Chicken, Stuffing and Potato Casserole

How many meals can you get from a chicken? From a single roast chicken?  

Well, quite a few as it turns out.  

That's our plan for the week, take a single chicken along with a package of chicken thighs and make as many meals as possible from just that.  We roasted the chicken on Saturday and Sunday we stripped it and took the Homemade Stuffing and Mashed Potatoes and combined them to make one of our favorite casseroles.  

The best part?  It takes less than 10 minutes to assemble and is fantastic!

You'll need:

-Roughly chopped or shredded roast chicken 

-Mashed potatoes

-Chicken gravy - The jar stuff is perfect for this, I don't really enjoy making homemade gravy

-Stuffing

-A bit of left over broth if you've just roasted the chicken

-Carrots if you cooked them with your chicken (if not, you can leave them out or add a small amount of cooked carrots or canned carrots. 

Take a nice large casserole dish and layer in the chicken at the bottom, pour a couple of spoonfuls of the broth or if the broth is in it's gelatin form in the fridge, just scoop a bit, it will melt in just fine.  Also, pour a few spoonfuls of gravy over the chicken. 

Next, spread the carrots if you're using them and then a layer of the mashed potatoes.  Drop small amounts of the herbed butter that you skimmed from the roasted chicken or drizzle some more gravy over the potatoes.

Finally, spread a layer of stuffing over the top and drizzle the rest of the jar of gravy over that.

Bake at 350º for about 30 to 40 minutes until hot and bubbly throughout.

If you want to make this, but haven't had the roast chicken dinner the night before, just take any left over chicken you have, instant mashed potatoes and instant stuffing. Use the jarred gravy and assemble as above.  It couldn't get any easier and this is one casserole the kids will like.  It's warm and filling and a great way to stretch the food budget.

This works just as well with a roast turkey, awesome Thanksgiving leftovers!

Simple Roast Chicken

What's better than a roast chicken for dinner on the weekend. It's simple, easy, and folks will think you've slaved away for hours over something that you can do in less than 20 minutes and then stick in the oven.

I've several ways that I do a roast chicken, I always mix things up a bit.  We've had some great successes and some, well, not so much.  This is the fall back on, the go-to way, when I don't feel like experimenting and just want a delicious dinner that makes for great leftovers.

I use an herb butter to coat the chicken with and usually cook over a bed of celery, carrots and onions.  I rarely make a chicken that I'm not going to get at least 3 meals from.  When you're on a budget and have little time, this is a lifesaver.

You'll need:
-1 large roasting chicken
-5 or 6 celery stalks, cleaned and chopped into about 3" sections
-1 or 2 cups of carrots, peeled and chopped in large chunks (an easier way is to buy the baby carrots that are already peeled and they are the perfect size)
-1 or 2 large onions, I love to use a Vidalia type onion, just a nice sweet onion for this, peeled and chopped into quarters.
-5 or 6 cloves of peeled and chopped garlic
-2 to 3 cups of chicken broth or stock

Optional stuffing for chicken: Either a traditional Homemade Stuffing or 1 onion, quartered, 3 cloves garlic, peeled and 1 lemon quartered.

If you're not using an herbed butter, you'll also need about a stick of softened butter and whatever herbs you like to use.  I suggest thyme or rosemary as well as garlic and salt and pepper of course.

Clean the chicken well and then pat dry with paper towels. Rub the herb butter or plain butter all over the bird, take a spoon and spoon butter in between the skin and the breast on both sides of the center and then smoosh the butter down along the breast to evenly distribute.  If you're going to do stuffing, now's the time, just don't over stuff or your stuffing will increase your cooking time making the chicken a bit dry.  Instead of stuffing, I put a quartered onion, a couple of cloves of garlic and maybe a few slices of lemon inside.  Makes it lovely and fragrant.

