Chicken, Broccoli and Rice Foil Packs--It's What's For Dinner!

Since I have been home the past two glorious days and I will be home for yet another one thanks to my 12 hour shift on Sunday, I have been cooking supper.  Last night, I made Nikki's Slow Cooker Salsa Chicken from the Chef in Training blog.  Let me tell you, I absolutely LOVE this blog.  And my chicken turned out great.  Hubs and I (just us two) ate a whole pack of chicken, with lettuce, cheese, and tortilla chips, and I was down a pound from the day before!  I highly reccomend it.

Tonight though, I made up my own recipe.  Well, I adapted two Kraft recipes it until they became my own recipe.  I present to you Foil Pack Chicken, Broccoli and Rice!  At the bottom I have included abbreviated directions for easy printing.  But I can't promise the abbreviated directions will be as clear as the full out version.

    

Prep Time:  about 30 min

Cook Time:  35-45 min

Total:  1 hour and 5-10 min

You will need:

1 package Tyson Trimmed and Ready Thin Sliced Chicken Breasts

1 bag frozen broccoli

1 box Uncle Ben's Fast and Natural Brown Rice

2 teaspoons or 2 cubes chicken bullion

2 cups water

1 can 98% fat free cream of mushroom soup

2 cups grated sharp cheddar cheese

The same number of rather large sheets of Heavy Duty Aluminum Foil (here in the South we still call it Tin Foil) as you have chicken breasts (I happened to have 5 in my pack)

A few notes on ingredients: 

~The Tyson Thin Sliced chicken is a little more expensive (unless it's on sale), but to me is totally worth it.  I know I claim to be a good cook, but I don't like bones and I don't like trimming skin and fat.  I have better things to do with my time.  So it's totally worth it to me.  It also cooks quicker (great for grilling) and when it is on sale, you just buy extra and throw it in the freezer just like you bought it. 

~You gotta use Uncle Ben's rice.  I've tried other brands, and Uncle Ben's is the best.  Dry rice keeps, so look for it when it's on sale and Uncle Ben's always emails me pretty good coupons (like a whole dollar off).

~Everything else, go Laura Lynn, that is if you live near an Ingles.  Often, it's cheaper to get Laura Lynn than it is national brands on sale.  And almost everything is just as good as the national brand (rice, instant oatmeal and the frozen veggies you cook in the bag are an exception). 

See, lot's of Laura Lynn

To start with, you'll want to boil your water and dissolve the bullion in it.  Doesn't take much, just enough to dissolve the bullion.  When it's dissolved, pour the put the dry rice in a medium sized bowl and then pour the newly made broth over it.  Let this sit a minute so the rice can absorb some water.  You may also want to preheat your oven here to 400 degrees F.  I forgot this step and just put it in a cold oven and it turned out fine, but whatever floats your boat.  If you're cooking with a convection oven, you may want to make sure that there are only two racks with ample space between because I had to use two cookie sheets.

Now onto a concept called mis en place.  As I learned from a teacher who studied at Le Cordon Bleu in France, this means, "everything in place."  This is the quickest way to put these packets together.  Mis en place is not quite as essential here as it would be as if you were battering and frying the chicken, but it makes life a whole lot easier.  To have enough room, I moved from the kitched to the adjoining dining room.

There are my sheets of tin foil, my broccoli, cheese, opened mushroom soup with a spoon and my rice with a spoon.  My cookie sheet is in the middle and I have the tin foil molded into little bowls.  The rice mixture is runny, you want tin foil bowls.  Now what's missing?  Oh yeah, the chicken.  The chicken needs to keep it's slimy self somwhere that can be disinfected.  In this case, it's on a dinner plate in the sink.  Raw chicken is notorious for carrying Salmonella, a nasty bacterial species that causes...uh...digestive distress.  That's why the waitress will never ask you if you want your chicken cooked rare.  Always, ALWAYS disinfect any surface that the raw chicken comes in contact with and try to touch as few things as possible after touching raw chicken.  Use your elbow to pump soap and such as that.  I'm not a germ-o-phobe, but Salmonella is one thing I don't play around with.

Ok, I'm off my soapbox.

Now, back to the food.  You may want to spray each sheet of tin foil with Pam, or you could use this little baby.

