One Dish Chicken Dinner

Do you know those annoying posts on Pinterest that lead to nowhere? Yeah, they're very disappointing. But that's what inspired this post. A yummy looking picture which led the hubs to ask me to make it for supper. With not too much creativity I came up with a recipe that I thought would do the misleading post justice.

(The portions in this recipe are for two people.)

One Dish Chicken Dinner

Cooking Ingredients:

4 chicken tenders or 2 chicken breasts

1 small bag frozen cut green beans

2 russet potatoes cut into bite sized chunks

1 package Italian salad dressing mix

1/2 stick melted butter

Cooking Directions:

1. Place chicken down the middle of a greased glass baking dish. Pour beans on one side of the chicken and potatoes on the other side.

2. Mix Italian dressing and melted butter in a small dish, then pour over chicken, beans, and potatoes.

3. Bake in oven at 350° for one hour.

Too easy right? The chicken was perfectly juicy, the potatoes were just soft enough, and there was just enough butter in the bottom of the dish to soak our home made rolls in! Plus, only one dish to clean? That's my kind of supper.

Enjoy!

Tortilla Rollups

Here's a fun twist for mexican night: Tortilla Rollups. The original recipe is from The Weekend Gourmet and can be found here. Feel free to mix it up and add what you like, take out what you don't, and let me know how your version turns out!

Tortilla Rollups

Cooking Ingredients:

1lb ground beef or shredded chicken
1/2 can whole kernel corn
1/2 can black beans
1 cup shredded cheese (I used a mexican blend, but feel free to use your favorite)
1 cup plain greek yogurt
1/2 cup salsa
1tsp cumin
1/2 tsp salt
the juice from 1 lime

8-1o flour tortillas
olive oil
chili powder

Cooking Directions:

1. Spray your baking pan with cooking spray (super important step that I forgot and you will see the disastrous result below!)

2. Brown your ground beef (or cook and shred your chicken). Mix together with corn, beans, cheese, yogurt, salsa, cumin, salt, and lime juice.

3. Place 1/2 cup of the above mixture onto a tortilla and roll up. Place roll ups in a baking pan seam side down. Continue until you use up all of your mix.

4. Brush olive oil on your roll ups, then sprinkle with chili powder.

5. Bake in a 400 degree oven for 5 minutes. Flip, coat with olive oil and sprinkle with chili powder, then bake for another 5 minutes. (I added a little extra cheese to a couple when I pulled them out of the oven, because the hubs loves cheese).

These rollups are very simple and very delicious. Plus, they make great leftovers!

But, please, remember to spray your pan first! Otherwise, you will end up with pieces of rollups… like I did in one of my pans.

P.S. I've made these before with shredded chicken instead of ground beef (actually I use ground venison) and they are just as tasty. Enjoy!

Italian Chicken Crockpot Style

The hubs has been working nights since Thanksgiving which complicates cooking dinner since we now have to eat dinner around 3:30 in the afternoon. That combined with my work schedule has been my excuse for not trying new recipes the past couple of weeks. But this week I'm making up for it with 2 new recipes!

I have Pinterest to thank for this week's inspiration. Seriously, how did we ever come up with new recipes to try and diy crafts to make before Pinterest?

Anyways if you've seen my Pinterest page you've seen the following picture with this recipe:

(Photo Credit: The Girl Who Ate Everything)

Crockpot Italian Chicken

Ingredients:

4 chicken breasts (I used 6 tenderloins)

1 packet dry Zesty Italian dressing

8oz softened cream cheese

2 cans cream of chicken soup

1/2lb bow tie pasta

Cooking Directions:

1. Place chicken in crockpot and cover with Zesty Italian dressing.

2. Over medium heat on the stovetop, combine cream cheese and soup until well blended. Then pour over chicken in crockpot on cook on low for 4 hours.

3. Cook pasta and drain. Serve with garlic toast.

The chicken was so tender it fell apart on the plate so we ended up shredding it and mixing it in with the pasta and sauce. This was really easy to make and quite inexpensive. I think it would have been even better topped with cheese (which is kind of what it looks like in the picture she just doesn't mention it in the recipe?). Because I used chicken tenders instead of chicken breasts we had some extra sauce which is perfect by itself with left over pasta.

So there you have it. An easy, cheap supper (or mid afternoon lunch in our case.) It wasn't amazing, but it was good and we'll probably have it again.

Apple Roasted Chicken

It's only a couple of weeks until Christmas!! Trying to get our taste buds in the holiday mood (without baking cookies!) I pulled out my Lady and Sons Christmas magazine from last year and happened upon the following recipe (actually the original recipe calls for 2x what I have listed, but I was only cooking for 2 people so I reduced the portions).

