Chili's Type Southwestern Eggrolls

You love them at Chili's...and you can make them at home!

So here's what you'll need:

• 1 Skinless Boneless Chicken Breast, cooked and shredded. 
• 2 tablespoons Minced Green Onion
• 1/3 cup MexiCorn (You know the stuff!)
• 1/4 cup Black Beans, rinsed and drained. 
• 2 tablespoons chopped spinach. 
• 2 tablespoons diced Jalapeno Peppers
• 1/2 tablespoon parsley
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
• 1/3 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup shredded Monterey Jack (or any shredded Taco cheese)
• 5 (6 inch) flour Tortillas
• Oil for Frying

Okay, I'm telling you ahead of time that you have to put these things in the freezer for four hours before you fry them. Don't plan on making this and then immediately eating them. Plan ahead! Four hours ahead. At least. I make double the recipe above when I make this, since you can freeze them and it seems silly to waste half a can of corn and beans.

For starters, we're gonna cook and shred some chicken. For you newbs, to cook chicken breast, simply rinse it off, wrap it in some foil, place it in a baking dish and stick it in the oven at 350 for 50 minutes. Then slice the crap out of it.

(Playing Dexter with Chicken)

Next, we're going to chop up some tasty green onions. Green onions are bought in the produce section of your story and they come in a nice, cheap little bundle that looks like this.

(This is a great recipe for people who like to play with knives!)

Heat a tablespoon of oil in a pan over medium heat and toss these green onions on in there. Cook /stir them for a few minutes until they are soft. Then add the chicken, corn, black beans, spinach, jalapeno peppers, parsley, cumin, chili powder and salt. (aka 'everything else') Cook and stir 5 minutes until well blended and tender.

(Starting to look very Southwesterny!)

Remove from heat and stir in the Monterey Jack cheese until it melts. I used some generic 'Taco Cheese' because that's what Kroger carries and I was too lazy to go anywhere else. Honestly, as long as the words "Monterey Jack" are somewhere on the package, you're good to go! 

  

The Cheeese...eet eeez melting!

Wrap your tortillas in a clean, lightly moist cloth and stick them in the microwave on high for 1 minute, or until hot and pliable. (There can't be more than like 10 people in the world who don't exclusively use 'high" on their microwave. I'll bet 95% of you don't even know how to change that setting.) 

Tortillas...in a microwave.

(This picture wasn't really necessary, but look how clean the inside of my microwave is!) 

Put about two spoonfuls of mixture onto each tortilla. Like so:

To make your eggroll, fold in the sides of the tortilla in, fold the top over the filling and squeeze it gently a second. The tortilla is soft, it will conform to the shape of your filling. Then tuck the sides in again just a bit and roll it all the way. Squeeze it gently again. It's a bit like play-doh. You'll feel it mold. (Secure with toothpicks if you feel you need to) Put the eggrolls in a baking dish, cover it with plastic, and stick it in the freezer for at least four hours. (This is so they don't fall apart when you fry them.) 

Okay..now it's time to fry these suckers. The key to frying these in a pan is this: You don't want the heat so high that the outside gets too hard and brown before the inside cooks....so you want barely med high heat and watch your eggrolls carefully.  (Put them in carefully, don't splash hot oil on yourself!!!) (Start with the fold side down) Deep fry them for about ten minutes or until golden brown.

Drain on a paper towel before serving, and serve with a tasty ranch dressing!! :) 

Delicious! 

(*Bonus picture : My Noodles, helping me cook.)

Chicken Cordon Bleu for Newbs!

One of the things I love about doing a cooking blog is it forces you to try new and interesting recipes. Chicken Cordon Bleu is one of those things I always thought of as too hard to do, so I never even attempted it. Something about having to roll up ingredients with toothpicks...and hope it will A. Hold its shape and B. Cook all the way through...just seemed impossible given my limited skill set...but all of a sudden, today, I woke up and decided I was gonna try and make this.

