More Chicken

Continuing from last week's blog, I made another dish with my remaining shredded chicken. I was poking around online for some eggroll recipes and I actually came across this recipe. They call it "eggroll in a bowl" because it was like an eggroll filling without having to wrap it up and fry.

When I went to the grocery store, I was hoping to find some bags of coleslaw on sale to use in the recipe and just throw it all in. Fortunately, they had some on sale. Unfortunately, the cost of buying it pre-cut was too much for me to stomach even on a whim. Instead, I ended up buying green cabbage from the grocery store and using my own carrots and onions from home. There was no purple cabbage in my final colors, but it actually turned out okay.

When you add garlic, soy sauce, and sesame oil to anything, it's hard to go wrong from there. 

 

The actual recipe called for ground meat to be used. I used my shredded chicken because my goal was to use up the rest of what I already had. I think because my protein was pre-cooked, the whole dish ended up being slightly drier than perhaps the recipe intended. Also, there wasn't any added fat from needing to cook my protein. My chicken had also been kept in the refrigerator for many days since it's initial cooking date. From a texture and mouth-feel perspective, it wasn't my favorite. However, the flavor was very good. 

In the future, if I were to actually use ground pork (my favorite) in addition to following this recipe, it could be quite delicious. It's a great recipe to have on hand to use up leftovers and make a balanced dish. Personally, I think any of the following vegetables could be added to this recipe and it would still turn out very well:

- mushrooms
- cabbage
- carrots
- onions
- celery
- spinach
- bell peppers

I would just make sure to cut all my vegetables to about the same size - julienned or shredded.   

I don't think this is a recipe I would purposely add to my rotation as there are many other dishes I enjoy more. However, I think this is a great recipe to make on a whim with some leftover ingredients you may already have at home in your refrigerator.  

Takeout with the Tos #27 : Gluten-Free

This may be my last Takeout post of the year. I have still been cooking but a lot of the dishes have been repeats of ones I've already made. When I cooked this gluten-free dish for a friend, it inspired another dish, both which I will talk about in this post. 

One of my friends is gluten-free and I was at her house. I can't remember how it started exactly,  but our conversation went from food to fried chicken to gluten-free to gluten-free flour. I told her I could make her a gluten-free fried chicken if she had the gluten-free flour. Indeed she did! 

I took her flour home and made fried chicken with it! 

You would never believe this was gluten-free if I didn't tell you. 

My breading of preference with fried chicken is actually panko. When I use panko, the crumb is larger so it sticks better to the chicken. When I used the gluten-free flour this time to fry, a lot of the coating went into the frying oil. Not a problem at all, but it doesn't leave a clear oil when you're done frying. In the past, I've just dumped the oil and the flour in it in the trash. However, this time, there seemed to be a lot of extra flour in the oil. 

Then it hit me. I had just fried chicken and inadvertently made a roux! Roux is pronounced "roo" like kanga"roo" if you don't know. Typically, it's made by cooking flour in oil in a pan for a long time before making gumbo. People have created other shortcuts to roux by baking the flour in the oven first before cooking it in the oil to cut down on the stirring time - you must stir your roux or it will burn and burned roux is bitter.  I think I just found the greatest double-duty hack of all time: fry something with a flour batter, and then use the extra cooked flour and oil to make something that requires a roux!

I poured off the excess oil from the top and then I was left 
with this beautiful dark brown, flavorful roux.

Now you might be looking at this in the bottom of my wok and think this is way too much roux to use for any dish. That's exactly what I thought. It was a lot of roux. I pulled out my silicone ice cube molds (which I've never used for ice) and spooned a portion of the roux in. These molds went into my freezer and now I have pre-made roux cubes for next time!

I only spooned out four cubes worth. In retrospect, I probably 
could have spooned out...at least another two. Wisdom for the future.

It was unfortunate I could not share this gumbo with my friend as well as I had fried non-gluten-free food in the same oil after I fried her gluten-free chicken first. I don't know all the contamination rules with gluten and frying, but I wasn't going to risk it. 

My gumbo was not traditional as the Cajun trinity involves onion, bell pepper, and celery. I used neither bell pepper or celery in my "trinity." My gumbo started simply with onion and carrot. Then I added leftover ham, lentils, and shrimp. Not traditional at all, but absolutely delicious. I would definitely make it again and use the same ingredients or even try mixing up other ingredients. I actually enjoy okra in my gumbo but I didn't have any in my freezer so it wasn't included. If this isn't a real gumbo to you, then I guess you can call it a very rich stew. 

