Category: Main Dishes

Chicken, Main Dishes, Recipes

Crispy Honey Ginger Chicken

Sarah

Sometimes my family calls me the chicken finger girl. Yes, I am that kind of person: one who always gets the same thing at restaurants, time after time. What can I say? I know what I like. And I like chicken fingers. [Not actual fingers of a chicken, as you can find with your roasted chicken in places like Cameroon, where I studied abroad. (Click at your own risk.) No joke. You can make restaurant-quality baked chicken tenders at home! Crazy, huh? This Crispy Honey Ginger Chicken is incredibly good! But the crispy, flavorful, unhealthy breaded chicken popular in most American-style restaurants today. Ooooh yes, the good stuff.]

I’ve tried to make my own at home from time to time, but never with much success. Not having a deep fryer makes crispy chicken difficult. Until I tried Jessica’s recipe. Panko bread crumbs make all the difference, I’m tellin’ ya! Panko breadcrumbs mixed with spicy ginger and savory garlic coat lucious, tender chicken bites… and made at home, these little chicken tenders aren’t exactly a health food, but they are definitely more nutritious and satisfying than any fried chicken tenders at a restaurant. Plus, they’re really simple too, and you probably have almost all the ingredients at home already, so as long as you plan ahead for the marinating, this is a perfect dinner for a busy night! Enjoy!

Crispy Honey Ginger Chicken

  • Servings: 4
  • Print

from How Sweet It Is

Ingredients:

  • 1 pound boneless, skinless chicken tenders [or sliced chicken breasts], cut into bite sized pieces [halfs or thirds]
  • 2 cups lowfat buttermilk
  • 1/4 cup honey
  • 2 cups panko bread crumbs
  • 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
  • 2 tablespoons ground ginger, divided
  • 1 teaspoon seasoned salt
  • 2 teaspoons garlic powder, divided

In a baking dish, whisk together buttermilk, honey, 1 tablespoon ginger, and 1 teaspoon garlic powder. Add cut-up chicken and toss to coat. Cover with plastic wrap and marinate for at least 2 hours, or up to overnight.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees and place a wire rack on a large baking sheet. Grease wire rack with cooking spray. In a small bowl, stir together panko, remaining garlic and ginger, seasoned salt, and flour. Coat chicken pieces in mixture, then lay on wire rack. Spray each piece with cooking spray. Bake for 10 minutes, flip, coat with cooking spray, and bake again for another 10-15 minutes, or until cooked through. Serve with honey and barbecue sauce.

Question of the Day: Are you one to always try new things at restaurants or do you find a favorite and stick with it?

Main Dishes, Pork, Recipes

Pork Chops with Red Wine Sauce

Sarah

My new favorite way to eat pork! Pork Chops with Red Wine Sauce. Yum.You have GOT to try this recipe. I don’t care if you never make any other recipe from my blog ever. If you make one thing, make these pork chops. They are just that good. Your life will be infinitely better. I promise. If you’re a vegetarian–no excuses either, because you can make just the sauce and be happy with your life, too. Just cook some tofu or beans up in a ‘lil olive oil in lieu of the pork chops and proceed as planned. And plan to love ’em.

This may be my new favorite way to eat pork, especially because it’s an easy company recipe. Though it looks complex, it’s real quite simple to make and it is so flavorful. Now, I’m not normally a red wine kinda gal, but this red wine sauce is sweet, the tang of the wine balanced out by the plump dried fruit.   The sauce was so good I was eating it by the spoonful! Served atop tender, juicy pork, this is a meal not to be missed. Enjoy!

