Dinner Tonight :)

     Tonight for dinner I tried to recreate a dish that I came up with for Sunday dinner about a week ago. there were several things wrong with the dish then so I figured I would try again. Tonight when I cooked, I measured everything out, so here is the recipe for what I think I will call Chicken-Boiled Potatoes. Caution: You may want to read through this entire post before you try this recipe.

Chicken-Boiled Potatoes
                                                           
Chicken:
4 Chicken Thighs
4 C water
1TBS Candont Pesto Classic paste
1/3 C Lemon Juice
1 tsp basil
1/8 C butter

Before cooking

     Mix water, lemon juice, and basil in a large bowl (one that has a lid to go with it). Rinse off chicken thighs and place in the water mixture. Put the lid on and refrigerate. You can let it soak for an hour to 2 days. I let mine soak for two days because I had to go shopping.
     After the chicken has soaked as long as you want, you can do several things. Tonight, I pulled one of my pyrex dishes from the cupboard to cook the chicken in the oven. I cut the butter into 5 pieces and put pieces all around the pan. Then, I used the Pesto Paste, and put a little on the underside of each thigh, kind of like a rub. I put the chicken paste-side down in the pan, put the lid on it, and cooked it until it was done.

After cooking

   ALSO: I use my slow-cooker (crock pot) a lot. You can do this same process, and just leave it to cook on low. I have also cooked the chicken in a pan on the stove. Every method yields slightly different chicken. Slow cooker chicken is usually really tender, and not rubbery at all.



Preheat oven to 400 (Fahrenheit)

Potatoes:  (This isn't just potatoes, but I couldn't come up with a short enough name for it.)
7 medium potatoes
2 quarts water
3 TBS chicken base (I used the paste stuff)
1 TBS basil
3 C baby carrots
3/4 C onions, chopped
1/8 C butter

    Put the 2 quarts of water on the stove and bring it to a boil. While you wait, cut the potatoes into 1/4 inch slices and set aside, and chop the onions to your desired size (mine were in 1/4 inch pieces). After the water begins to boil, mix in the chicken paste until there are no clumps. Add 1 TBS basil to the mixture. Put the potatoes, carrots, and onion in the chicken broth and basil mixture. Cook until the potatoes and carrots are tender about half way through.

Butter in the dish

   In a baking dish (mine was Pyrex again) cut up the butter into pieces. Spread the pieces along the bottom of the pan. Put the vegetables from the pot and pour them over the butter. DO NOT DUMP OUT THE BROTH MIXTURE. Pour about 3/4 cup of the broth mixture over the top of the potatoes. This will help to keep them moist in the oven. Put the lid on the baking dish and cook until the potatoes and carrots are soft all the way through. I also sprinkled a little salt and pepper over the top of the veggies.

Before baking

     Last, if you so desire, you can turn the broth into gravy. All you gotta do is mix cornstarch with cold (emphasis on the cold) water. Mix it with the broth, bring it to a boil, boil for a few minutes and viola! Gravy!! You can find instructions for the cornstarch mixture on the back of the cornstarch box.
   

After baking

Okay, now, here are a few things I learned from doing this dish.

1. Potatoes cut in 1/4 inch slices cook a LOT faster than potatoes cut in chunks. When I tried this dish the first time, I used potato chunks. I would recommend doing the chunks, personally.

2. If you are going to cook the chicken in the oven, get it started and cooking BEFORE you start the veggies boiling-especially if you do potato slices and not chunks.

3. Sugar can help make something that was too spicy a little less so. Got to be careful though, or suddenly your gravy will be too sweet instead. (this happened to me)

4. I was in a hurry tonight and used baby carrots. Last time I tried this, I used long carrots that I pealed and cut into 3 inch pieces. It tasted much better that way.

Dinner on the table

How it looks on a plate. ;)

5. The chicken was soaking in the lemon water too long. I think, because the Pesto paste had a slight lemon taste, that it would have been a good idea to mix some of the paste with water and use that to soak the chicken in.

     We had a few friends over tonight to be my guinea pigs. A special thanks to Chris and Clairissa for lending their services. Here is the rating scale I am going to use:

Name of guinea pig (gp)
Rating for chicken with gp comments
Rating for potatoes and carrots with gp comments'

Chris: He was funny because he didn't really care much about details in the dish
Chicken: 4 (no comment)
Potatoes: 4.5-Potatoes were too mushy, but still tasted good
Carrots: 5-Loved them!

Clairissa: Clairissa was my toughest critic tonight. :)
Chicken: 3-The outside tasted good but because of the soaking in the lemon juice, the inside tasted off.
Potatoes: 4-Too mushy
Carrots: 4-Not much flavor in them (she said they weren't fresh and young enough, which is accurate. The younger the carrot, the better it tastes)

Bryan:
Chicken: 3-for the same reasons listed above
Potatoes: 4-Too mushy
Carrots: 5-Loved them!

     I calculated the average of the above scores. Turns out this meal now had an overall rating of a 4 out of 5. I can already see a lot of things that I can (and will) change about this dish. Hope you enjoyed it!

LP