A Gracie made meal!
Gracie says:
The above picture is not Gracie approved, not Gracie approved at all. I mean, I think this was taken after Mommy hogged all the broth and before I could dive in to rearrange the carrots, so it looks awful. At least Isaac got to plate his food- mine’s all….pot-y. Au natural. Meh.
Anywhoo. Isaac wants me to try to give a general recipe idea, which is one of those things that if you were the same person making the same thing again, you’d definitely tweak it, and I think Isakey wants me to say how I made this one for reference sakes, but I want to just put down an edited one.
Grrr. Compromise.
So Daddy brought home leg quarters, and Isakey likes being carnivorous, so I hacked apart 2 (into thigh-drumstick pairs) and put them skin side down into a hot frying pan- My “America’s best test kitchen” book said to use the rendered fat to saute the veggies before simmering them (like pot roast, it brings out flavors for some scientificy reason that I’m too tired to figure out right now.) So I rendered out a buttload of fat, got the skin golden brown (< which should have been more browned) and then put them into a pot of (should have been simmering or boiling, but I forgot to pre-simmer/boil the water, so it wasn’t) one can of low sodium chicken broth, a bouillion cube, and 6 cans of water. Ish. Just… mehhhhh I don’t like measurements for soup. I mean, I measured that because I was figuring that one and a half cans of water was a decent bowl of soup, but- eyeball it. I used our pressure cooker, which is like a large, heavy duty stock pot, and I filled it a little less than 3/4ths of the way. so it filled to about 3/4ths of the way when I put in the chicken and got to prepping the veggies. This time I used an onion, 3 1/2 carrots (< the half was a scraggly little one), 3 stalks of celery and about…6 cloves of garlic? But they were small and old and it takes like- 3 cloves of our garlic to equal one decent one. Threw in the garlic into a little of the hot chicken fat and toasted that a little bit, then 1/3rd of the total veggie count (didn’t want the veggies to go flying when I pushed them around in our frying pan), a third, and the final third until they were all done (every time I was done with a third I poured them and the fat into the pot) and once that was all done, a decent amount of fatty goodness (blegh) had collected at the top, so I skimmed off as much of that as I could. Due note that once the water/stock/bouillon is at a boil, it must be brought down to a simmer. That’s how you avoid tough meat and overcooked veggies kiddos. I added a ton of spices- aka. Thyme leaves, ground oregano, rosemary, italian spices, pepper, salt (lots), garlic powder, ginger powder, etc, but only because i was throwing a fit because I couldn’t find the goshdarned basil. And because I ran out of oregano. And because I just wanted to. So I threw my crazy herb mixture in and went and putzed for a bit. Came back when the chicken seemed about done and fished them out with tongs. Ripped the chicken off the bone with the tongs. (Too hot to handle, but some were obviously not cooked enough yet, so I popped those back into the pot to finish cooking.) and put them in a bowl to cool for a second before I chopped/shredded the bigger pieces. (SHREDDED PIECES OF CHICKEN > CUBED CHICKEN. Fact.)
Eventually fished out the pieces that were raw earlier, same deal. Went and putzed again. Came back, tried it, seemed too bland at first so I put in more salt (< mistake, never taste test when your food is hot) then dumped in a bag of freakishly awesome amish egg noodles.
The kind that’s in a bag with a twisty tie, like the speciality but not really specialty kind. Cooked those for about 15 minutes, so that was good enough for me, Daddy and Isaac to eat, but too tough for Mommy.
AHHHHH I FORGOT THE PARSLEY AHHHHHHH.
Next time.
SO SLEEPY.