*Derpy Edit -- I should probably give you a list of ingredients:

•  6 Boneless Chicken Breast halves
• 6 Slices of Boiled Ham
• 6 Slices of Swiss Cheese
• 3 Tablespoons Flour (pretty sure I used a lot more than that.)
• 6 Tablespoons Butter
• 1/2 Cup White Wine
• 1 Tsp Chicken Bouillon Granules (go easy on this..)
• 1 Tablespoon Cornstarch
• 1 Cup Heavy Whipping Cream

For starters, preheat the oven to 350. Now, because Chicken Cordon Bleu needs nice thin slices of chicken, I decided to make a cooked, shredded chicken meal for tomorrow (Southwestern Egg Rolls, fyi,) thus allowing me the luxury of keeping that nice flat top piece while tossing those weird shaped under pieces into something else. Using a nice sharp knife (by the way, nice sharp knives DO matter...it took me a stupid long time to finally understand this.) slice your chicken in half like the illustration below..and just use those pretty top pieces. (Bottom pieces go into a foil hell all their own.)

Each thin slice of chicken now gets a slice of ham and a slice of swiss folded onto the top of it. I literally went to the deli and asked for SIX slices of Ham and SIX slices of Swiss Cheese, and the young woman behind the counter literally rolled her eyes at me. But why get more than you need?!

There are two methods to rolling these things up. The more common is to roll it up thin end to fat end long ways, and the other is to just fold it in half. Being a newb, I tried both ways to try both methods out. Once I rolled them, I secured that thing with a TON of toothpicks...because bitches love toothpicks. Meanwhile, I melt some butter (Did I say 'some?' How about six freaking artery clogging tablespoons worth?) in a pan over med-high heat. (Downs a handful of Simvastatin)

(Picture of butter melting in a pan...because Melted Butter!) 

Dredge the chicken pieces in flour, or...flour mixed with some seasoned bread crumbs. Some people dip them in egg first. I didn't do this..because after using SIX FREAKING ARTERY CLOGGING TABLESPOONS worth of butter, I am going to pretend to be health conscious. That...and this particular recipe didn't actually call for it.

(Dredging the chicken roll in flour)

(Is it me, or does this look pornographic?)

And then, why not just go ahead and toss that chicken on into that sea of butter. 

So the idea is to brown the chicken on all sides, and you would THINK that the cheese would fall out and it would get really messy, but this didn't actually happen. (Well, it did a little, but just a very teeny little.) You want to fry it long enough in the butter so that the sides get nice and brown. I started with the 'non open' sides down and then moved them around, which..requires a little creative work on your part since there are toothpicks fighting you the entire time. I used two forks to turn them...worked like a charm. 

(Chicken getting golden brown.)

(This is when my husband actually come downstairs to ask what I was cooking.)

Now that the chicken is brown, you put it in one of these things and stick it in the 350 oven for 25 minutes.

I'd like to point out, at this time, that the rolled chicken seems to be holding up better than the folded chicken, although in the end, they tasted exactly the same, so...take from that what you will. While this is cooking, we'll make the sauce. Now, I'll be honest...I didn't care for the sauce that came with this recipe. It came out too salty tasting to me. There are a few dozen different recipes for sauce for Chicken Cordon Bleu when I looked on the net, all with varying ingredients, and I'm sure one of them is delicious. But here is the sauce I didn't like...because I took pictures and well, you may as well learn from my mistake. 

You pour a half cup of white wine into the used pan (of butter goodness,) along with a teaspoon of chicken bouillon crystals. (I think the bouillon is what made it taste salty...so maybe try half a teaspoon first. Like, a real half teaspoon, leveled....) (I used one of those haphazard slightly heaping teaspoons...which may have been a bad idea.) Mix the cornstarch and whipping cream in a separate little bowl and then whisk that into the pan, lower the heat and let it simmer for ten minutes. It does thicken up nicely.

 (I...seriously messed up this sauce somehow...)

After twenty five minutes, I checked to make sure the chicken was cooked through nicely, which it was. And here's the finished product! 

(Why yes, that IS a LAKE of butter..but look at my beautiful CHEEEKEN!)

When I cut open the rolls, they were indeed perfect inside, much to my surprise, and they tasted AMAZING, as in a full ten on a scale from one to ten! The folded ones also tasted amazing, and while not as aesthetically pleasing, I found no real difference between the two. Even without my completely messed up sauce, these things were heavenly to eat and now that I've finally got my first Chicken Cordon Bleu under my belt, I plan to make them more often. Hopefully, with a much better sauce. :)

Chicken with Red Wine Sauce

Real connoisseur's will wince at this admission, but I love cooking wines.