Yum.

I flipped the order this time, but this is my cost breakdown:

4 large servings of gumbo at $12.99 per serving: $51.96

15 gluten-free fried chicken tenderloins at $2.50 each: $$37.50

Total: $89.46

Tax: $7.38

Grand Total:  $96.84

It's been a fun year blogging and sharing about my food and stories. I hope you've enjoyed reading about what I cook, how I cook, and occasional tips and tricks with freezing and saving food. I have a couple ideas for themes next year that still revolve around food. When I finalize which one I want to do, you will be reading about it on the blog. If you cooked anything I shared or received inspiration from a recipe, I'd love to hear about it! 

Takeout with the Tos #23

It finally happened. I forgot to take pictures of all of my food this week. Oh well. I guess this is what happens when I don't cook everything on the same day. There are no photos of ketchup shrimp or my snow pea tofu stir fry, but I made them on week 12 of this year and it's pretty much the exact same dish. 

Pork Belly Tacos (2lb pork belly): $25.99

Homemade "Ramen" Bowls (4 servings): $35.99

Ketchup Shrimp:  $16.99

Snow Pea Tofu Stir Fry: $14.99

Asian Marinade Chicken Tenders (1.5lb): $20.99 

Total: $114.95

Tax: $9.48

Grand Total:  $124.43

 

Pork Belly Tacos

 

One of the chefs I enjoy watching on television (and is still airing new episodes) is Pati Jinich. There's many recipes in my collection which are from her cooking shows. We were watching an episode of her show one evening and it was all making us hungry. When meal-planning for this week, we thought about using pork belly as a protein since I had some in the freezer. We also had leftover tortillas which needed to be eaten. I picked up some vegetables from the grocery store and we were able to use our Kewpie dressing.

 

We found this dressing on clearance at the store. I'd never used it before but I do enjoy other flavors of Kewpie dressings. We decided to buy one to try. I used a little in a recipe last week but decided it would make a great taco condiment. 

 

I winged the pork belly marinade. It's a combination of soy sauce, sugar, cooking wine, sesame oil, honey, and a little salt. I wish I had actual amounts to tell you....I don't. I literally just grabbed ingredients and poured some in. For two pounds of pork belly, each ingredient was probably between 1-4TB. I bet you could mix and match between the ingredients I listed above and it would still taste good albeit a different "stronger" flavor. That's one thing I love about Asian cooking. When you have the main staples, any combination of them is going to give you a nice flavor. You just have to know how to control the amounts based on the flavor you actually want.  

I had some pickled banana peppers in my fridge which made a great sour addition to the savory taco.

 

 

Homemade "Ramen" Bowls

We have lots of instant ramen at our house....despite all my cooking with fresh meats and vegetables, we still love a good late night instant noodle when the time calls for it. 

This meal came about on my lightest day of work. We were starting to run low on food - middle of the week - and I thought of something quick and easy with some ingredients I already had on hand. 

The protein for these noodles came from an egg and some spam. Yup, I cook spam. I had frozen broccoli in my freezer so I pulled some out for a quick blanch to reheat and added them in. I cooked the instant noodles and used the seasoning packets from our Mi Goreng. I didn't season any of the add-ins because there would be enough flavor from the instant noodle seasoning and spam. 

My kids ate this so quickly all by themselves with no need for coaxing. I realize it's not the most healthy meal I've ever made, but as a mom, a self-fed meal with no fuss about finishing is a huge win.  

Everyone got their own bowl of this.

 

The ketchup shrimp and snow pea tofu stir fry I made were delicious. Unfortunately I didn't get photos of them. I did use my stainless steel wok  which I had written about earlier this year. I spent a few months away from the stainless steel and back to my nonstick because I got scared after a few bad tries with the wok. The unfortunate part of learning is that you have to keep cooking in stainless steel, even if it means messing up dishes. 

I got brave this week and tried again. The last three dishes - ketchup shrimp, snow pea tofu stir fry, and my chicken tenders were all made using stainless steel. These attempts were much more successful. I think I need to remind myself not to use too high of heat. 

Asian Marinade Chicken Tenders (1.5lb)

This is all that was left when I remembered to take a photo.

Originally, I pulled this chicken out of the freezer to thaw in order to make curry. By the time the chicken thawed, I wasn't in a place to make curry and if I let it stay in the refrigerator for another 15-20 hours, it would begin to go bad. I realize not everyone enjoys freezer meat because they can taste the difference from fresh meat. I don't notice it. However, I do use my thawed meat immediately because the longer it sits in the refrigerator after thawing, the more likely it is to go bad. 

