Chicken and Rice v2.0

Yeah, I got nothing on Kroger's baked chicken.

I made a different version of that other chicken and rice, in which I actually purchased uncooked chicken and marinated it and did my experimenting around with it for a while.

Let's see, what's in here... some red onion, parsley, ginger, garlic, lemon zest... added after the picture was taken - balsamic vinagrette, honey, lime juice, mustard, thyme, ponzu sauce... I don't know, I just raided my fridge and made it up as I went.

I left that in the fridge for a few hours, baked it, cubed it, decided I had used perhaps Way Too Much Onion and ended up making a very plain cream sauce (as opposed to the onion cream sauce in the post linked above). It was good, I guess. I mean, I'm glad I liked it, because I ended up making obscene amounts of it and have pretty much been eating nothing but for the last 4 days, but I'll take crispy, roasted chicken skin over skinless any day.

Reason/excuse = I actually made this for the pot luck at work and I wanted something that could easily and quickly be ladled onto a plate with minimum fuss. Thus the lack of bone and skin.

Chicken and rice

I have a thing for roasted chicken, and it borders on "unhealthy obsession."
Roasted chicken is pretty much perfect. A whole chicken costs barely more than a sub, and you can get something like 3-4 meals out of it (more like 2 meals for me, because, seriously, I LOVE roasted chicken).
We went to Kroger tonight and they had this huge 16-piece chicken thing for 8 bucks. Add to this the recent acquisition of a toaster oven, and dinner was on its way.
Chicken was baked for about 23 minutes at 325F (so the package instructed), and while that was happening I made some white rice with frozen corn thrown in. Since both of these things sort of cook themselves, I busied myself with making an onion cream sauce.

There are things I keep in my freezer to make lazy meals even easier than they already are. For example, I love parsley with a passion, but I never use an entire bunch before it starts going bad. So I dry it up as much as possible using paper towels, then finely chop it, blot out more moisture, and then store it in an airtight container in the freezer. When I need some, I bang the container on the counter a few times, shake it up, and it goes straight into whatever I'm cooking. Better than dried parsley.
(I also do this with cilantro)

Another thing I keep in the freezer is cubes of chicken or beef broth. The chicken ones are usually a result of a roasted chicken binge, when I take all the meat off the bones for the 2 picky eaters in the household, throw the bones in a pot with whatever peels/stems/leaves I have leftover when cleaning up vegetables for storage, and simmer over low heat for about an hour. The beef ones happen as a side effect of shredded meat for flautas or salpicon (which I'll probably post about eventually, but tonight is not the night).
I have 2 ice trays specifically for the purpose of freezing broth.

So, this onion cream sauce.
(I may or may not also have a thing for cream of-'s)
Roux drill - melt about a tablespoon of butter over low heat, add equal amount of flour and whisk until it dissolves, allow to cook for a bit until thick.
Then I started playing with it--added some milk... a few beef broth ice cubes, about half an envelope of onion soup/dip mix, some parsley from the freezer, some thyme (chicken + thyme = OTP). I just messed with it until it was the consistency and amount that I wanted.


I wish the end result had looked as pretty as it was tasty. For a half-assed meal thrown together out of things in my pantry/freezer and an impulse buy at Kroger, it was much better than it had any right to be.