Apple Roasted Chicken with Herb Vegetables


Ingredients:
1 whole chicken (4-5lb)
3 red delicious apples
4 carrots
1/2 clove garlic
1 tablespoon rosemary
4 springs thyme
2 tablespoons butter
salt and pepper

Cooking Directions:
1. Take one apple and cut in half. Place chicken in cast iron dutch oven and stuff with halved apple, garlic and rosemary. Tie legs together. Rub butter over entire chicken and cover with salt and pepper. Bake in oven at 400 degrees for 30 minutes.

2. Cut carrots into bite size pieces. Core and slice remaining 2 apples. After 30 minutes take the chicken out of the oven and carefully place carrots, apple slices and thyme around the chicken. Return the dish to the oven and continue cooking 30-45 minutes.

I cannot express to you how juicy and delicious this chicken was!! It was literally melt in your mouth goodness.. The carrots were perfectly tender without being mushy. The apples (though not a favorite of the hubs and mine) were pretty yummy but a tad on the mushy side.

This recipe is perfect for the season. It took a little time (not a quick casserole to stick in the oven) but totally worth the investment. I served it alongside mashed potatoes and it made the perfect December dinner for two! I'm thinking that it might also be good to add some sliced potatoes and onion. But that will be for next time.

Cheesy Chicken Spaghetti

It's official, I have had my first fiasco!

I was so excited when I saw this recipe for Cheesy Chicken Spaghetti on Pinterest. I couldn't wait to try it. The pictures looked yummy. The recipe sounded yummy. All roads looked like they headed to yummy. And then I tried it.

It was the most bland thing that I have ever made! And talk about cheese overload. Now I am one that loves cheese, and trust me when I say that this was way too much cheese.

The hubs was a darling and said it wasn't "that bad" and ate his entire plate. Talk about grin and bear it. He's the greatest :).

So, if you see the below picture for cheesy chicken spaghetti floating around Pinterest, don't say I didn't warn ya. Better luck next time.

Chicken n Dumplins

My grandmother loves to cook. I remember when I was growing up, whenever we went over to her house for a visit she always had something boiling on the stove or baking in the oven. She had some interesting concoctions at times, but one of my favorites was always her chicken and dumplings. Thick and creamy, the kind that cooked on the stove for hours before it was finally ready. I can almost taste it just thinking about it!

However, as delectable as it was, it also scarred me for life (ok, so that may be a little dramatic, but it has left a serious impression). Because in spite of what I am sure were her best efforts, there were always chicken bones in it. And for those of you that know me well know that I have a problem dealing with bones. I just can't handle them. Chicken, human, any kind of bone just freaks me out.

That being said, I have always been afraid to try chicken and dumplings and restaurants and other people's homes for fear of finding those nasty little chicken bones that are a result of cooking a whole chicken to put into the chicken and dumplings.

Well, thank you Pinterest and BubbleCrumb for showing me the obvious. Boneless chicken breasts for chicken and dumplings! Plus it uses a crockpot. Yippie!

Crock Pot Chicken and Dumplings

Ingredients:
4-6 BONELESS skinless chicken breasts
2 tablespoons butter
2 cans cream of chicken soup
1 can chicken broth
1 diced onion
1 tablespoon dried paisley
4 grands flaky refrigerator biscuits

Cooking Directions:
1. Place chicken, butter, soup, broth, onion and paisley in crockpot. Cook on high for 4-6 hours.

2.Break chicken into pieces (the chicken should just fall apart). Chop biscuits into pieces and add to crockpot and continue cooking 30 minutes or until done.

(photo credit: BubbleCrumb)

The results? Perfecto! Let's just say the hubs and I ate almost the entire crock pot full. I did, as usual, make a couple of minor changes. I used 6 chicken tenders and only had 1 can of cream of chicken soup on hand. Also instead of 4 flaky biscuits I used a small tube of 6 biscuits and flattened them out to get 9 pieces out of each biscuit. But it still worked out perfectly well. Thank you Pinterest!

Nacho Cheese Chicken Chowder

Back to Better Homes and Gardens' slow cooker recipes for this week's experiment.


Nacho Cheese Chicken Chowder


Ingredients:
1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts cut into small pieces (for a change I actually cubed my chicken instead of shredding it)
2 14.5oz cans Mexican stewed tomatoes (if you're not a big tomato fan I would recommend using diced tomatoes instead)
1 can Nacho Cheese soup
1 10oz package frozen kernel corn
shredded Mexican or cheddar cheese to use as a topping


Cooking Directions:
Mix together chicken, tomatoes, soup and corn in slow cooker and cook on low for 4-5 hours. Or if you're in more of a hurry, cook on high for 2.5 hours.

(Photo credit: Better Homes and Gardens)

Super easy right?? It was. However, the taste buds weren't quite as excited. It was okay but nothing special. It was actually quite bland to be totally honest. It needed a little something extra to give it more flavor. Any suggestions??


