Sausages, onions, peppers, sauce, and Udi's hot dog buns

Hi. I got a package a few weeks ago from my friends at Udi's, with some hot dog buns and burger buns. Sweet! We ate the burger buns already, and I didn't take pictures, but here's what the hot dog buns look like, with sausages and peppers and onions and tomato sauce. Oh and provolone cheese. The burger buns were good, they held up to the big burgers I made and then devoured. The hot dog buns are good as well, although they do get a little soggy if you don't scarf down your saucy sausage immediately. No stopping to talk you guys, eat this fast. To be fair though, I did make regular sausages and peppers and onions without the tomato sauce, and the buns didn't fall apart. We don't have a grill yet, so we haven't had hot dogs, which I would imagine would be great in these buns, as long as you don't top them with chili or anything.

Even though they were a little soft in the face of saucy goodness, I'd still buy the hell out of these all summer long (as soon as I find them in the store), because it would be great to go to BBQs with these and be able to eat a hot dog like a regular person, not off a plate like a 5 year old.  Disclaimer! I did get these buns for free, but I am not paid to say that I ate them and will eat them again. I just think they are delicious.

Now on to the delicious sausage mess on top!

Sausage and onions and peppers and tomato sauce


1 onion, cut in half and sliced
3 cloves of garlic, minced (or sliced)
1 pepper (whatever color you like) sliced into strips
a can of whole tomatoes
a big pinch of basil and oregano
salt and pepper
4 sausages of whatever kind you like (just make sure they're gluten free)

Heat a pot with a little bit of whatever kind of oil you use over medium heat, and toss in the onion and garlic. Lower the heat to medium-low and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions are soft and smell good. Toss in the pepper and cook for a few minutes, until that starts to soften too. Then add the can of tomatoes, pouring them through your fingers so you can squeeze the whole tomatoes into squishy lumps. Add in the herbs and salt and pepper, stir, then nestle in the sausages. Cover and cook until the sausages are cooked through, about 15 minutes. Serve on toasted hot dog buns. For extra credit, melt a slice of provolone cheese on each bun before adding the saucy sausages. The cheese will help protect the bun from falling apart too much.

the best roast chicken (again)

There are a lot of ways to roast a chicken, and this is my favorite. It's easy, fast, and every single time I've made it it has come out perfect. I posted about it before, a few years ago, and it's still my go-to chicken recipe.

The best roast chicken
From Thomas Keller on epicurious. 


1 chicken, 3-4 lbs (pick a good one, no added hormones or any of that junk)
salt and pepper

Preheat your oven to 450. Yes, 450, very hot. Dry off your chicken as much as you can, then sprinkle inside and out with salt and pepper. Truss your chicken, or tie it up tight (check out this link to learn how). Place the chicken in a cast iron pan or other dark, oven proof pan, and cook for about an hour. I cooked mine about an hour and 5 minutes. You'll know it's done when the juices run clear and if you twist a drumstick it feels loose. Let it sit for 15 minutes, then cut up and serve. Thomas Keller recommends slathering the chicken with butter and dipping it in good mustard after it's cooked, but I think it's fine as is.

What to do with leftover boiled dinner (corned beef hash)

Hi! I made this a bunch of days ago, but then I went away with my sister for the weekend and then worked and some other things happened. Now I have a day off and despite how nice and sunny it looks outside, it's still winter. It snowed yesterday. Hmph.

Anyway, this is one of my favorite breakfasts, and there is nothing more sad than eating all your corned beef at night and then waking up in the morning and realizing it's gone and you can't make hash. Boo. It's easy and fast and good and you can even add in some spinach to make it healthier. If you want to do that, spread a few handfuls of spinach over the hash right before you add the eggs, then when it's wilted, stir it in and add the eggs. We did this for dinner last night.

