There are probably as many different chili recipes as there are reasons for people’s differing opinions as to whether or not chili should have beans in it. For the record, we do not put beans in our traditional (award-winning!) chili because Texas Chili does not have beans in it. Apparently someone even wrote a song about it: “If You Know Beans About Chili, You Know That Chili Has No Beans.” We make an exception to this rule for white chili, which is a lighter alternative to the red meat version. We’ve made white chili before and enjoyed it, but felt that it lacked the flavor “wow factor” of our beef chili recipe. Enter the chipotle and the tomatillo. The idea of adding these ingredients came from this recipe and took the white chili to a whole new level, flavor-wise. The spicy/smoky chipotle and sweet/tart tomatillo give a much needed boost to the otherwise potentially bland flavor combination of white beans and ground turkey. This is a dish that even a Texas-chili-purist can love, beans and all.
Category: Poultry
Shredded Chicken Tacos
If you like chicken tacos even just a little bit, we’re going to have to insist that you make these tacos, adapted from this recipe. While we always respect people’s varying palates and food preferences, we can’t say enough good things about these tacos and really want everyone to try them. If we could invite you all over for dinner and make them for you, we would. They’re that good. They’re also pretty easy to make — just simmer a couple of chicken breasts in a sauce made with tomato sauce, white vinegar, garlic, a chipotle pepper, ancho chile powder, ground cumin, oregano and sugar. Then shred the chicken, add it back to the sauce, and fill a couple of tortillas with the tender, spicy and tangy chicken mixture. Garnish with chopped white onion, cilantro, and a squeeze of lime, and enjoy your new favorite tacos!
Southern-Style Chicken and Dirty Rice
Every once in a while, the easy efficiency of a slow-cooker meal can be a trade-off for complex and sophisticated flavor. Not so with this recipe. It requires a little bit of work on the front end (browning meat and sauteing veggies), but the final result is a meal that we would be quite pleased to be served at a restaurant in New Orleans, and it’s one of our favorite slow-cooker dishes to date. Not surprisingly, the recipe comes from one of our go-to sources for excellent cooking — America’s Test Kitchen — specifically, their book “Slow Cooker Revolution.” We have tried several recipes from this book (including Smothered Pork Chops) and enjoyed each of them, this chicken and rice most of all so far.
Turkey Barley Soup
If you’re planning on cooking a turkey this holiday season, an excellent use of the leftover meat and bones is turkey soup. Rather than disposing of the turkey carcass when the holiday meal is over, it’s really easy to simmer the bones in a big pot with some veggies to make delicious turkey stock, which will serve as the base for this hearty soup. We’ve posted instructions on how to make turkey stock before, and although it takes time to cook, it is well worth the (minimal) effort. Simply place the turkey carcass and other bones in a large stock pot full of water, then simmer on the stove (or cook in the oven at 200 degrees) for about 6 hours. Add 2 bay leaves, an onion, 2-3 ribs of celery, 2-3 carrots (roughly chop the veggies into big pieces) and about a teaspoon of cracked peppercorns to the pot and simmer on low for about 2 hours. Drain the stock through a fine mesh strainer and discard all the bones and veggies. Refrigerate the stock until you’re ready to use it (you can also portion out some of the stock to freeze for later use), or use it right away for the soup. If you don’t have the time or inclination to make homemade turkey stock (but we highly recommend you do!), then you can use its lesser, not-as-flavorful cousin, chicken stock. The other ingredients for this soup are simple: olive oil, onion, carrots, celery, bay leaves, barley, leftover turkey meat, fish sauce (or soy sauce) and parsley for garnish. Despite its simplicity, this soup is rustic and filling with dominant turkey flavor and interesting texture from the barley.
Turkey Meatloaf
I’ve never been much of a fan of meat in loaf form — it’s a texture thing. But Dan knows me and my palate quirks well and created a meatloaf that I actually really like. He took the standard turkey meatloaf ingredients — ground turkey, milk, bread crumbs, egg and ketchup — and added cheese and Rotel tomatoes to turn bland and boring turkey meatloaf into something much more appetizing and special. The little pockets of melted cheese break up the texture and the Rotel adds a little spice and Tex-Mex flavor. This is not your typical turkey meatloaf, but it still has the comfort food aspect and is as easy to prepare as the more basic variety.