So, while not being a fiasco, it wasn't quite a success either. Time to wash out the slow cooker and try again next week.

Poppyseed Chicken + Broccoli Casserole

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Labor Day weekend. We traveled back home to Georgia for the long weekend and get to spend some much needed/wanted time with family and friends.


To start this shortened week off on the right foot I decided to try out a new recipe. Pinterest, yet again, provided some inspiration for tonight's supper: "French Chicken Broccoli Supreme" from Get Off Your Butt and Bake!

I tweaked the original a little bit, so bellow is my version and how it turned out.


A bit of warning before I begin. The prep time for this dish... for me, for the first time... was 1 hour. I'm hoping that it only took this long because I was constantly referencing back to the recipe to make sure I was doing it correctly. Or I could just be a very slow cook :)

Ingredients


1 lb chopped broccoli steamed 'til softened
10 chicken tenders boiled and shredded
2 cups shredded mild cheddar cheese
2 sleeves of Ritz crackers
1 and 1/3 sticks of butter
1 tablespoon poppyseeds
1/4 cup corn starch dissolved in 1/2 cup cold water
1/3 cup chicken broth
1/4 teaspoon of each salt and pepper
2 cups milk


Directions


1. Boil and shred chicken and place in a 9x13 inch baking pan
Chop and steam broccoli and place on top of chicken in pan


2. In a saucepan over medium heat, combine 1/3 stick of melted butter with dissolved cornstarch, chicken broth, milk, salt and pepper. Stir continuously as sauce thickens.


4. Once sauce thickens, stir in 1 cup of shredded cheese. Pour sauce over chicken and broccoli. Use 1 cup of cheese to cover the chicken and broccoli.


5. Melt 1 stick of butter and stir in poppyseeds. Crush Ritz crackers into crumbs and spread over the shredded cheese.


6. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes or until the crumbs turn golden brown and the sauce bubbles.




Yet another yummy chicken casserole dish going into the recipe folder! The hubs was less than thrilled with the broccoli (said it took away from the yummy chicken flavor - he really just doesn't like broccoli). However, I liked the idea of having a vegetable in the casserole rather than as a side. Oh well, you win some, you lose some.

Hmm, two chicken recipes in a row... maybe next week I will get a little more adventurous. Maybe.

Chicken Florentine and Cheddar Biscuits

Tonight was the first venture into unknown cooking territory. I originally found these recipes on Pinterest (my newest obsession. are you pinning?). The main dish: chicken florentine bowtie pasta, and the side: cheddar biscuits Red Lobster style.

Chicken Florentine Bowtie Pasta from pickypalate.com

(photo credit: http://picky-palate.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Chicken-Florentine-Bowtie-Pasta-text-539x700.jpg)

Ingredients

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 cup finely chopped white onion

1 clove minced garlic (I cheated here and used garlic powder)

4 cups baby spinach leaves

2 cups cooked shredded chicken

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 freshly ground black pepper

2 cups Philadelphia cooking cream (I couldn't find this at the store so I just used store brand heavy whipping cream)

1 pound bowtie pasta

1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese

Cooking directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. and spray a 9x13in baking pan with non-stick baking spray.

2. Cook pasta according to package directions.

3. Cook oil in a dutch oven/large pot over medium heat. Add in onion and cook 5 minutes until tender. Stir in garlic for 1 minute. Add in spinach leaves and cook 2 minutes until wilted. Stir in chicken, salt and pepper. Slowly add in cream, stirring to combine.

4. Add pasta to mixture. (I also added a handful of cheese at this point).

5. Pour mixture into sprayed baking dish and top with mozzarella cheese. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes until cheese is slightly golden.

Makes 8 servings.

As you can see, I made a few adjustment. It was very tasty. The sauce wasn't very thick and the spinach helped me not feel too guilty eating only a pasta dish for supper.

This one is definitely going into the recipe box for future reference.

Red Lobster Cheddar Biscuits from RasaMalaysia

(photo credit: http://rasamalaysia.com/uploaded_images/biscuits/biscuit.jpg)

Ingredients

2 cups Bisquick mix

2/3 cup milk

1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese

1/4 melted butter

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

1/4 teaspoon dried parsley

Cooking directions

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.

2. Mix Bisquick, milk, parsley and cheddar cheese into thick batter

3. Spoon the batter onto cookie sheet and bake for 8 to 10 minutes until golden

4. Melt butter and mix with garlic and drizzle over warm biscuits

Makes 12 servings (serving size = 1 biscuit)

These were delicious! Not exactly like the ones from Red Lobster, but they were quick, easy and cheap which is definitely the better thing in my opinion.

So overall tonight's adventure turned out scrumptious.

Newlywed: 1. Kitchen: 0.