Month: September 2013
Chicken and Wild Rice Soup
What:
Chicken and Wild Rice Soup
Recipe by: I can’t remember…
Why:
It’s a surprisingly easy, really, really, good soup! It makes a lot, so it’s a good thing to make on those cold, hot, or perfect temperature days when you have some company over or if you are hungry.
The Recipe:
Ingredients
2 boxes of Uncle Ben’s Long Grain and Wild Rice Mix Original recipe, prepare according to box instructions
6 boneless skinless cooked chicken breasts cut up (Another option instead of chicken breasts is to buy a precooked rotisserie chicken you usually can find near the deli section of the super market)
2 cups thinly sliced carrots
1 cup thinly sliced celery
2 small onions, diced
8 – 10 chicken bouillon cubes (I always go with ten)
Directions
In about 8 tbsp. of butter (1/2 cup), sauté the carrots, celery, and onion until the onions are tender.
Add about 8 cups of water and the bouillon cubes
Simmer until carrots are tender
Add cooked rice and cut up cooked chicken. If you think there is too much rice, don’t add as much (I usually add all of it)
Prepare a white sauce
Ingredients
1/2 cup butter
8 tbsp. flour
2 tsp. salt
4 cups of milk (any type will do, skim, 2%, or even 1/2 and 1/2, using 1/2 and 1/2 will make the soup richer)
Directions
Melt the butter in a sauce pan
Once melted, gradually stir in flour and salt
Constantly stir for about 1 minute
Gradually add the 4 cups milk
Stirring constantly, cook until sauce is thickened
Pour sauce into the soup and heat through
Cost:
This recipe is a little pricey, but it really does make a lot of soup. Where I shop, the rotisserie chicken was $6.50, the Uncle Ben’s rice was around $2 a box, the celery and carrots are always pretty cheap, the milk, and everything else I already had. If you had to buy all of it, I would price this soup around $20, but if you already have some of the ingredients, obviously that price would drop significantly. Definitely worth the cost!
Variations and suggestions:
For the vegetables, I almost always hand chop them. If you have a food processor that can slice vegetables, that would make that process much faster, but for me, there is something about using a good old fashioned knife and cutting them up. I have more control over how thick the vegetables are and it also helps me improve my chopping skills. I would suggest doing it this way so that you become more comfortable with knife handling and chopping.
Review:
Everyone I have made this soup for have raved about it and get excited when I mention I am making it. It is a great soup and goes well with dinner rolls or, my wife and I use the Hawaiian sweet rolls. It’s a pretty filling soup too, so it lasts a while. I would put this meal in my top five favorite meals that I have made so far.
Lasagna
What:
Lasagna
Recipe by: Kim and Chad E.
Why:
This is a very easy, relatively quick, delicious lasagna recipe. When my wife and I have a hankering for some lasagna, we make this one! Ditch the frozen, chemical filled lasagna and make a delicious, homemade one instead!
The Recipe:
Ingredients:
1 package of no boil lasagna noodles
1/2 – 1 pound ground beef (we don’t like a lot of meat in the recipe so we use a half pound, but if you like beef, add more!)
1 small onion, chopped
1 garlic clove (I almost exclusively use minced garlic you can buy in a jar. If you use that, put about 1 to 2 teaspoons in)
Salt and Pepper
1 egg
2 cups cottage cheese
2 cups mozzarella cheese
1 23.5 ounce jar of spaghetti sauce (I use Prego Traditional style sauce)
Parmesan cheese (optional)
9″ X 9″ baking pan
Directions:
Set oven to 425 degrees
In a medium skillet, add onion, beef, salt and pepper to taste, and garlic
Cook and chop beef until beef is desired size and cooked through
While the beef is cooking take out two medium bowls
In one bowl, mix together the cottage cheese, 1 1/2 cups of mozzarella cheese, the egg, and parmesan cheese (if desired)
In the other bowl, add pasta sauce and cooked beef mix
Put a couple spoonfuls of sauce on the bottom of the baking pan, this will keep the noodles from sticking to the bottom of the pan
Place the first layer of noodles down
Place a few spoonfuls of sauce on the first layer, spread it around as evenly as possible, fully covering the noodles
Place a few spoonfuls of the cheese over the sauce, mix it around so the cheese and sauce are blended and covering the noodles
Place the second layer of noodles so that they are perpendicular to the first layer
Add the cheese and sauce like the previous direction
Repeat until you are out of noodles (I was able to get four layers, if you don’t like is at noodly, add more sauce and less layers of noodles)
Spread any remaining sauce and cheese you may have on the top layer
Take the remaining mozzarella cheese and sprinkle it over the sauce
The final product before baking should look something like this
Place lasagna in oven for 35 – 40 minutes (Ovens vary, so it may take longer for some)
Bake until top layer of cheese is golden brown and sauce is bubbling
Remove from oven and let rest for 10 minutes (This lets everything settle and it makes it easier to cut)
Enjoy!
Cost:
This recipe is fairly inexpensive, especially since it makes enough for a couple meals. I purchased all the ingredients and the total was around $10.
Variations:
If you don’t like a lot of noodles, follow the directions as shown, and just add more sauce to each layer and use the desired layers of noodles, but still cook it the same way.
Review:
My wife and I love this recipe. It’s very simple and doesn’t take too long to make, in total maybe an hour, and more than half of that is the lasagna cooking in the oven. This recipe also doesn’t need any fancy equipment, just a skillet, a square pan, a spoon, and an oven. It has a great flavor and it is very filling too! Try this one out for a great, homemade Italian dinner.
Apple Pie Pocket
What:
Apple Pie Pocket
Recipe by: Ed M
Why:
Because this is the easiest and quickest dessert I’ve seen. It tastes great and uses only four ingredients!
The Recipe:
Ingredients:
1 can of Apple Pie Filling
1 container of Pillsbury (or whatever brand you prefer) Biscuits
Cinnamon
Brown Sugar
Directions:
Take two of the raw biscuits, roll them out, squeezing them together so that it makes a 4″ x 4″ square
Take two more biscuits and do the same, one square will be the top, the other, the bottom
Take one of the squares and place it on a preheated sandwich maker, not dissimilar to the one pictured below:
Put a few apples from the can of apple pie filling on the square that is in the sandwich maker
Sprinkle however much cinnamon and brown sugar you’d like over the filling
Place the second square over the filling and squeeze together the bottom and top crusts
Close the sandwich maker and cook for 5-7 minutes or until the crust looks brown and done
Serve and enjoy!
Cost:
This recipe is about the cheapest dessert you can make. Since I didn’t buy the ingredients myself I don’t have an exact cost, but I’d ballpark it around $5 tops. In total we made 4 half pie pockets that were very tasty, so that would put the price per pie at around $1.25. Not bad for an apple pie dessert!
Review and Variations:
For Ed to come up with using the biscuits off the top of his head, I’d say this is a winner! It was very good and it took all of the work out of making an apple pie, but you still get a great apple pie flavor! Definitely worth trying out! You don’t need a sandwich maker to make this. Just follow the directions as listed above and cook according to the biscuit package directions, though you may have to knock a few minutes off the total time. Also, this is certainly not limited to apple pie filling. You can put whatever pie filling you’d like! Go for cherry filling, raspberry filling, any type! this is a great way to experiment what you like and get a good grasp of how your oven bakes at a certain temperature as this is important when baking in general! I hope you enjoy this one.
Culinary Courage 