 1 green pepper
6 oz snap peas
(optional – portabello mushrooms, 1 jalapeno)
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tbsp ground coriander
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp lime juice
1 tbsp honey
Sunflower oil or Chile oil for frying
The Chicken
Mix together the turmeric, ginger, salt, pepper, cumin, coriander and sugar in a bowl until well combined.
Cut the chicken into small strips or chunks and toss them in the spice mix until thoroughly coated.
On medium high heat, brown the chicken with 1 tbsp or so your oil of choice for several minutes. Actually, due to the coriander and cumin the chicken will take on a deep yellow color, just so you know. You can eat the chicken with saffron rice at this point and it’s a meal in and of itself. But if you want to continue, set the chicken aside.
The Rest
Cut all veggies to prep them for frying; cut the celery, onion and peppers into strips, slice the mushrooms and de-tail the snap peas.
Add some more oil to the pan from previously cooking the chicken and toss in the veggies. Stir vigorously for several minutes, until the snap peas are just barely tender. The point is to not overcook the veggies into a mush – the snap peas, being the most firm, are the indicator for “readiness.”
Return the chicken to the pan and add the lime juice and honey. Toss all ingredients until the juice and honey are mixed in – about two minutes. Serve PIPING HOT DAMMIT! (with lots of rice)
Hey remember Coolio? Me neither! And for some reason now he has a cookbook AND a cooking “show” on the internet! Behold an example episode in which he essentially doesn’t teach you anything about how to cook a spring roll (aka Soul Roll):
His cookbook, Cookin’ with Coolio: 5 Star Meals at a 1 Star Price is available on Amazon RIGHT NOW HOLY CRAP!!!!! Here’s a sample of one of his recipes, possibly from Chapter 3 – “Appetizers for That Ass” (no I didn’t make that up, look at the table of contents via the link):
This easier than hell to prepare seafood soup provides a broth so explosively flavorful it should be outlawed by science. If you couldn’t care less about having the full on soup, I’d recommend just preparing the broth and using it to steam rice. It’s really quite good.
Ingredients
12 oz. (or more) raw medium shrimp with shells
1 tbsp. vegetable or sesame oil
2 serrano chiles, seeded and slivered
2 lime’s worth of grated zest
2 lime’s worth lime juice
2 stalks lemongrass, chopped (or 1/2 tbsp. of the tube stuff)
4 cups chicken broth
2 tsp. nam pla (fish sauce – available at most groceries these days)
1/2 bunch cilantro, chopped
3 scallions, sliced
1 red jalapeno, seeded and diced
Prepping the Broth
Peel and devein the medium shrimp and set aside the shells. In a large pot, heat the oil over high heat – then add the shrimp shells, serranos, lime zest and lemongrass, cook for about a minute or two.
Then, add the chicken stock and simmer for at least 20 minutes. All of the flavors from your ingredients will impart their awesomeness to the broth.
Strain the broth using a sieve and either keep for later use, or move onto the next step.
Finishing the Soup
Bring the broth to a low boil and add shrimp, lime juice and fish sauce. Simmer until shrimp are pink – about 2-3 minutes.
Sprinkle on cilantro, scallions and sliced chiles and serve HOTTER THAN HELL.
Most of you probably think that New England Clam Chowder is the be all and end all of chowders and blah blah blah there’s no other way to do it but GUESS WHAT I DON’T LIKE CREAM BASED SOUPS so without further ado I present to yall one of the greatest most amazing recipes for Manhattan Clam Chowder, presented by one of the most greatest most amazing grocery stores on Earth, Stew Leonard’s. It is delicious.
INGREDIENTS :
6 slices chopped bacon
2 cups diced onions (about 2 large onions)
1 cup diced celery (about 2 stalks)
1 cup diced carrots (about 2 large carrots)
1 cup clam juice
2 cups diced tomatoes
2 cups tomato juice
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 bay leaf
1 cup diced potatoes (about 2 medium potatoes)
28-ounce can of chopped clams
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
COOKING INSTRUCTIONS :
1. In a pan over medium-high heat, cook the bacon until it is crisp. Remove the bacon and drain the majority of the grease. Leave more or less, depending on how much you’re comfortable with (I usually leave a tablespoon or two at most).
2. Add the onions to the remaining grease and cook until golden. Add all of the
other ingredients except the clams and the potatoes and cook for
15 minutes, stirring frequently.
3. Add the potatoes and clams and simmer until the potatoes are tender. Add salt and freshly ground black pepper and taste.
To be perfectly honest, for as long as I’ve been eating the stuff I really had no idea what made “minestrone” “minestrone.” So like any other annoying person with an iPhone trying to settle an argument at a bar, I consulted Wikipedia on the matter. As it turns out and in summary, minestrone is basically soup consisting of a bunch of stuff thrown into a pot and cooked, typically featuring pasta, beans and vegetables. And so without further ado, I present two variations of minestrone – one with seashell pasta, the other with chicken and artichokes.
This is a pretty great soup. So much veggie goodness that it’s actually filling, and the seasoning is really well balanced. Not too watery but for my taste, needs more tomato. Pretty much perfect for lunch or on a cold day.
Next up is another variation of minestrone featuring chicken, corn, and artichokes. I was a little weirded out by the combination at first, but this stuff is insanely awesome and borderline addictive. If you try no other recipe I’ve posted thus far, I highly recommend this one.
Artisan Chartichoke Bistro Bonanza in Awesome Broth
It’s gooooooood soup. That’s pretty much all I can say about it.
Welp, that’s it for now, I’ve got at least two more soups in store for yall, and then soup month is pretty much over. Now I just have to come up with a food theme for next month….
Winter is most definitely the time for soups. While cold and boring outside, most humans basically just want to stay warm and stuff their faces with something at least similarly warm, whether it be food or otherwise. So in honor of this concept I am dedicating December to soup. Eating soup, making soup, and providing you, the four readers of this blogozine, recipes for soup that I have tested out and hopefully enjoyed. And so without further ado, this month’s first soup recipe:
Italian Wedding Soup (with lemon!)
INGREDIENTS
1/2 to 1 pound extra-lean ground beef
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 tablespoons Italian-seasoned breadcrumbs
1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons shredded fresh basil leaves
1 tablespoon chopped Italian flat leaf parsley
2 green onions
6 cups chicken broth
2 cups sliced spinach
1 lemon zest
1/2 cup orzo pasta, uncooked (actually I just used rice)
shredded Parmesan cheese for topping
DIRECTIONS
Mix together the meat, egg, bread crumbs, cheese, basil, parsley, and green onions in a bowl. Unless you are a masochist and love chopping things up forever and ever, I recommend using a small food processor to chop up the parsley, basil and green onion.
Pour the chicken broth into a large saucepan over high heat. When the broth begins boiling, drop in the meatballs a few at a time and let them cook for a minute or two. Then stir in the spinach, lemon zest and orzo (or rice). Allow the mix to return to a boil, then reduce heat to medium. Cook at a very low boil for 10 minutes or until orzo is tender (If you use rice, this will take longer. Sample the rice as it cooks until it’s done to your liking), stirring frequently. Serve sprinkled with shredded Parmesan cheese.
The finished product should look remarkably similar to this:
It should also taste really great. Serves 4, 30 minute prep time tops.
(nutrition information forthcoming)
is available on Amazon RIGHT NOW HOLY CRAP!!!!! Here’s a sample of one of his recipes, possibly from Chapter 3 – “Appetizers for That Ass” (no I didn’t make that up, look at the table of contents via the link):
