Oven Fried Chicken

Recently I’ve been trying to reduce our weekly grocery bill while finding ways to continue making tasty and healthy meals. My goal is to get our bill down to $60/week, but let me tell you folks it’s not so easy in NYC. Especially since I love, love, love shopping at the fancy grocery store. For some ridiculous reason it’s just relaxing to me… there are free samples of fancy cheese and the milk comes in pretty glass bottles. Speaking of which, big PSA for any readers in the NY metro area; I just found out that you can get $1.50 back for returning your Ronnybrook glass bottles to the grocery store. So there you have it, I’ve officially found an excuse to keep on buying fancy milk and sampling expensive cheese. What?! I get money back, it’s cost cutting!

Photo via: Ronnybrook Dairy

But back to the issue at hand, last week I swapped my usual boneless skinless chicken breasts for more budget friendly skin-on chicken legs. Originally I was going to make regular baked chicken, but I was feeling kind of meh about that as a dinner option so I decided to go for some oven fried chicken instead.

I’m not sure that this really classifies as “healthy” per se, but considering that it isn’t fried in three inches of oil, I’m okay with dubbing it a healthy alternative. However, I will caution you that if you are craving traditional fried chicken with a thick crust, this probably won’t do it for you but it is delicious and makes the house smell A-MA-ZING! Also it goes great with a little bourbon spiked iced tea…..go on with your bad self, I won’t tell J

Oven Fried Chicken

2 cups buttermilk
2 tsp  hot sauce
3 tbsp shortening
1 1/2 pounds chicken drumsticks
2/3 cup Bisquick
1 1/2 tsp poultry seasoning
1 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
cooking spray

1. Place chicken, buttermilk and hot sauce in a large bowl and marinate in the fridge for at least 2 hours.

2. Put the shortening in a glass baking dish, place the dish in the oven and preheat to 425 degrees.

3. Mix together the Bisquick, poultry seasoning, cayenne pepper, salt & pepper. Dredge the chicken in the Bisquick mixture.

4. Place the chicken skin side down in the melted shortening coated baking dish, spritz with cooking spray and bake for 30 minutes. Flip chicken, spritz with cooking spray and bake for another 30 minutes or until chicken juices run clear. Be sure to let the chicken rest for at least ten minutes so that the skin adheres to the meat.

*note: I didn't have any actual buttermilk at the time so I did the milk & lemon juice trick (1 tbsp lemon juice per cup of milk will give you buttermilk)

**second note: I live in Brooklyn and therefore everything takes forever to cook in my oven. If you have an oven that hasn't been around since the mid 70s, be sure to watch your chicken carefully.

***third note: lots of notes on this one, but a note about Bisquick. I happen to really like the slightly sweet, waffley taste that the Bisquick gives the chicken, but if this isn't your thing and you're more of a purest, feel free to substitute regular old flour.

Hey look! An actual picture of the finished product:

Just um, don’t mind the terrible lighting in our kitchen…..or the huge mayo finger smear in the tomato bowl.

Bourbon Maple Braised Sausage & Pierogies

A few days ago I was really in a cooking mood.  It’s been a stressful few weeks and I was feeling really excited to get in the kitchen and whip up something delicious.  Only one hitch in the plan though….I was too lazy to go to the grocery store.  So instead, I decided to challenge myself to come up with something new and tasty by “shopping” in my kitchen.  Think of it as embracing the freegan lifestyle, but without the part that involves dumpster diving for expired hot dogs.

photo via Bloomberg Business Week

At any rate, I scrounged around for a while and eventually found a package of chicken sausage and frozen pierogies. Score! I love pierogies and had completely forgotten about them….until now.  The resulting dinner was delicious and gave me warm, fuzzy memories of my Pittsburgh days (Hail to Pitt!).

Now I’m feeling really proud of myself for making a new recipe and saving money by using forgotten freezer food.  What do you say readers? Have you ever shopped in your own kitchen for dinner? How did it turn out?

Bourbon Maple Braised Sausage & Pierogies

1 12 oz package chicken and apple sausage, sliced

1 16 oz package pierogies

1 onion, sliced

1/4 cup bourbon

1 tbsp maple syrup

1 14.5 oz. can chicken broth

1 tbsp olive oil

1. Cook pierogies according to package directions.
2. Heat olive oil in a frying pan and saute sausage and onions in a frying pan until the onions soften and the sausage browns (about 2-3 minutes).
3. Turn off heat and add the bourbon to the pan to deglaze. Turn on the heat and cook off the alcohol. Add the maple syrup and chicken broth to the pan and simmer until reduced by half (about 10 minutes).
4. Add the pierogies to the pan and heat through.

Katie's Home-style Chicken and Egg Noodles

Happy Easter!  I hope everyone had a nice, relaxing day. I know I’ve been enjoying a full day of gorging myself on Peeps and Honeybaked Ham. I’m also super excited that the weather has been a little more reasonable recently.  Feels like it's been a long haul this year and I’m definitely ready to start having picnics in the park and dust off the old grill. Or maybe I’m just excited that I can finally walk to the subway without freezing off my little rear?!

Before I get ahead of myself though, I realized today that I forgot to share this recipe for Home-style Chicken and Egg Noodles…..oops.  This hearty soup is super comfort food, which was a huge hit in our household and is now part of the regular dinner rotation.  Seriously, run don’t walk to your kitchen and make it immediately, I promise you won’t be sorry!

Katie’s Home-style Chicken and Egg Noodles

2 skinless, bone-in chicken breasts

4 skinless, bone-in chicken thighs

2 14.5 oz. cans low fat chicken broth

43.5 oz water (3 chicken broth cans full)

1 chopped onion

2 chopped carrots

1 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp poultry seasoning

1 tbsp garlic powder

1 10.75 oz can cream of mushroom soup

8 oz home-style egg noodles

Salt & pepper to taste

1. Place first 9 ingredients (through garlic powder) in a dutch oven on the stove.  Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes.
2. Carefully remove the chicken from the pot and pull meat from the bones.  Put the pulled chicken back in the pot and stir in the cream of mushroom soup. Add salt and pepper to taste.
3. Add the egg noodles and cook according to package directions.

Just in case you didn't fully enjoy today's balmy weather, a little flashback below via Gothamist.