In a large roasting pan, arrange the carrots, celery, garlic and onions around the bottom of the pan, place chicken on top.  You might also sprinkle a bit of salt over the top of everything.  Pour some chicken broth around the pan to help start the base of the broth that you're going to get. After the chicken is done, this broth is liquid gold!  You can make gravy or save it for chicken and noodles the next day.

Cover loosely with foil and make at about 375º.  Depending on the size of the bird, your oven and how much room is in your roaster pan, this should take about 1 1/2 hours.  But could be as little as an hour. Once the internal temp has reached about 160º, remove the foil and allow the top skin on the chicken to brown, about another 15 to 20 minutes.  Just check your temperature and make sure the internal temp is about 165º to 170º.

Allow the pan and chicken to rest, covered lightly with foil for about 15 minutes before carving.

Save everything from the pan, the drippings, the cooked veggies, all of it!

Depending on how large the chicken was and how many people or how hungry they were, you will hopefully have enough leftovers to at least get one more meal out of this wonderful stuff.  I knew I was going to want to do several left over dishes so I also put a package of boneless, skinless chicken thighs in the pan right along with the veggies so I'd be sure to have enough meat left over.

After dinner is over, you can either cover and put the entire roaster pan in the fridge, or pour all the broth and vegetables into a container and strip the meat from the chicken and either store that separately or just put in with the broth and veggies.

The next day, the butter will all have separated and risen to the top, you can then just spoon that off and use the broth for chicken and noodles chicken soup.  The veggies should be in fine shape to just chuck those right in, you might want to chop the celery up a bit smaller if you're doing soup though.  You can save the butter and drop in by small amounts if you're broth needs a bit of flavor or add a bit to mashed potatoes for extra flavor.

We have a favorite casserole that we always make if we do stuffing and chicken and it's super easy and a great way to use up all the little bits you end up with.  That recipe will follow.

Easter Dinner - Roast Lamb and Potatoes

We don't have lamb at our house very often, usually a couple of times a year as my hubby is about the only one that really likes it.  I did things a bit different this year and had the best tasting lamb roast I've ever had (in my humble opinion and limited experiences) and it's converted me.  We had this with some really simple roasted potatoes that we did in the same pan and some asparagus that we roasted by itself.

We used a 1/2 leg, shank portion cut that was really just the thick part of the leg, chopped off.  It had a nice thick bone through the middle and was about 4 lbs.  Also, most recipes I see for roast lamb call for rosemary, but my mother hates it and since she was joining us, I left that out.  You could certainly add some if you like, but this was lovely without it.

You'll need:
-A cut of lamb, could be the leg or the shank portion of the leg as we did, or really any nice lamb roast-style cut
-One fresh package of thyme or a large bundle of thyme if it's coming from your garden
-About 10 pieces of garlic, fresh, peeled
-Olive oil for drizzling
-One stick of salted (or unsalted) butter
-Potatoes - Any kind, any amount, but the more uniform in size the better. Yukon Gold works well, but so would red potatoes.  I wouldn't suggest tiny new potatoes or fingerlings as they'll be too small to really work for this type of prep.
-Salt and Pepper, maybe a bit of garlic salt if you like

Pre-heat oven to 450º (F)

In roaster pan, lay lamb, fat side up, sprinkle with olive oil, salt, garlic salt and pepper. We didn't use the rack and found it worked better without it.

Strip the leaves from a large sprig or several sprigs of fresh thyme and sprinkle a good portion of this over the lamb as well.  Allow this to come up to nearly room temperature.

While your lamb is resting and coming up to room temp, peel your potatoes.  It doesn't really matter what kind, but I used a Yukon Gold type that were nice and buttery without much work.  Boil the peeled potatoes for about 10 minutes, maybe a bit longer depending on their size.  You want them to be just starting to get slightly soft, but not mushy. This way they'll crisp up on the outside and be buttery soft on the inside.

Drain the potatoes and place around the lamb in your roaster pan.  Sprinkle the remaining stripped thyme leaves over the potatoes along with salt and pepper.