Corned beef hash


a bunch of leftover corned beef
some leftover potatoes
maybe some cooked vegetables if you have any (I added carrots)
eggs
salt and pepper

Cube up your meat and potatoes and vegetables into little pieces. Heat up a pan with about a tablespoon of olive oil or butter, and toss in the cubed things. Press down with the back of a spatula, and cook without stirring about ten minutes over medium heat, until brown and crusty. Flip over the best you can, pat down again, and cook another few minutes. Crack an egg or two or three on the top and lower the heat, and cover. Cook until the whites are set and the yellow is still runny. Serve immediately.

Happy St Patrick's Day!

As someone who's totally not Irish in any way, I don't really feel anything special about St. Pat's day, except that it means two things. One, my birthday is in a little over 2 weeks (it was supposed to be today), and two, it's corned beef season!!! I love corned beef. It's my favorite food. When I was younger, I used to always ask for corned beef for my special birthday dinner. Technically, I made New England boiled dinner, which is easy easy easy, and good. Not terribly nutritious, but it could be worse. I could have deep fried it.

New England boiled dinner


3-4 lb corned beef
1 onion, quartered
2 heads garlic, peeled
2 bay leaves
1 t peppercorns
1 T pickling spices (or the packet that came with your corned beef)
4-6 carrots, peeled and sliced into 1" pieces
4-6 red potatoes, halved
1 head of cabbage, cored and cut into eighths

Combine corned beef, onion, garlic, bay, peppercorns, and spices in a large pot. Cover with cold water, bring to a lot boil, cover with a lid, and lower the heat to medium-low. Cook about 3 hours, until it's not too hard to stick a fork into the meat. Add the carrots and potatoes and a little more water if you need to (you shouldn't), cover back up, and cook 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, add the cabbage, cover, and cook another 15 minutes. Done! Serve meat sliced, with vegetables and broth.

The best meatloaf of my life

Meatloaf is fairly hard to take pictures of that do it justice. This is the best meatloaf, ever. Take my word for it.
Alex and I decided we are going to continue eating healthy but eat meat once in a while, and started off with this meatloaf, since this was on Sunday, before I'd gotten my stitches out and wasn't sure if I should be eating solid food. Don't worry, I'm not going to suggest you put this in the blender at the end of the post. I asked Alex to make this since I was working later than him, and he followed the recipe that I had ripped out of a magazine a while ago. This is from America's Test Kitchen's Magazine, Cooks Country.

Glazed meatloaf aka the best meatloaf of my life

From Cooks Country but adapted by Alex

Glaze:

1 c ketchup

1/4 c packed dark brown sugar

2 1/2 T cider vinegar

1/2 t hot sauce (we used siracha)

Whisk everything together in a small saucepan. Set 1/4 c of the glaze aside, then simmer the rest over medium heat until thickened a bit, about 5 mins.

Meatloaf

2 t olive oil

1 onion, chopped fine

2 garlic cloves, minced
2/3 c gf breadcrumbs (toasted then crushed Udi's bread ends is what we use)
1/3 c milk
1 lb ground beef
1 lb fresh chicken or pork sausages (we used Italian and hot), removed from the casing
2 egg yolks
2 t mustard (we used spicy)
1/2 t dried thyme
salt and pepper

Line a cookie sheet with foil and lightly grease. Heat oil and cook onions until softened and lightly browned, then add garlic and cook until fragrant. Set aside. Process the breadcrumbs and milk in the food processor until smooth, then add beef and sausage and pulse until combined. Transfer to a bowl, add onions, eggs, mustard, thyme and 1 t salt and 3/4 t pepper, and mix with your hands until combined. Important! take off your rings that have stone settings before mixing meat with your hands!

Preheat your broiler, and lump your meat into a wide, flat loaf. Broil for about 5 minutes until well browned. Brush 2 T of the reserved 1/4 c glaze onto the loaf, then broil again for about 2 minutes, until browned further. Turn the heat down to 350 and brush the rest of the 1/4 c glaze onto the loaf. Bake 40-45 minutes (we cooked ours 42), then remove from oven and tent with foil, letting rest for 20 minutes. Serve with the rest of the glaze to your swooning wife.

