cooking @ home

Archive for the ‘Budget’ Category

As with meat loaf, I have several different ways to make beef stew, depending upon my mood du jour. Actually the ways are not all that different, so maybe variants or “slight variations” would be the more correct phrase. But this one is pretty much what I would consider the “master” verion.

There are so many great things about stews. Number one is they turn any tough meat into delicious meat. Second they bring together so many wonderful things — meat, vegetables, herbs, sometimes wine — into this well amazing orchestra, basically. For what is an orchestra but something which at times you hear (in this case taste) all the individual elements, and yet they also work in harmony with each other Kill me for saying this, but it’s music for your mouth and your stomach

You can use way inexpensive meat, such as ground beef, and turn it into something of a feast. Stew has to be the ultimate way to cook a budget meal for your family. Budget if you’re using beef chunks, and major budget-saver if you’re using burger. Stews are an excellent way to use up some leftovers, definitely leftover vegetables. Together they also form an amazing broth. I know whenever I make stew I use a tablespoon over a fork and I must have plenty of bread or rolls in the house to lap up every drop of that flavorful brew. It’s one of the ultimate comfort foods. And during the frigid winter, it just might become for that season the ultimate comfort food. And if you are into the cook a lot on one big day so you can microwave it multiple times the rest of the week, then stew is indeed your friend.

What more to say? Always sear your meat prior to putting it in the stew. Get it carmelized. If you’re using ground meat, this isn’t as necessary. What is more important for “hamburger stew” is drawing out the fats in the pan and putting the meat and the fat (aka, the flavoring) into the stew itself. But you don’t want it too dry either.

More tips: Chunky is better. You can also cut it into smaller pieces in your bowl with your spoon or fork. (No knifes here except for spreading margarine on your bread!) Sometimes I use tomato sauce as an important base element. Sometimes wine. Often both.

You’ll have noticed that I do not suggest using premade broths in my stew. But, why, Harry? Two reasons, the main one being: hello, it’s stew! — It makes broth, it doesn’t require broth! Second, the entire idea of adding broth to a stew reminds me one of those science fiction time warp anomalies. Adding broth to a stew means someone first had to make a stew to make the broth in order for you to now be making your stew! Yes, it gives me the same headache as when I hear about how if you go back in time to shoot your grandfather then you no longer exist and if you never existed then how could you have gone back in time…. Ouch! See what I mean?

Last tip or tips. Don’t be scared that this uses a lot of water. There is plenty of juices in the veggies and meats and all to flavor it. On the flip side, do not be shy with using your spices. With the exception of bay leaves in which a few can flavor two to three gallons of stew handily, when it comes to putting in your other spices, do it liberally. And yes I mean a lot. There’s a lot of water and a lot of food in there. It needs it to get around. Again, we’re going for eight quarts of stew here. A dash here and there is nice for a little meat chop or a burger, but it will be lost in all of this if that’s all you put in.

Finally, a word about the wine in this dish. Just the other day I did as the story lead up to a recipe where I talked about the statistics for alcohol evaporation in cooking. Compare that to this recipe. There’s about .75 quarts of wine among a total of 8 quarts of water, beef, potatoes, carrots, etc. When you take that with the statistics mentioned and stewing for about an hour and a half, that has now burnt off 80% of the wine. Considering how much wine is in this dish with the rest of the dish and that less than 20% of it remains, no, no one is going to get drunk. Remember, wine with food stops that. Even a little wine with no food it rarely happens. And how can you get more wine with food then wine actually in the food?

So for those of you who think I’m getting you drunk … well, it will either gladen you or sadden you to know, that it won’t happen with this dish. Enjoy, bon appetite and (hehe) salute!