Peel about 10 pieces of garlic and crush slightly, place these around the lamb and potatoes.

Toss in a few sprigs of time around the lamb and potatoes and drizzle all with a little olive oil.  I also added a stick of salted butter as there wasn't much fat on the piece of lamb we get bought.

Leave uncovered and roast at 450º for about 15 minutes, then turn heat down to 425º. Again, all depending on your oven.  The idea is to start a sear on the fat side of the lamb and get the oil and butter hot.

Turn the potatoes about every 15 minutes or so, trying to get them brown and crisp on all sides, I also turned the lamb over about every time to, just to get a bit of browning all the way around.  The less oil and fat, the quicker things will brown, but the idea is to get the potatoes crisp on the outside and tender on the inside at the same time your lamb is ready to come out.

Depending on how you like your lamb, go by the internal temperature, allowing for it's resting period at the end where it will come up by 5º to 10º.  Once the lamb was in, we roasted for about 1 1/2 hours.  The smaller potatoes were almost to crisp, but the larger ones weren't so much.  They were all still lovely, but next time I'll probably try to get more even size ones to use.  The lamb ended up between medium rare at the very center to a nice well near the outside.  With a good thermometer you can figure out just what you'd like.

Lamb is something we'll definitely be having a bit more around our house, it was tender, flavorful and not gamey or muttoney at all.  I loved it and so did our five year old.

Slow Cooker Chicken Pot Pie

All moms know any meal you can do in your slow cooker is a good meal.  This recipe takes only minutes to put together but you'd never suspect that from how it tastes. Made with canned soup and frozen vegetables, it could easily be altered to use fresh veg from the farmer's market or garden.

Best served over warm biscuits, either frozen or home-made.

2 cans cream of chicken with herb soup

1 1/2 cups chopped and peeled raw carrot (or baby carrots cut in half)

2 cups red skinned or new potatoes chopped into cubes

1 bag frozen peas

1 medium onion, diced

1 lb boneless chicken breasts or thighs, chopped into 1" chunks

1 cup milk

1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, chopped

1 tablespoon fresh thyme, chopped

salt and pepper

Combine soup, carrots, milk, herbs, potatoes, onion and chicken in your slow cooker

Cook on low for about 7 hours

30 minutes before serving, stir in frozen peas

Serve over warm biscuits

The herbs can be changed a bit to suit, but do go well with this recipe.

If you can't find cream of chicken with herb soup, plain cream of chicken works well too.

Slow Cooker Chicken Tacos

An online friend passed this recipe onto me and it's become one of our staples. Simple and so quick to do, the best part is you can control just how spicy you make it so it's easy to tailor to different tastes.

1 lb chicken breasts
1 packet taco seasoning (or more depending on how spicy you like)
1 large can diced tomatoes
2 cans beans - I normally use 1 can pinto and 1 can navy, but you can use whatever you like

Put all in a slow cooker on low for 4 to 6 hours until chicken is fully cooked and tender

Remove chicken and shred or shred in slow cooker

Serve on tortillas with shredded cheese, mexican style rice and sour cream

Makes enough for 8 to 10 large tortillas

Spinach and Bacon Quiche

Spinach and bacon, swiss cheese and eggs - what could be better!

6 large eggs

1 1/2 cups heavy cream

1 lb bacon

2 cups, packed, fresh spinach

1 1/2 cups shredded swiss cheese

salt and pepper

pie crust (either made fresh or refrigerated)

Fry bacon, drain and chop into small bits

Chop spinach and pack to measure out two cups

Arrange pie crust in 9 inch pie plate

Layer spinach, bacon, swiss cheese in crust, sprinkle with salt and pepper

Beat eggs and cream until well combined

Pour slowly over spinach, bacon and cheese, allowing a bit of time for the egg mixture to settle in around the spinach

Bake at 375 degrees for 35 to 45 minutes until center is set. Re-heats wonderfully if there is any left over!