Spoon roast

Hi there, yellow-y unedited photo from a film camera! Sorry you don't look as good as say, the pictures of waffles from yesterday, but you do your best. We're still learning, after all. Who cares, though, you can see how perfect and buttery looking this meat looks, and how thin the dreaded 'grey edge' is on the piece in the back (ignore the front piece, that was an end piece). I'd never heard of spoon roast until they were just on super duper sale at Whole Foods recently, so Alex and I splurged and got a big one. We split it in half, and roasted both halves in the same way a few days apart. It's so good. Very tender, super easy to cook, as long as you like rare or medium rare meat. Our pieces weren't super fatty, super flavorful, and beefy. Yum.
Spoon roast is a top sirloin roast, or top butt. Apparently it is so tender you could eat it with a spoon, which sounds about right.

Spoon roast, the easiest way possible
Another customer told me how to cook this roast in this way while I was buying ours, so I didn't invent this, just passing it on. 


1 spoon roast, make sure you know how much it weighs
salt and pepper

Preheat your oven to 500, and rub your meat all over with salt and pepper. Cook the meat for 5 minutes a pound for rare, 6-8 for medium rare. Turn off the oven, set a timer for 2 hours, and go do something else. After two hours, take your meat out, slice it, and it's done. Magic!

However! If you have a gas oven that's full of holes and spaces for hot air to get out, you may need to cook your meat for another 15-20 minutes at 400 to get it to not be as rare as you'd like.

Roasted lamb shoulder with vegetables

I saw this recipe in Saveur, I'm not totally sure what month. I'm always looking for good ways to cook cheap cuts of meat, and lamb shoulder is fairly inexpensive and there just don't seem to be a lot of recipes that call for it. This is super easy, and real good.

Roasted lamb shoulder with vegetables
From Saveur, scaled down for two and with some other changes. You can use whatever vegetables you have on hand, I would have liked some carrots in there. 


about a pound of lamb shoulder
salt and pepper
two handfuls of green beans, trimmed
a head of garlic, peeled and smashed
two onions, roughly chopped
1 pint grape tomatoes, sliced in half
2 medium zucchini, halved and sliced
two handfuls of mushrooms, sliced
2 T olive oil


Preheat oven to 325. Sprinkle salt and pepper on the lamb and set aside. Toss the vegetables with the olive oil, and spread in the pan. Snuggle the meat down into the vegetables, cover, and bake an hour. Remove the foil, and continue cooking until the lamb is tender, about another hour. Serve over polenta or rice or as is.

How to roast a turkey

Turkey! Cooking a turkey isn't that hard, you guys. It's just like a big chicken!
The most important thing when cooking a turkey is to make sure it's totally thawed out before you try to cook it. The first year I cooked a turkey I was all ready to get it into the oven when I remember it was frozen solid. Ice cubes, man. It was a disaster. I ran it under cold running water for a long, long time until it was thawed enough to cook, but let me tell you, that was a mistake I won't do again.

This is the most basic of turkey recipes. I didn't do crazy things like rub it with herby butter, brine it, or stuff it. Well, I did stuff some herbs and a lemon into it, but not stuffing. My turkey was 10 pounds. Yours might be bigger.

Turkey


1 turkey, whatever weight yours is
1/2 stick butter (4 T), melted
a handful of herbs (thyme, rosemary, sage)
1 head of garlic
1 lemon, halved
salt and pepper

Preheat your oven to 350. Remove the guts from your turkey, and stick them in the fridge for now. We'll deal with them some other time when we make gravy. Rinse the turkey, then pat dry. Stuff the herbs, garlic, and lemon into the cavity of the bird. Smear some of the butter of the turkey, sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. Tie the legs of your turkey together, and if you want, tie the wings down too. Place the turkey breast down and stick in the oven. Baste with melted butter every 30 minutes until the butter is gone, then baste with the pan juices. Flip the turkey after an hour. Cook 10-12 minutes per pound, until a thermometer reads 175-180 when stuck in the thigh. Let sit for 15 minutes or so before carving.