This is my Misto.  A refillable olive oil sprayer.  It's aerosol free.  Just pour in the oil, pump it up, and spray.  Now of course it doesn't spray as evenly and as long as an aerosol can, but considering you know exactly what you are spraying (have you ever wondered what Pam really is?  I don't know.) and there are no Chloro fluoro carbons (CFCs) eating a hole in the ozone layer. 
Ok, after you have sprayed the tin foil, divide the rice AND water in the rice among the 5 sheets of tin foil.  There's no exact science to this, just guess at it.  Then put about 1 small spoonful of mushroom soup on top of this.  You'll use about half the can of soup for all five packs.  After that, go get your chicken.  Put one chicken breast on each rice pile.  Now go put the plate the chicken was on in the sink and wash your hands.  Then spray the plate and sink down with Clorox, or whatever you use to disinfect.  Let that sit a while.  It'll be ok.  Go back to your packets and plop a spoonful of mushroom soup on top of the chicken.  Spread it around if you like, it'll make the broccoli and cheese stick better.  But don't lick the spoon when you're done!  Throw that in the sink too!  Remember, raw chicken juice.  Now sprinkle a handful of broccoli on top of the chicken and rice and soup.  It uses about the whole bag.  And then definitley sprinkle the whole bag (2 cups) of cheese on top of that.  Here's what you'll have:

Mmmm, now doesn't that look good?  No, not really right now.  Here comes the magic.  Very carefully fold up two sides of the foil and fold them over together.  I say carefully because you don't want rice juice spilling everywhere.  Then carefully fold up the sides.  Don't wrap it up too tight, make sure there's enough room for steam to circulate.  Then place the pack on the cookie sheet.  When you're done, your cookie sheet will look like this:

So neat and tidy!  Now, as I said before if you have a convection oven you can cook these at the same time, if not, cook them in batches or get a bigger cookie sheet.  I suppose you could just place them directly on the racks, but it makes getting them out harder. 

Let these babies cook for 35 to 45 minutes, until the chicken is done.  If you use bigger pieces of chicken, cook them longer.  These took about 45 minutes and weren't over done. 

When they are done, pull them out and serve them directly on dinner plates.  Don't unwrap them before serving.  Let your...ahem...patrons...carefully unwrap them.  They are full of hot steam that will burn your fingers if you aren't careful.  I guess if you have little ones, you should unwrap theirs for them, but leave it in the tin foil.  That's part of the fun of eating them.  Then when you're done, ball up the tin foil and chunk in the trash can basket ball style.  No scraping dishes or plates!  

Hubs ate two.  They are really more food that what each looks like.  It went down pretty easy.  With a little sweet tea of course!     

Printer Friendly (copy and paste into your word processing software):

Prep Time:  about 30 min

Cook Time:  35-45 min

Total:  1 hour and 5-10 min

You will need:

1 package Tyson Trimmed and Ready Thin Sliced Chicken Breasts

1 bag frozen broccoli

1 box Uncle Ben's Fast and Natural Brown Rice

2 teaspoons or 2 cubes chicken bullion

2 cups water

1 can 98% fat free cream of mushroom soup

2 cups grated sharp cheddar cheese

The same number of rather large sheets of Heavy Duty Aluminum Foil (here in the South we still call it Tin Foil) as you have chicken breasts (I happened to have 5 in my pack)

Preheat oven to 400 F

Boil water and dissolve bullion in water

Pour boiling water over dried rice in medium sized bowl

Spray tin foil sheets with Pam or oil

Divide rice among tin foil sheets

Put 1 spoonful of mushroom soup on top of rice

Put 1 chicken breast on top of mushroom soup

Put 1 more spoonful of mushroom soup on top of chicken

Put a handful of broccoli on top of mushroom soup

Divide 2 c. cheese among each packet.

Fold up each packet and bake at 400 F for 35-45 minutes. 

Enjoy your cheesy chickeny goodness!

Blueberry Fro-Yo

I finally have time to post the long awaited Blueberry Fro-Yo (or Frozen Yogurt) recipe!  I've had so many other rather time sensitive things to blog about, and I have so much more for the next few days that I was really starting to wonder when this would happen.  And I also have lots of pictures.  I love picture recipes.  So without further ado, here it is.

Blueberry Fro-Yo

Makes about 1 quart of frozen yogurt

You will need:

1 pint of fresh blueberries

                                                                                   

1-500g container of Greek Yogurt (I used fat free and the 500g can vary a bit) 

2/3 cup of sugar

And that is it!

Directions:

Wash your blueberries and place them in a food processor.  Chop them up to the consistency that you want.  I don't like big chunks, so I pureed them pretty fine.