Homemade Beef Stew
©2007 Harry Kenney

2 lbs chuck (or other stewing beef), chunks
(you can substitute ground meat for “hamburger stew”)
6 cups potatoes (about five large potatoes, I prefer the medium-starch potatoes), chunks
3 cups carrots (about five medium-large), cylindrical chunks
2 cups yellow onion (about 2 large onions), triangular chunks
2/3 cup celery (about 3 stalks), small chunks
1 cup frozen peas
1-1/2 cups Italian flat beans (or regular green beans)

8 or more cups water
1 cup dry Marsala wine
2-3 cups dry red wine (suggestion: Merlot)

16 oz diced tomatoes
6 oz tomato paste (or 4-8 oz of spaghetti sauce)
5 cloves garlic, crushed, cut finely

to taste:

salt
pepper
3 bay leaves
basil
oregano
garlic powder
onion powder
Worcestershire
hot sauce (or Tabasco)
cornstarch (if needed)

In your giant stewing pot, dutch oven, or other similar container that is going to be your “final” pot, put in the mirepoix, in other words, your onions, carrots and celery with oil on a low to medium-low flame and sweat them for 10 minutes. Do not brown. Meanwhile in a large pan, start browning your beef with oil and 3/4 of your fresh garlic, salt and pepper.

When your core vegetables are looking nice (and the onions going translucent), time to add 2 cups of water and a ton of seasonings including your bay leaves. Remember, you’re starting to season this not just for what is currently in the pot, but to some degree for what will be the entire pot, so go crazy with it. See photo above.

As your beef is browning and you’ve been turning it to brown on all sides, now add more seasonings and splash with some red wine. After a few minutes, toss in the main pot with the veggies. Add the potatoes. Add the Marsala and red wine and if needed, more water, enough to cover everything. Cover with lid, simmer on medium-heat.

After about three-quarters of an hour, add more water as needed. Mix around and taste. At this point you can usually tell how bland it might be and if it needs some kick to it. Add more seasoning if needed, including Worcestershire and or hot sauce to taste. Add tomatoes, and green vegetables.

Check on it about twenty minutes or so later. Again, add water or make any other seasoning adjustments, including adding tomato paste or sauce at this point. Add cornstarch if it seems too thin. Mind you, you are not aiming for gravy nor sauce, but you do want a very well seasoned not-thin broth with body to it. Continue stewing for another 15-30 minutes. Basically at this point you’re checking every 10 minutes until you are happy with it all. Besides tasting the broth, be sure to open up at least one chunk of beef and taste a bit of it to see if you agree with the consistency and taste of it to your liking. When you are happy with it, that’s when it’s done. Makes 8 quarts, feeds a small army or enough leftovers to last the bulk of a week.

I’m certain I’m not the first one to notice, but I must ask anyway. Exactly who was it and when that decided half of all Italian foods must begin with the letter “P”? Hey, even if you start typing “Italian food” in the Google toolbar one of the suggestions it offers is “starting with P”, and that’s based on the popular searches — so it’s not just me!

Oddly enough Google’s first 100 results never once listed a single page that actually corresponds to the search. It did find a bizarre reference to “P. Diddy’s Pasta” which you don’t want to know about …. Can you say time for another algorithm tune-up, Big G? I mean, wow, you couldn’t even match 1 in 100 to your own toolbar suggestion? That’s just sad. But enough of SEO and let’s get back to eating.

And so, since someone has to do it, at least in part … pancetta, prosciutto, polenta, pepperoni, pasta, provolone, panna cotta, Parmigiano Reggiano, Pecorino romano, panettone and the big one, pizza … to name a few. Seriously though, and I’m sure you knew this already, the “joke” is when you do find a long and exhaustive list of Italian food names, what you find is exactly what any intelligent person would expect: the percentage of names starting with a “P” is actually very small.

So it’s always seemed interesting the “coincidence”, for lack of a better word, that many of the most delicious and more well-known Italian dishes in the English language just happen by circumstance to be that way.

What’s way more important and to the point is, to paraphrase Shakespeare, an Italian food by any other name would taste as delicious. And so, here is a delicious sandwich to enjoy. If it’s not Italian, it’s definitely Italian-American to be sure. And yes, a three-”P”er in fact. You’ve love it on your pizza, and you’ve probably enjoyed had it with cheese and crackers, now to make it the main centerpiece of your lunch, pepperoni that is, with peppers and provolone.