So instead of making curry, I took my chicken and marinaded it - and then put it back into the refrigerator for 36 hours. Once you add something with salt and sugar, the marinade serves as a mini "cure" for the meat which is why it will not spoil so quickly after that. Simply leaving raw unseasoned meat in the refrigerator will go bad after an extended amount of time. 

The seasoning for this chicken was very similar to the pork belly. I think I used the exact same ingredients for the marinade, probably in slightly different proportions because I just dumped everything into the bowl. I like making this because it's a quick, easy protein with lots of flavor that goes well with rice and a vegetable for a balanced meal. 

That's all for this week!

Takeout with the Tos #18: Fry Edition

We don't have any streaming services right now. We do have a nice big screen TV and an antenna to get public channels. Occasionally I miss the variety from when we had access to a streaming service. It would have been very easy for us to sign up for a subscription and pick up right where we left off. It would cost us about $20/month and we'd continue the shows we watched from before. However, with us being out of town for two weeks at the time, we decided to wait. I was never opposed to signing up for a subscription, but I knew once we started, there was no going back.

 

When we came back from our trip, there was a period of time when we didn't watch a lot of television. There was just too much to do around the house and we were still tired/jetlagged from our trip.  It wasn't until about a month after returning when we started resorting to the television again. 

 

We haven't started a subscription for anything yet, and honestly, most of the time, there's nothing overly exciting to watch on public channels, but once in a while, there will be a nice gem of a show that's on when we're watching. 

 

This happened at the end of last week. We were browsing channels at night and came across a cooking show talking about Louisiana and seafood. They introduced various restaurants in Louisiana and the food they served. These weren't fancy high-brow restaurants. Most were just basic restaurants serving simple food of the south. I loved watching them talk about oysters. It also made me hungry for some oysters myself. 

 

I had oysters in my freezer. With some thawing technique, I was going to give it a try. The recipe I followed loosely (and boy do I mean loosely) is this one.  

 

If you've followed along with my blog you'll know that I'm a very rustic cook. I don't like following recipes because they slow me down. I either have to memorize enough of it to be simple to execute or it's completely made up. 

 

What I followed from the recipe: a 1:1 ratio of flour and cornmeal

 

What I didn't follow from the recipe: everything else 😂 

I didn't have buttermilk for the recipe, but I also didn't have enough milk to amend into buttermilk (milk + vinegar) so I ended up just leaving that part out. I also did not add seasoning to the oyster or the batter. When using frozen oysters, I learned from a Korean cook to salt them and wash them before using. I thought this would have been enough salt to flavor, but it wasn't. 

The overall fry was great though. 

Tasty.

Proof it's an oyster and not chicken in disguise.

 

 

If I did this again in the future, there would be two things I'd make sure of:

1. Add some seasoning. Or wash them in more salt next time, haha. 

2. Fry a little longer. These weren't bad by any means but they got less crispy as they cooled. A longer fry may have helped this. **We've gone to seafood restaurants before and had dried fried seafood so I'm aware of the opposite extreme.**

 

Now if you know me, I don't waste my frying oil or my extra fry batter. I had both in this case. That same evening, I speed-prepped some shrimp balls for frying. Because there is cornmeal in the batter, it wasn't a true Asian shrimp ball. Think more of a shrimp hush puppy.  But it was improvised on the spot, quick to pull together, and tasted pretty good. 

I don't think these would ever be my main item on my frying list, but they make a good secondary fry to use up extra batter and take advantage of the oil. 

 

 

 

The following day, I continued my frying efficiency by making a batch of chicken karaage. This is the recipe I first used when making karaage, but since then, I just wing it by memory and improvisation now.  

I've breaded it in both potato starch and tapioca starch. Both get good results. 

I love fried food. We never had homemade fried food growing up, but we did fast food. My kids get the opposite. We don't do a lot of fast food, but we have fried food in my freezer on hand. A pipe dream of mine is to never buy freezer chicken nuggets again and to always have enough karaage in my freezer. My kids consume a lot of chicken nuggets, so this is a lofty goal, but maybe in the future when they can significantly help in the kitchen, this will be possible. 

As for our health, everything in moderation, right? Not all of this (except the oysters) were consumed in one sitting.

Fried Oysters x18: $20.99

Shrimp Balls x11: $15.99

Chicken Karaage (1.5 lb): $14.99  

Total: $51.97

Tax: $4.29

Grand Total:  $56.26