Steak with warm tomato and artichoke salad

Not my best photo, I know. But bear with me. This took about 15-20 minutes from start to finish, and was just what I wanted on a home alone night (while Alex is working late). Followed by a piece of this tres leches cake (really? You haven't made it yet? Do it! It keeps really well in the fridge and is oh so good), I'm in for a good evening of lying on the couch.

Steak with warm tomato and artichoke salad
The salad should maybe be called warm tomato and artichoke and gooey mozzarella and steak juice salad, but whatever. 


a piece of flank steak (mine was about 1 lb, and no I didn't eat it all)
salt and pepper
1 T olive oil or coconut oil*
a few big handfuls of cherry tomatoes (we grew ours!)
a few artichoke hearts, drained from whatever liquid they were in
a few basil leaves
a little handful of mozzarella balls, I like the little ones

Leave your steak out for a while so it comes to room temperature. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and heat up the oil in a pan over medium-high heat until shimmery but not smoking. Cook the meat for about 3-5 minutes on each side (depending on how thick your meat is). While the meat is cooking, slice the tomatoes in half and cut the artichokes into strips. When the meat is cooked to your liking, remove it from the pan to a plate and let rest while you finish the salad. If you're not sure if your meat is done, take a sharp thin knife and cut a little tiny hole in the thickest part of the meat to see if it's cooked enough for you.

While the meat rests, toss the tomatoes, artichokes, and basil into the hot pan. Let cook on medium-high for 30-45 seconds, then toss in the pan and cook without stirring for another 30-45 seconds. Pour the salad into a bowl and toss in the mozzarella balls, which will start to melt. Slice up the meat, and serve!

*I've been cooking in coconut oil because it's healthy and full of good fats, but you don't have to. However, if you are curious about coconut oil and thinking Ew won't that make my steak taste like coconut? The answer is no. I cook almost all the meat I eat in coconut oil and Alex hasn't noticed, unless he comes in the kitchen when I'm heating up the pan with the oil - when you can smell the oil. But the taste isn't there.

triple onion burgers

These are so delicious. Crispy on the outside, sweet and onion-y on the inside. Sorry I don't have anything else to say about them, but I have to go to sleep but I have been so miserably terrible about updating I figured I owed you this much. These are a cheap, delicious dinner if you toss some kale in the oven for kale chips and some sweet potato fries too.

Triple onion burgers

1 1/4 lb ground meat (beef, pork, veal, bison, your choice)

1 onion, chopped very finely

2 T dried onion (I love these ones)

1 T onion powder

1/2 t salt

a good bunch of pepper

2 T chili garlic sauce

a little less than 1 c bread crumbs*

1 egg

Preheat oven to 450. Mash everything together, and form into patties. Preheat a cast iron pan with a little bit of oil (I used coconut, healthier) and brown well on either side. Finish in the oven, about 5 minutes.

*I've been saving the ends of my Udi's bread, toasted and ground them up.

Eat some vegetables, too.

Franks and beans and bacon

I was going to do something elaborate and fancy for dinner tonight but then I got lazy. And hot dogs were on sale. And then I remembered hot dogs and beans, otherwise known as franks and beans. I threw together the Pioneer Woman's baked beans, which I'd been meaning to make for a while. Basically you doctor up a few cans of baked beans, and bake them for a long time with some bacon. I added some jumbo hotdogs and served them with a salad for a lazy, delicious, super cheap dinner.

