Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Just Like Martha Stewart Would Make, Were She to Sully Herself By Using Condensed Soup

The other day, I was in no mood to cook, but I knew we needed [o.k., I needed] to eat otherwise someone [o.k., me] would get really, really hangry.

Everything was frozen or needed a ton of prep, and I was not having it.

So, instead, I plopped some frozen chicken in the crockpot and went about my day.  It turned out pretty good - so next time you are just at the limit of thinking about dinner, here's a good plan.

World's Laziest Chicken
Ingredients
  • ~ 3lbs. Boneless, skinless chicken pieces [I used a package of breasts and a package of thighs.  You know, to mix it up.]
  • 1 can Cream of Whatever soup [I happened to have mushroom, so I used that.  I think chicken or celery or onion would be delicious.]
  • 1/2 can broth or water
  • Salt
  • Pepper
  • Garlic
  • Spinach [I had a ton of baby spinach I needed to use up, but I'm sure frozen or regular would be fine.]
Directions
  1. Find your crock pot.  Make sure it works.
  2. Take the chicken out of the package & rinse it off.  Sure, you can not rinse it, but that's disgusting.  Also, you may want to use thawed chicken, so you aren't running a frozen blob of meat counter chicken under warm water, hacking at it with a very, very sharp knife, trying to get the last bit of paper/wax paper out from the crevice it's frozen into, spewing watery chicken bits all over the sink, your clothes, the crockpot, and the formerly clean wok in the dishdrainer, before giving it up as a bad job, calling your kid over to find a big bowl to dump the frozen chicken blob into before moving on to the nicely packaged Amish chicken parts that are placed lovingly and evenly on the chicken maxi-pad that is still frozen to the chicken, meaning you're going to have to fish out that really, really sharp knife from underneath the random dirty dishes in the sink and then pry off the maxi-pad, before rinsing everything off.  Again. 
  3. Lay the chicken pieces in the crock pot.
  4. Wash your hands and disinfect every part of your kitchen.  You may want to change your shirt and wash your face, too.  I'm just saying.
  5. Now, at this point, you can be fancy and mix the condensed soup, broth and seasonings together in another bowl.  Or you can do what I did, which was to dump all of them on the frozen pieces of chicken and kind of stir them around a bit before shaking my head in disgust and irritation and tossing the spoon in the sink.
  6. Put the lid on the crock pot, turn it on.  I started kind of late, and didn't want to eat raw chicken, so I cranked the crock pot up to high for about 2 hours before putting it on low and cooking it for another 3 hours.  If you're starting this early with frozen chicken, I'd say cook on low for about 6 hours or so.  If you're using thawed chicken, probably 4 - 4 1/2 hours on low is good.
  7. About 10 minutes before the end of cooking time, I added all the spinach and let it wilt, stirring it a bit.
I served this with farfalle noodles and shredded parmesan, but rice would probably be really good, too.  I also thickened the gravy a bit with cornstarch & water because, well, I like thick gravy.  I'm kind of a whore that way.

Makes dinner for 3 + lunch for 3 - and it's even better the second day.

No flash on my iPhone, so the photo is a bit dark. Also, it doesn't look like vomit, at all.  I swear.

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10 comments:

  1. That might be the best recipe title E.V.E.R.

    :)

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  2. my crockpot is the greatest thing ever. i love it, love it, love it. during exams, in the fall particularly, it's the only thing that keeps me alive and fed.

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  3. This sounds great! I love things that are yummy and easy!

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  4. do you have any lazy vegetarian recipes? i'm too lazy to look up any...

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  5. That is quite the title for this recipe. I think though I would have opted for going out to eat instead of cooking.

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  6. Chicken maxi pad!! HA! I never knew what to call that thing on the bottom of the chicken. I love it!

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  7. There.

    You see there?

    YOU explain a recipe the RIGHT way.

    Barefoot Contessa? Would leave all the important parts out, like washing your face after handling a chicken corpse.

    You're looking out for us. I like you.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Wait a minute, I invented the cooking maneuvers documented in step 2! I should get credit!

    The chicken maxi-pad thing made me equal parts cringe and laugh, which is what I look for in a blog post really.

    I like a whore's gravy too. We could totally eat together.

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  9. I wasn't sure about this recipe until I saw the photo with the caption, "It doesn't look like vomit, at all."

    Then I knew what we were having for dinner tonight.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Cream of some young guy? Couldn't help it...giggle giggle.

    ReplyDelete

Every time you comment, I get a lady boner.