When my brother and I were children, on a few rare occasions, we were allowed sips of red wine. Usually it was connected to the holidays, but sometimes my father just indulged our curiosity. While I loved pretending to be drunk, I always hated the taste - an unfortunate prejudice that followed me into my adulthood. Forget the Manischewitz...I didn't drink anything with alcohol in it at all.

For years, I avoided recipes that included wine in its ingredients, assuming I wouldn't like them either...but finally I gave in and tried one, and I've been hooked on Holland House ever since.  So, if you're like me and know nothing about wine but want to try something new, this recipe is for you. :)

Chicken with Red Wine Sauce

Ingredients : 

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 1/4 cup chopped onion
• 2 lbs boneless chicken breast
• 1 tablespoon paprika
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup red cooking wine 
• salt and pepper to taste

  Directions:

Cut chicken into small strips.

 
Heat oil in skillet over medium/high heat. Stir fry chicken with garlic and onion until chicken is no longer pink and its juices run clear. Sprinkle with paprika and brown sugar.  *I* use two heaping tablespoons of minced garlic, myself...but then, I love garlic.

Pour red wine around chicken. Lower the heat to medium, cover and simmer for 20 minutes, lightly basting chicken as you cook.

 The wine will slowly thicken and your chicken will pick up a beautiful caramel color. Towards the end, you can leave the lid off to help the sauce thicken if you like.

Season to taste with salt and pepper, but keep in mind that cooking wines have a higher salt content than regular wines. You might not want to use any at all. I serve mine over white rice (I serve everything over white rice because I have a microwave rice cooker, and that thing is the bomb!) but this goes perfectly with spaghetti as well.

Easy, tasty and fabulous looking!!  Make it this weekend. It will be a perfectly yummy surprise for your hungry family!

Chicken Souiza Cornbread Bake

Whenever I buy chicken, I buy it in the economy packs, which generally give you eight decent sized chicken breasts at a fair price. Usually I'll bake four of them right off the bat, to be used in recipes during the week. (Also great for cutting up to toss on salads or use in lunch wraps.) As such, I'm always on the look out for new recipes that use cooked chicken, and lately, this has become one of our favorites. Don't be put off by the large ingredient list. Almost everything here is self-contained. All you have to do, really, is chop an onion..(well, and the chicken if you haven't done that already.) Then it's just a matter of mixing things together and layering them in a baking dish. Easy. (ish)  


INGREDIENTS:

• 2 1/3 cups chopped cooked chicken breast
• 1/2 cup margarine
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 3 tablespoons minced garlic
• 1 can whole kernel corn
• 1 can cream style corn
• 1/2 cup eggs (2 eggs)
• 1 (8.5 oz) package corn bread mix 
• 1 4oz can green chili peppers, chopped
• 1 1/2 cups sour cream
• 1 (8 ounce) package Monterey Jack cheese, shredded
• 1/4 teaspoon salt (x 2)
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper

Directions:

1.   Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease 9x13 inch baking dish.

2.   Melt margarine in a small skillet over med-high heat. Saute onion and garlic until tender, 4 to 6 minutes; set aside.

                                                      ...Because it smells AMAZING!

3.   In a large bowl, combine corn, cream style corn, salt and eggs. Beat in muffin mix. Fold in cooked onion mixture. Pour into prepared baking dish.

                                         (Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix...still only costs like..$0.35!)

4.   In a large bowl, combine chicken, green chiles, mushrooms, sour cream, salt and pepper. Spoon over corn mixture to within 1 inch from edge.

 (It will sink in a little, but not much. So long as you are gentle, it will sit delicately on the top. Or at least not emulate cement.)

5.   Sprinkle top with cheese.
 

6.   Bake in preheated oven for 35 to 40 minutes. (Edges should be golden brown.)

Add a little more salt/pepper to taste. Yeah, it sort of looks like a mosh of stuff...and it is. But it's a delicious, hearty meal for a cool winter evening, and it tastes amazing! Kids will love it. Spouses will love it. Everyone is happy, and you look pro! Which is great...because making you look pro is what Killer Gourmet is all about!