Franks and beans and bacon

8 slices bacon

1 onion, diced

1 pepper, diced

4 cloves garlic, minced

3/4 c bbq sauce (I used bone suckin sauce, I would use the hot version next time)

1/4 c brown sugar (I might use molasses next time)

1/4 c cider vinegar

2 T mustard

2-3 cans of baked beans (Bushs are gluten free)

3 jumbo hot dogs, sliced

Cook the bacon on low for a while, until most of the grease is rendered out. Set it aside, and toss out a little of the grease. Keep some, about 2 T, and cook the onion, pepper, and garlic on medium-low to soften. Stir together bbq sauce, brown sugar, cider vinegar and mustard, then stir into the onion mixture. Add the beans, stir in the hot dogs, then lay the bacon on top. Bake at 350 for about an hour and a half.

Serve with a salad and maybe some sort of bread for dipping.

Cabbage roll soup

It's snowing again. Of course it is. We're having the snowiest winter in the history of the universe of Philadelphia, so I don't think the snow will let up/melt anytime soon. When it snows, I don't really leave the house unless it's an emergency, so I had to cook dinner with things we had in the fridge/freezer, which led to this soup. It's delicious, hearty, easy, and delicious. This soup has all the ingredients of Hungarian stuffed cabbages, which are delicious but a little time consuming. Here is a good, quick alternative.

Cabbage roll soup

3/4 pound ground beef

salt and pepper

1 T paprika

1 onion, diced

2 carrots, cut into half moons

2 stalks of celery, diced

4 cloves of garlic, minced

1 can diced tomatoes (or of tomato sauce, I didn't have any but that's what I wanted to use)

1 quart chicken or beef broth

1/2 head of cabbage, core removed and the rest sliced into thin strips

1/2 c rice

Salt and pepper the beef, add the paprika, and mush in. Brown the beef in a small amount of olive oil, then remove to a bowl. Cook the onion, carrots, celery and garlic until starting to soften, then add the tomatoes, broth, and cabbage. Add the beef back in, and enough water to cover. Cook 15 minutes, then add the rice. Cook another 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the rice is done and the cabbage is cooked to your liking. Add salt and pepper if necessary. Serves 4.

Buffalo chicken soup

It's soup season. Have you noticed? We've got a ton of snow. Like, a TON. Now is the right time to eat a hot, spicy, creamy soup. This is it.

Buffalo chicken soup

1 lb chicken thighs, cut into cubes

2 T rice flour

salt and pepper

1 T butter

1 onion

2 carrots

2 stalks of celery

4 c chicken broth

1/2 to 1 c hot wing sauce (Franks brand is gf)

1 c gf noodles (I used Tinkyada fusilli)

3/4 c blue cheese, crumbled

Dredge the chicken cubes in rice flour, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Melt the butter in an appropriate soup making pot, and brown the chicken on all sides. Once browned, remove the chicken from the pot and stir in the vegetables. Cook the vegetables 15 minute over medium-low heat until softened. Add the chicken and any juices that have oozed out, then stir in the chicken broth, hot wing sauce and noodles. Watch out, the soup will be much spicier once it cooks for a few minutes than it will when you start! Bring to a simmer and cook about fifteen minutes, until noodles are tender. Stir in the blue cheese, and serve with extra blue cheese just in case.

Delicious clementine wings

I started to write about these, then I remembered I posted about wings a while ago, and then I realized that this recipe is almost the same as that one. Oops. The good news is I took new pictures and am reposting, with some modifications. These are great, easy, and you should make them if you're having some sort of Superbowl party. If not, take advantage of the fact that wings should be on sale because of the Superbowl.

Delicious clementine wings

Otherwise known as sticky, delicious, sweet, spicy, addicting wings.

