Pickle Brined Chicken

Pickle Brined Chicken

When most people think of cooking from scratch they think of breads, soups etc. However, there many kitchen ingredients that can be made from scratch, saving not only time, but money. Spice mixes can be expensive at the store, but easy and inexpensive to make at home. Plus the taste of homemade spice mixes is fresher and can be the difference between a good and great dish. Later in the week I will share a recipe for homemade chili powder. The amount of heat can be adjusted for families with kids or increased if you like things with a little kick. I also make homemade Greek seasoning and various Indian spice mixes (since it can be hard to find some of them in my area). Homemade spices can last up to 6 months when stored in an airtight container and make throwing together a great meal that much easier. Plus since there are so many recipes available on the internet now making spices from scratch is beyond simple.

On to the recipe! My family is obsessed with pickles. The males in my house could eat pickles three times a day if they had their way. Last week I tried a new recipe for Pickle Brined Chicken from the January 2014 issue of Better Homes and Gardens magazine. 

This recipe has 11 ingredients. It takes 8 hours and 40 minutes of total time (including brining), 25 minutes of which is active and makes 6 servings. I only made a few changes to the original recipe. First, I used two jars of 32 ounce pickles. My store does not stock 64 ounce jars of pickles so I bought two smaller jar instead. I found that the thighs took longer than the suggest oven time to fully cook. The thighs that I bought were on the larger side and took closer to 25 minutes to fully cook. Most of the time I make my recipes gluten free (so that I can enjoy them). However, I did not eat this meal so I used regular all-purpose flour to dredge the chicken. I chose to pour the pan sauce over each serving instead of pouring it over the entire dish as suggest by the original recipe. I prefer serving sauces at the table so each person can chose the amount of sauce they want to eat and it helps to keep the meat tender on the plate. 

Everyone in my house loved this recipe. My oldest son said this was the best chicken recipe I had ever made and eat four pieces of chicken in two days. The leftovers didn't last very long at all since my kids kept going back for more servings over and over again. My husband thought the chicken tasted like a popular chicken restaurant's chicken sandwiches (which is a compliment coming from him). All-in-all a great recipe. 

For the recipe go to Pickle Brined Chicken. 

Recipe For Chicken Salad with Capers

Chicken Salad with Capers on Rye Bread

When my husband and I were first married I struggled with leftovers. We would forget to eat them or I just re-heated everything in the microwave. I never really thought past the actual food as it was. Then after having kids I realized that I needed to start using leftovers in a more efficient way. With two boys if I serve the exact same dish two days in a row they groan or refuse to eat it. However, if I reinvent it into a new dish they embrace it wholeheartedly. So I have learned to make multiple meals from one recipe. Today I made chicken salad with capers from the leftovers of the Roasted Chicken with Parsley Caper Pesto from last week.

I made two versions of the chicken salad. For the first sandwich pictured above I made rye bread sandwiches. Here are the ingredients I used:

• 3 cups leftover chicken
• 2 tablespoons capers
• 2 dill half spears, chopped
• a small pinch of cayenne pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• a pinch of paprika
• enough mayo to make desired consistency
• 1/2 of a small gala apple, chopped
• small squirt of dijon mustard

Chicken Salad with Capers on Gluten Free Bread

For the gluten free sandwich shown above I followed the same recipe with the addition of dill seeds. The dill seeds really did help to bring out the flavor of the salad.

My husband and oldest son enjoyed their sandwiches with arugula. I had mine with just the chicken salad. Overall this was a great way to use a recipe to make two separate meals.

Here is the link to the post for the Roasted Chicken. 

Everyday Food Creamy Macaroni Salad

Growing up I never liked any 'typical" picnic/bbq food. Potato salad always tasted too sweet or full of mayonaise and I was more likely to eat dessert than hamburgers or hotdogs. As I grew older I tried a larger variety of foods and fell in love with macaroni salad. Not the store bought type, good old homemade macaroni salad with pickles and eggs. However, as I got older and the metabolism of my teenage years began to wear off after two kids I started looking for healthier alternatives to my favorite recipes. Recently, Everyday Food magazine had  a recipe for Creamy Macaroni Salad utlitlizng yogurt to reduce the fat, making a healthier version of a household favorite.

This recipe goes together very quickly. There are 11 ingredients, including salt and pepper and the total cooking time is approximately 25 minutes. The majority of the prep is from the cooking of the pasta and the hard boiled eggs, which can both easily be made prior to the recipe and refridgerated. I followed the recipe as stated, except I used full-fat plain yogurt, instead of low-fat as suggested by the recipe.  Other people might have better luck finding low-fat plain yogurt, but my local grocery stores only stock whole-fat plain yogurt in the big containers. Additionally, I utilized my homemade dill pickles for the chopped dill pickles, which tasted delicious.

The one modification I suggest for the recipe is to allow the macaroni salad to sit in the fridge until completely chilled before serving. I served the dish only partially cold and I think it would have been even better chilled. That being said, my husband and I enjoyed this dish. It doesn't taste exactly like a traditional homemade macaroni salad, but it is much lower in fat, using low-fat yogurt this recipe has 210 calories and 5g of fat. The traditional recipe contains 317 calories and 11g of fat, so a large difference in fat and calorie content between the two. A great recipe to cut down on the fat of traditional summertime salad recipes.

This recipe is currently unavailable, but can be found on page 104 of the July/August issue of Everyday Food magazine.

Fridge Pickles

In the last couple of weeks multiple friends have been kind enough to give me pounds of vegetables from their gardens. I have been using the squash to make pasta (post to come later in the week) and the tomatoes to make pasta sauce and a tomato tart. However, my family can only eat so many fresh cucumbers, so I decided to make fridge pickles.

Fridge pickles are very easy to prepare and take little effort. Everyone I know has different spices which they like to include in their pickles or a particular dill packet mix which is their favorite. The recipe I choose to follow involved the following spices:

• dill weed
• dill seed
• mustard seed 
• garlic
• red pepper if I want to make them a little kick

I used a 50/50 water vinegar ratio and made the pickles in wide mouth jars. I had five pounds of pickles total, which I sliced into spears and soaked in boiling water with a teaspoon of turmeric for three hours. Then I added the spices to the jars, added the cucumbers to the jars, boiled the vinegar, water, sugar and canning salt and then poured into the jars. Since I don't own a dishwasher I always boil my jars and lids for ten minutes before using. Stick in the fridge and your done. I normally wait about five days before tasting, to make sure the full flavor of the pickles comes out.

Fridge pickles are a great way to save money, especially since my two boys eat a large amount of pickles. They are easy to prepare and you need no previous canning experience since they don't need to be water bathed. Pickles are a great way to use extra garden veggies before they go bad and taste delicious.