Pork Chops with Red Wine Sauce

  • Servings: 4
  • Print

simplified from Martha Stewart Living, February 2004

Ingredients:

  • 4 pork chops
  • 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1 cup dry red wine
  • 1 3/4 cup chicken broth
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 1/2 cups assorted dried fruits [Martha suggests pitted prunes, apricots, and cherries; we used about 1 cup apricots + 1/2 cup orange flavored cranberries]

Directions:

In a small bowl, combine flour, pepper, and cinnamon. Set aside 2 tablespoons. On a plate or in a shallow baking dish, sprinkle mixture over pork chops, turning to coat. Brush off extra. Pour oil in a large skillet over medium heat.When oil is hot, add pork chops and brown until they are cooked through. Be sure to watch them so they don’t dry out or burn. Transfer pork chops to a [clean] plate or baking dish. Turn heat up to high, then add wine and cook to deglaze pan, constantly scraping up the brown bits. In a measuring cup, whisk together chicken broth with flour mixture, then pour into skillet. While constantly stirring, slowly add dried fruit to pan and cook until sauce has thickened, approximately 15 minutes. If desired, after about 12-13 minutes, add the pork chops back to the pan to warm up for a couple minutes before serving.

Question of the Day: Do you have a favorite “company” dinner?

Main Dishes, Recipes, Soups

Chicken and Wild Rice Soup

Sarah
chicken and wild rice soup
soup's up!

So, Panera’s Cream of Chicken and Wild Rice has always been one of my favorite soups. In fact, I would plan my Panera trips based around the soup schedule as much as possible. Considering that I’ve traditionally been iffy about soups, that’s saying a lot. And my senior year of college, I spent a lot of time at Panera working on my thesis so I ate this soup all. the. time. I don’t even want to think about how much moolah I invested in the growth of Panera and Coffee Expressions that year… I blame my thesis. 100%.

Now that I’m a married grad student who has a little more self-restraint and a little more care as to her budget, I have had to make some changes. Instead of $4 lattes during a busy school session, I make my own coffee at home. Instead of Panera’s smooth, rich, and creamy soup, I make my own Chicken and Wild Rice Soup. And let me say… I think it is just as good, if not better than Panera’s version since it is lighter and less salty without compromising on the flavor at all. Next time I make this I think I’ll plan ahead and get some extra veggies–maybe carrots?–to add to the mix, and perhaps some fresh herbs for texture too. But even without, this soup is phenomenal… this was one recipe that I didn’t pawn all the leftovers off on Ben!

Chicken and Wild Rice Soup [adapted from Whole Foods and Taste of Home]

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup brown rice
  • 1/2 cup wild rice
  • 1 pound boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized cubes
  • 8 ounces mushrooms, sliced
  • 1 cup onions, chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • olive oil
  • 6 cups chicken broth
  • 1 teaspoon parsley
  • 1/2 teaspoon thyme
  • 1/2 teaspoon sage
  • 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
  • 12 ounces fat free evaporated milk
  • 2 tablespoons cornstarch

Directions:

In a saucepan, cook brown and wild rice according to package directions. I didn’t want to use two separate pots even though the cooking directions varied slightly so I just added 3 cups of water to the rices, brought everything to a boil, and then simmered for about 45 minutes until all the water absorbed.

Meanwhile, in a skillet, heat up a little olive oil and then saute the chicken, mushrooms, onions and garlic until the chicken is cooked through and everything else is soft. Remove mixture from heat.

In a large stockpot, combine the chicken broth, parsley, thyme, sage, and pepper. Whisk to combine. Gently stir in chicken mixture, then bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. In a small bowl, stir together evaporated milk and cornstarch until smooth.

By this point, the rice should be about done. When it is, add the rice and milk to the stockpot and stir until fully incorporated. Return to a boil and cook for about 10-15 minutes or until soup is thickened to desired consistency. Enjoy!

Click here for the printable version: Chicken and Wild Rice Soup

Question of the Day: What are some restaurant foods you like to recreate at home?

Main Dishes, Recipes, Soups

Sweet Potato Soup

Sarah

SWEET potato soupThey say necessity is the mother of inventions… and let me tell you, last Tuesday night soup was a necessity for me! It was cold and rainy and I had just come from a terrible class. After class, I went to the grocery store and intended to buy potatoes for my favorite soup in the whole wide world… but forgot until I got home. That’s what happens when you don’t write things down on your grocery list, at least in my world. There was no way I was heading back into the nightmare that is a grocery store in a college time after a school break, nosireebob. My sweet husband offered to go out in the cold and the wet for those potatoes, but I didn’t want him to have to do that. But I still wanted that soup… so I improved. And thus, this soup was born. One day, when it is all grown up, I can tell it the tale of it’s birth on a cold, dark November night… but for now, I can just enjoy it in its infancy.