1 1/2 lb chicken wings, cut apart at the joint

1 T rice flour

salt and pepper

2 T oil

2 cloves garlic, smashed/minced

2 T soy sauce

2 T hoisin sauce (Dynasty brand is gf)

4 T honey

1 T sesame oil

a good pinch of chili flakes

a squirt of chili sauce

juice of one clementine

Preheat the oven to 450. Dredge the chicken wings in the flour and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Heat the oil until it shimmers, and brown the wings on all sides. While the wings are browning, combine the remaining ingredients in a microwave-safe bowl. Heat 30 seconds to a minute and stir well. Dump the browned chicken wings in the bowl with the sauce, turn to coat, and spread them out in a glass dish. Bake 15 minutes, flip, then bake another 10-15, until the sauce is thick and sticky and the wings are cooked through. Serve over rice.

blue cheese sauce/steak

I'm home alone a lot this week because Alex has been working nights, until late.

I cooked myself fancy dinner.

Blue cheese. There's been a lot of talk about whether blue cheese is gluten free or not. I've been reading more and more articles about how blue cheese is gluten free, but if you're not sure go with one of the brands who state that their cheese is gluten free, like Boar's Head or Rosenborg.

Steak & blue cheese onion mushroom sauce

1 steak

2 T butter

a drizzle of olive oil

1 onion, sliced

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 c sliced mushrooms

salt and pepper

1/2 c cream

1/4 c crumbled blue cheese

Heat half the butter over high heat, add a drizzle of olive oil, and salt and pepper both sides of your steak. Sear the steak on one side until nice and crispy and brown, then flip and sear on the other side. Don't cook too long, you don't want to overcook your steak! Remove from the pan and let rest on your plate.

Melt the rest of the butter in the pan you cooked the steak in. Slowly cook the onions and garlic, until softened and starting to caramelize. Push the onions to the side and dump in the mushrooms. Cook until starting to brown, then pour in the cream. Cook until it starts to bubble, then stir in the blue cheese. Pour over the steak, and eat!

Chicken and dumplings from Cook's Illustrated

I get free magazines from work. It's pretty cool, I love magazines. It takes me forever to get through them all, though. I just finished last months Cook's Illustrated and decided to make this for dinner, and Alex was soooo happy. He loves soups and I love dumplings, we're a good pair.

Chicken and Dumplings

From Cook's Illustrated, kind of.

6 bone-in, skin on chicken thighs

salt and pepper

2 t olive oil

2 small onions, diced

3 carrots, peeled and chopped

3 ribs celery, chopped

1/2 bulb fennel, chopped

3-4 cloves garlic, smashed and chopped

1 c quartered mushrooms

1/2 c white wine

1 t thyme

6 c chicken broth

1 pound chicken wings

Sprinkle the chicken thighs with the salt and pepper. Heat up the oil in a Dutch oven until it shimmers, then sear the chicken on both sides to brown. Remove the chicken, pour out all but a tablespoon of the oil, and stir in all the veggies. Cook slowly until they start to caramelize, then stir in the wine and thyme, scraping the brown bits off the bottom. Add the thighs back to the pan, along with the broth and chicken wings. Cover and simmer 45-55 minutes, until the chicken is almost falling off the bones. Remove the meat from the pan and let cool. Skim the fat off the top, and shred the chicken back into the pot. Bring to a slow simmer while you make the dumplings.

Dumplings:

2 c rice flour mix

1/2 t baking soda

1/4 t xanthan gum

1 t sugar

1 t salt

3/4 c buttermilk (or 1/2 c milk and 1/4 c sour cream or yogurt)

4 T butter, melted and cooled

1 egg white

Whisk the dry ingredients together. Stir the butter into the buttermilk, then stir in the egg white. Pour into the flour mixture, and stir slowly until just incorporated. Don't over mix! Drop by large teaspoonfuls into the simmering broth. Cover with a dish towel and then a lid, and cook for about 15 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean and the dumplings have doubled in size.

Daring Cooks! Vietnamese Pho

Oops! Better late than never. This month we made pho, which I love. Pho is a Vietnamese dish of broth with rice noodles and meat, and you get to customize it to your taste. Served alongside is usually a plate of sprouts, lime, chilis, basil, and maybe a few other things. I added scallions, cilantro, and onion as well.