Perfect Baked Ribs

This isn't a recipe per se, but rather an easy way to cook perfectly tender juicy 'falls off the bones' ribs in your oven.  While this method is best served using baby back ribs, I used country ribs here because they were on sale. And it's very simply this:

Ingredients: 

• Any kind of porks ribs
• Any kind of bottled or homemade BBQ sauce
• Salt, Pepper, Garlic Powder, Onion Powder, Paprika, Brown Sugar for rub.

If you are using baby back ribs, you want to remove the membrane on the back by slitting it with a knife and pulling it off. (It comes off pretty easily.) Break your ribs down into small portions (like three to four ribs per) and tear off a sheets of aluminum foil big enough to fully enclose each.  Spray your foil pieces with cooking spray. Shake your rub stuff over the meat and using one or two fingers just rub it into the meat. You can change rub ingredients according to taste or use some prepackaged rub...but these guys work fine and are generally in every kitchen.

Seal up your foil into nice tight little packets and refrigerate at least 8 hours or overnight. (I like to ready them the night before I plan on baking them since it only takes a few minutes.) (And its nice to get it out of the way.)  I also wrap a couple of sweet potatoes with a pat of butter each because they bake perfectly with these in the same amount of time.

When you are ready to cook them, preheat the oven to 300 degrees F (150 c.)  Open each little pack just a little, cover your ribs with some BBQ sauce, reseal it, and bake at 300 for two hours forty five minutes.  When time is up, open your foil packets, add more sauce, and stick your tray under the broiler for five minutes.

What you come out with is unbelievably tender, visually pleasing ribs.

 Serve it with your big ol' sweet potato and a nice crispy salad!

Remind your family what this would have cost them in a restaurant and then pass around a tip jar. 

It really is that simple!

Chicken Parmigiana

Chicken Parmigiana is one of the very first dishes I learned how to make because it's pretty basic. Toss some sauce and cheese on breaded chicken and throw it in the oven. In reality though, I end up with two pots, one pan, one strainer, one casserole dish, and two bowls in my sink. If you're not a clean as you go person, it can quickly trash your kitchen, but that's because I include the pasta in this meal. The pasta is always to blame. My kids always called this meal, "Chicken Pizza," and that's pretty much what it is.

Ingredients: 

• 1 package of boneless chicken (1-2 lbs)
• Italian Breadcrumbs
• 1 jar Spaghetti Sauce
• 4 oz shredded mozzarella or mozzarella slices
• 2 tbls Olive Oil
• Two cups of elbow or rotelle pasta 
• 1 egg 

Directions: 

Preheat oven to 350. Slice the chicken in half with a nice sharp knife so you get two thin pieces of chicken out of each breast. Dip each slice in the egg and then the breadcrumbs and fry it all over a med-high heat just until the chicken becomes a nice golden brown color.

 We're not trying to cook the chicken here, we're only sealing the breading on so that it doesn't decide to stick with the casserole dish later, but that little bit of frying really does enhance both the flavor and look of your chicken. Four minutes per side should do it. You will use pans. I use a griddle because I'm pro like that. (They only cost like $20. Hint hint.) 

                                                Lightly browned chicken. Like a boss.

Put a teeeeny bit of oil on a paper towel and coat the bottom of the casserole dish, and then fit your chicken on in there all nice and cozy. Coat each piece with about a tablespoon of spaghetti sauce. (Plain old marinara sauce works best I think.) Cover your casserole with foil and stick it in the oven for 20 minutes.

                                                       (Woot...we're going in an oven!)

About ten minutes before it's done, set up a half pot of water to boil for the pasta and the remaining sauce can go in its own little happy pan on medium/low, if you like, just so its slowly cooking while all that is going on. Go watch TV for a few minutes. 

Ding! (TV makes everything go faster.) Pull your chicken out, remove the foil, cover the top of the chicken with handfuls of Mozzarella cheese and stick it back in the oven, uncovered, for ten more minutes. Dump your pasta into the boiling water. Stir it. Stir it again. Go watch TV for a few minutes.

Provided nothing has gone wrong, ten minutes later you will have moist succulent chicken topped with bubbly cheese and perfect pasta ready for the strainer.

                                         (Moist succulent chicken topped with bubbly cheese!)

Shovel it out onto an plate and serve with pasta and sauce and a nice little crisp green salad on the side. Listen to everyone belly ache afterwards that they ate too much.

                                                                    (Chicken Pizza)