This is a top-notch savory sweet potato dish, folks. Forget all notions of Thanksgiving’s sweet potato casserole smothered in brown sugar or marshmallows [fact: I’ve never eaten sweet potato casserole with marshmallows… it’s brown sugar topping for me all the way!]. This sweet potato soup is subtly sweet, with just a hint of sweet via the nutmeg and the star of the show, the sweet potato itself. This soup is rich without being heavy, but is warm, chunky, and cozy–everything a hearty soup is destined to be, is called to be, can be.

How’s that for a introduction? Can you tell that I’m enamored with this soup, that I’ve been eating it gladly for days straight, that I haven’t dished leftovers into tupperware to freeze for future lunches for my husband? I hope you can, because I’m not sure how else to sum up my feelings about this soup. Amazing!

Sweet Potato Soup

Ingredients:

  • 7 cups sweet potato, roughly peeled and chopped [for me, this was 2 large]
  • 1 cup carrot, diced [2 medium]
  • 3/4 cup onion, minced
  • 2 cups chicken broth
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried sage
  • 1/4 teaspoon dried basil
  • 1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
  • 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 12 ounces fat free evaporated milk

Directions:

Combine sweet potato, carrot, onion, and chicken broth in a large stock pot and cook over medium heat until the sweet potato is soft [hint: the smaller the pieces of sweet potato, the faster it will cook… and stir constantly or you may end up with a not-so-nice layer of crusty potato at the bottom of your pot…whoops!]. Mix in sage, basil, pepper, and nutmeg, then bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and then add the milk, stirring constantly until fully combined. Simmer for at least 15 minutes or until heated through.

Click here for the printable: Sweet Potato Soup

Question of the Day: What has been your latest invention? Doesn’t have to be food-related at all! Please share in the comments 🙂

Main Dishes, Pork, Recipes

Blackberry Mustard Marinade

Sarah

porkEven though I’m not a big meat-lover like my husband, I still enjoy it. Before we were married, my main staple meat dishes were lasagna, meatloaf, tacos, and grilled chicken or chicken cooked with ranch dressing and BBQ sauce. Tasty, right? Umm… no, not so much anymore. Since getting married, I have come to embrace more diverse meat dishes, and have become more experimental in cooking [instead of just with baking, as before]. One of these “more diverse meat dishes” is what I affectionately call, the big hunk of meat. Pork or beef, it doesn’t matter. To me, a big hunk of meat is the same amount of work [and I’m sure this is blasphemous to some–tastes the same], no matter what type it is. So, in order to flavor up the meat, I’ve taken to some experimental marinades, using what we have in the pantry and fridge, instead of buying a pre-mixed marinade or a lot of complex ingredients. Fruit and mustard sauces are a classic counterpart to pork, since they play off each other so well. This blackberry mustard marinade is really simple and really tasty. Feel free to mix up the type of preserves or mustard used, but try to stay with good quality ingredients because that’s what really adds the depth of flavor.

Blackberry Mustard Marinade

Ingredients:

  • 1/4 cup good quality, all-natural blackberry preserves
  • 1/4 cup good quality, grainy Dijon mustard
  • 1 tablespoon dried sage
  • 1 tablespoon dried rosemary

Directions:

Whisk together all ingredients and rub on a 1 1/2-2 pound pork roast, and prepare as desired. Here’s what I did.

  1. I chopped two apples into slices and laid them out in the bottom of a crock pot, and covered them with 1 cup of water.
  2. I rubbed the marinade on the pork roast and seasoned the whole thing with a generous amount of freshly ground black pepper.
  3. Then, I cooked the whole pork roast on low for about 8 hours until it was so tender it fell to pieces! Delicious! You could also use the marinade to cook the pork in the oven in a roaster.

Click here for the printable version: Blackberry Mustard Marinade

Question of the Day: How do you feel about ‘big hunks of meat’? [sorry, vegetarians!]