Then add the sugar to the food processor and chop some more until the sugar is well incorporated.  It should start to form a syrup.  Let that mixture sit in the food processor while you dump the Greek yogurt into a medium mixing bowl.  Next pour the blueberry mixture into the bowl with the yogurt and mix well.  Greek yogurt is about the same consistency as sour cream, so make sure to scrape the bottom of the bowl while mixing.  I know to do this from experience.  After mixing, it should look like this:

At this point you can taste to see if you have enough sugar.  I find the 2/3 cup works fine, but the yogurt is pretty tart and some people may want a bit more sugar.  Now dump this into your ice cream/frozen yogur/sorbet churn.  Hubs bought this new toy for just such an occasion:

It's a Cuisinart 2 quart frozen dessert maker.  We got it at Bed, Bath and Beyond.  I think it's about $80, but we used on of their trusty 20% off coupons.  No ice or salt required.  You just stick the bowl of the churn in a big freezer bag, then put it in the freezer.  The bowl turns as opposed to the paddles turning to churn the yogurt.  The bowl goes in the base, then the paddles go in the bowl, then the lid goes on top.  Just turn the knob on the front and it starts churning.  It's really quiet too.  Anyway, here's what the mixture looks like before it's frozen:

Then when it's frozen, the yogurt just sticks to the paddles and doesn't burn a motor up.  Like this:

Not the best picture, I know, but this was done at about midnight, so forgive me.  Just remove the lid and the paddles and scoop out your goodness!  I will recommend not using a metal spoon to scrape the goodness off the sides of the churn.  We accidentally scratched it a bit trying to do this.  And it takes a while for the churn to thaw and for the yogurt to melt away, so we used an ordinary plastic spoon (the kind you eat with at cookouts and family reunions) to get it off.  Very carefully, might I add.  Hubs sat on the couch with the churn and a pot holder (because the churn is so cold) practically licking the bowl.  He can do away with a whole quart in one sitting.

Beanie Burgers?

So in my long dreamer post, I think I forgot to mention that I love cooking.  I include cooking in the list of things that I really think I'm good at.  I don't get to do this much since I'm on second shift.  I could cook for lunch and refrigerate leftovers, but then Dave just pulls it out of the refrigerator and eats it cold.  This does not do justice to my art.  So I don't usually do it.  I will however make Crock Pot meals.  I have become a Crock Pot Princess. 

But Dave has been on a diet.  He won't eat simple carbs.  So no bread, no noodles, no potatoes.  This limits me.  My maiden name is Patterson, we don't eat unless we have bread and/or potatoes.  So in an effort to make something besides roast beef with carrots and onions, I decided to make chili.

But I don't like my Mama's chili.  It's one of the few things that my Mama makes that I don't like.  But I do love her baked beans.  Boy, do I love her baked beans.  But baked beans have brown sugar, and bacon.  

So...I took the best of both worlds and made Beanie Burger (instead of Beanie Weenie) Chili

You will need:

About 1 lb ground beef

1 good sized Vidalia onion chopped finely (I did this in a food processor)

About 2 tblspns olive oil (for cooking the onion in)

1 big can of Pork 'N' Beans (don't drain, put all the goodness in there)

1 regular sized can kidney beans (drained)

1 regular sized can lima beans (drained)

1 regular sized can big white butter beans (drained)

1 can Rotel tomatoes and green chiles (I only put 1 can for the first go around, I would really like it spicier, so next time I'll put 2)

1 can diced tomatoes for chili (didn't know they made this, but here it is)

About 1/4 cup honey mustard (this gave it some sweet without adding straight sugar)

About 3/4 to 1 cup ketchup (I just added and tasted, if you want it tangier, add more, milder, add less)

Directions:

Brown ground beef like you would for spaghetti or tacos or whatever until it is done.  While this is going on, add all the beans, Rotel and chili seasoned 'maters to the Crock Pot and mix well.  When the ground beef is done, drain in a colander, but don't scrape all the drippings out of the pan.  Put the ground beef in the Crock Pot with the beans.  Throw the chopped onion in the pan with the drippings and add the olive oil.  Sautee the onion until it's mostly clear, then throw that in the Crock Pot too.  Then add your honey mustard and ketchup and mix it all together.  I'll admit, at this point, it doesn't look like the best tasting thing on the planet.  Don't worry, just put the lid on the Crock Pot and turn on low for about 6 hours.  This time can vary since everything in there is already fully cooked, but, of course, the longer you cook it, the better it tastes.  Leftovers can be refrigerated and Dave said it was even better the next day.

A word of warning though.  Consider the vast amout of fiber loaded beans in there.  Don't eat half the Crock Pot full in one night!  It won't end well...