Duck Confit
Time for another Charcutepalooza challenge. This month’s challenge was “stretching” — as in branching out in the kitchen, extending the uses of the meat and lengthening the time that the food can be safely cooked and eaten. The Apprentice challenge was rillettes or confit, while the Charcutiere test was galantine or roulade. Our usual starting point for Charcutepalooza each month is to read Mrs. Wheelbarrow‘s always entertaining and instructive post detailing the challenge — primarily so we can figure out what a lot of these charcuterie terms that we’ve never heard of mean, then to decide which technique we want to try. This month, however, Dan knew right away that he wanted to make duck confit, after having read about it and tasted it in restaurants on occasion. I cannot adequately express my relief that we were not going to attempt the galantine, which The Yummy Mummy eloquently (and terrifyingly) explains: “requires you to flay the skin off the chicken – Spanish inquisition style – in one single piece, debone the whole chicken, make pate out of the forcemeat, fold the forcemeat over the partially-grilled breasts so they are a snug surprise in the middle of the roll, and force all of it back inside the skin – that you just took off the chicken – and poach it in broth.” Wait, what? Is this cooking, or a special episode of American Horror Story?!? Fortunately, duck confit turned out to be one of the easiest — and by far most delicious — Charcutepalooza challenges to date. It was so easy that we actually felt a little like we were cheating. And it was so delectable that we were almost mad at ourselves for never having made it before. (And so good that I actually used the word “delectable.”) Many thanks to Mrs. Wheelbarrow and The Yummy Mummy for creating Charcutepalooza and introducing us to this amazing delicacy that we can (and will!) so easily make at home.
“Cold-Smoked” Chicken with Black Pepper Vinegar Sauce
Bobby Flay has a new cookbook, “Bobby Flay’s Bar Americain Cookbook,” chock-full of recipes from his New York restaurant Bar Americain. We’ve never been to his restaurant, but we’re big fans of his recipes from his other books. He has a creative, yet no-nonsense and relatively simple approach to cooking that we find easy to adapt to our home cooking and grilling. Although many restaurant-based cookbooks can be quite intimidating, this first recipe we tried from Chef Flay’s book wasn’t difficult at all, and the result was restaurant-quality food at home. The chicken was perfectly roasted with a slightly smoky flavor, and the black pepper vinegar sauce was one of the best sauces for chicken we’ve ever tasted. The sauce is the star of this dish and it is crazy simple to make. It might also be good as a salad dressing. Heck, I could almost drink it, it’s so good.
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Grilled Buffalo Wings
Dan’s favorite season has finally begun. No, not Fall — it’s Football Season! While I don’t share Dan’s love of the NFL, his penchant for watching games allllllll day on Sunday, or his obsession with tracking the scores from BOTH of his fantasy football leagues, I will support the marriage team by watching Steeler games, and I do enjoy the food that comes with this time of year. This season, we decided to cook some of our football-watching bar food favorites at home, starting with buffalo wings. We researched several recipes, expecting to find at least one with some secret ingredient for making the buffalo sauce so delicious. Turns out that there really is no secret, or if there is a special ingredient, it’s being kept secret. Pretty much all the recipes we found called for the simple combination of “hot sauce,” butter and vinegar. In some recipes, the wings were grilled, others called for frying them, and some required baking them in the oven. In the interest of making them just a teeny bit more healthy, we decided to grill our wings. The resulting grill flavor complemented the buffalo sauce nicely. We’ll make these again and maybe tweak the sauce a bit to come up with our own secret ingredient.
Chicken Stew with Green Olives
Now that it’s September, cooler weather is FINALLY on the way, and we could not be happier. It’s been a brutal summer here, but we have been blessed with glorious temperatures in the low 80s for the last couple of days and we are excited for fall. In addition to a break from the hot weather, fall means cooking more of our favorite soups, chili and other comfort-food dishes. This stew, adapted from a recipe in Glamour magazine, is a great dish for the transition from summer to fall. The olives and basil give it a bright, summery flavor, while the broth and tomatoes provide richness. It’s also really easy to make with simple ingredients: chicken, leeks, olive oil, garlic, white wine, tomatoes, chicken stock, green olives and basil.
Turkey Tetrazzini (with leftover turkey)
Now that we have a delicious new way to cook turkey breast and plan to cook turkey a lot more often, we need some good recipes for turkey leftovers. In the past, we’ve tried to think outside the box when it comes to turkey leftovers — turkey paella and turkey enchiladas, for example — but this time we decided to do something a little more on the classic side. Turkey Tetrazzini is a classic American dish, but one that neither of us had ever made or eaten. We found a great recipe for tetrazzini in (go figure) “The Best American Classics” cookbook by the editors of Cook’s Illustrated Magazine. We love the folks at America’s Test Kitchen because they exhaustively test all their recipes to come up with the best possible versions — something we thought would be key to successfully preparing a dish without having any clue how it was supposed to taste. Turns out that it’s supposed to taste really delicious with surprisingly complex flavors for what basically amounts to a noodle casserole. A noodle casserole that we will crave with every future turkey breast we cook.