The October 2009 Daring Cooks' challenge was brought to us by Jaden of the blog Steamy Kitchen. The recipes are from her new cookbook, The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook.

Vietnamese Pho

Green means my addition

For the broth:

2 T whole coriander

4 whole cloves

2 whole star anise

2 cardamom pods

1 T fennel seeds

8 c chicken broth

1/2 onion

1 3-inch hunk of ginger, peeled and chopped

1-2 T sugar

1-2 T fish sauce

Heat a pan over high heat. Add the spices and toast, shaking the pan so the spices don't burn. When you can start to smell them, they're done. Remove them from the pan, then combine all the ingredients (including the spices) in a pot and cook for 20-30 minutes. Strain the broth, then keep it on a low simmer while you get everything else ready.

For the soup/assembly:

1 lb rice stick noodles

1/2 lb thinly sliced beef

2 c bean sprouts

a handful fresh cilantro

a handful Thai basil

1/2 shaved red onion

1/2 lime, cut into wedges

sliced fresh chilis

3 sliced scallions

Cook the noodles according to your package directions.

Arrange the bean sprouts, cilantro, basil, onion, lime, chilis and scallions on a plate. Divide the noodles between bowls, top with sliced meat, then pour the hot broth over. The broth will help cook the beef. Add whatever additions you'd like, and enjoy!

We were supposed to make a dessert wonton, but I didn't have time and also, us gluten-free people can't use wonton wrappers. I wasn't up to that challenge today.

Pomegranate pulled chicken

At work the demo team was sampling pulled pork the other day, and it smelled sooooo good. The recipe they used had Worcestershire sauce (questionable) and soy sauce (gluten). I had all the ingredients at home to make it, so I did. I changed a few things, using chicken instead of pork, adding a pinch of pepper flakes, and adding an apple.

Pomegranate pulled chicken

From a Wholefoods recipe

2/3 c pomegranate molasses

1 small can of tomato sauce

1 T gf soy sauce

1 T Worcestershire sauce

a big pinch of chili flakes

3/4 c sliced onion

5 cloves garlic, sliced

1 apple, peeled and cubed

3 pounds chicken thighs, skin removed

Preheat the oven to 350. Mix together the pomegranate molasses, tomato sauce, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce and chili flakes in a casserole dish. Add onion, garlic, apple and chicken. Stir to combine. Cover the dish and bake for about 2 hours, until the chicken is falling off the bone.

Pull the chicken out of the sauce and put in a bowl, then stick the bowl in the fridge until the chicken is cooled enough to shred. Shred back into the sauce, discarding any bones, and then reheat the saucy chicken on the stove top until heated through.

Serve over rice, on a sandwich, or however you want.

Peanut chicken

Next up in the installment of "I'm too tired to do much besides throw together a quick dinner" is peanut chicken. I wanted something that combined chicken satay and it's delicious peanut sauce, but that didn't involve grilling (because I'm too lazy to heat up the grill) or the oven. I cubed up the chicken and cooked it in some peanut sauce, and tossed in some spinach and served it over rice.
Peanut chicken

1 small onion, diced

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 T oil

1 lb chicken thighs, cut off the bone and into cubes

1/2 c peanut butter (I used chunky)

1 T lemon juice

3 T soy sauce

2 T brown sugar

1 t chili flakes

1/2 c water

1 T fish sauce

1 c chopped frozen spinach, thawed and drained well

Heat the oil in a medium sized pan, then add the onions and garlic. Cook until softened, then push to the side and brown the chicken. Stir together everything except the spinach in a small bowl, and then pour over the chicken mixture and cook for 10 minutes or so, until the chicken is cooked through. Stir in the spinach and cook another minute or two until it's cooked through.

Serve over rice.