Much to do about chicken

 

Grandma's Chicken

We eat a lot of chicken casseroles at our house. The resident grandchild is not all that fond of beef, although his father is. I’ve discovered there are almost as many theories on how to cook chicken for use in a casserole as there are chicken casserole recipes. Since I’ve been in the cottage without an oven or a microwave, I’ve been poaching chicken and been unhappy about it—the meat was tough.

On the internet I discovered that perhaps I was letting the chicken boil too hard. I found directions that called for bringing the water just to a soft boil, turning off the heat and covering the pan and leaving the chicken for I think it was three minutes. Result? Underdone chicken.

So we went to rotisserie chicken. Jordan would bring it warm from the store, and I’d stick it in the fridge. Eventually, when forced to it, I’d de-bone it, struggling to get the as much meat as possible in usable chunks. Well, that was the second thing I’d done wrong. Jordan told me the meat slides right off the bone of you do it when it’s still hot. So from now on, she debones the chickens. Still, the rotisserie meat has a flavor and texture all its own—it isn’t like freshly cooked chicken.

But recently my friend Ann Kane suggested she has found a way better than poaching. It sort of resembles what I used to do when I had an oven—I put chicken breasts in a roasting pan, covered them liberally with salt and pepper, and laid a few onion rings over them. Covered the pan with foil and baked the meat for about half an hour.

Ann’s method is to skin the breasts and lay them in the pan. Then make a mixture of 1 Tbsp. lemon juice and ½ tsp. salt. Brush this on the meat, cover with foil, and bake 30 minutes at 400^o. I have not tried this yet—we had rotisserie chicken in the freezer, but it sounds good to me. When I told Christian about it, he asked if the cooked meat would taste of lemon, pointing out you might not want lemon-flavored chicken in every recipe. Somehow, I’m sure that’s not a problem. To me, lemon is good on almost anything.

Here’s a recipe we had the other night. Absolutely delicious—I ate two helpings, thank you very much.

Grandma’s Chicken

3 c. cooked chicken, cubed

2 cans cream of mushroom soup

2 c. shredded sharp cheddar cheese

3 c. finely crushed Ritz crackers

           Preheat over to 350^o

           Lightly grease a 9x13 pan. Arrange chicken in the bottom. Spoon soup evenly over the chicken and top with shredded cheese. Sprinkle cracker crumbs evenly over the cheese.

Bake 20-30 minutes until mixture is bubbly and cracker crumbs are lightly browned.

Leftovers are a problem. If you store them in an icebox dish, the crumbs get mixed in and become soggy. If stored in the original pan and baked again in the oven so crumbs would crisp up again, it might make good leftovers.

It would be easy to halve this in a smaller baking dish.