A couple of quick thoughts and notes. First, of course here I am bringing you this sandwich, and from a city known for it’s great sandwiches, the hoagie, the Philadelphia cheesesteak and a strong Italian-American community, well it’s just very fitting. I just figured if the sausage and pepper sandwich is well-known then hey this makes a nice twist on the concept.

Next, note, here is yet another a recipe where the microwave comes nicely in play: both in giving a quick heat to the sauce and the very important melting of the cheese into the roll. What would we do without that appliance? Gotta love the ol’ “nuker”.

Oh, and I have to one big note of warning for you: Do use a larger plate than the one I have in my photograph. I hadn’t had this sandwich in a while, and forgot how this one comes under the heading of “delicious and messy”. Naturally after I took the photo, I dug right in and was suddenly reminded of this fact, in a rather messy way. So, use a large plate and bring several napkins with you. Trust me, it’s worth it!

Pepperoni, Peppers and Provolone Sandwich
©2007 Harry Kenney

1/4 medium yellow onion, thin slices
1/4 large green bell pepper, thin slices
18-24 pepperoni slices
six-inch long roll, preferably Italian steak roll
three slices provolone
4 hefty tbsps spaghetti sauce
olive oil

On low flame, put in onions into small pan, sweat and brown slightly. Take out. Do same with bells. Take out. Blot both if you wish with paper towel. Put in pepperoni, same as before. Take out, definitely blot excess oils.

Place Italian roll on a paper towel to prevent sweating, open up, place across two sides, three overlapping slices of pepperoni. Place in microwave 15-25 seconds to melt. Remove. Place in microwave spaghetti sauce in dish, cover on top with paper towel to prevent splattering. Heat up for about 15-20 seconds. Remove.

Place 3/4s of the sauce up and down both sides of open sandwich. Pile on peppers and onions evenly. Likewise pepperoni. Take remaining 1/4 of sauce and place atop each. Fold and eat.

There are so many combinations of meatloaf in the world. Use 100 percent beef. No, use beef and pork. No, has to be the tri-meat combination of beef, pork and veal. No, it’s lamb as the third, not veal. You can use milk-soaked bread, big crouton things purchased or made yourself. You can use breadcrumbs. Nope, use the oats in oatmeal. With and without eggs. Mayonnaise as an extra binder; no way, hold the mayo. Gotta have some gravy. Gravy has to be brown. No, it’s gotta be tomato. No gravy anywhere; that ruins it. … And the list goes on and on.

And then, like myself, many cooks have more than one meatloaf. Why? Same as above. There’s so many ways to do it and there’s no one right way. In fact, it’s pretty tough to mess up. Hope all you newbie cooks are listening up. Meatloaf is many things: The perfect comfort food being one. And an excellent dish to start on if you’ve never or rarely cooked before.

I mentioned various meatloafs myself. I recall it being one of the first things I ever did, back around the age of 18 or 20. I followed the directions on the side of the Quaker Oats box, and yeah, oats, the stuff I would have for breakfast on freezing cold winter days here in Philadelphia, it actually worked. It was a pretty decent meatloaf as I recall.

Since then, who knows how many variations. Many of the early ones I would overcook and make too dry inside, and sometimes burn the glaze (if I remembered to have one, that is.) Sometimes myself I use the triple combination of meats, sometimes it’s all beef. Each has it’s own interesting characteristic and flavor from the other. I came up with another interesting variation about a year ago when I had a big jar of salsa left over after a party. It dawned on me, the ingredients were basically three I would normally use in a meatloaf: tomato, and red and green peppers. And yes, the jalapeno gave it a really nice kick, not too hot either. I’ll no doubt get to making that one later in the season and of course, when I do, I’ll publish it here complete with the requisite photos.

For this recipe, I decided to do a gravy. I don’t always do that. This time it was simple. I had a half pound of gorgeous pre-sliced mushrooms I picked up from the store and needed to do something with. While a vegetable or chicken ratatouille came to mind, I knew with Thanksgiving days away, the last thing I needed in the fridge was going to be not one but two kinds of leftover poultry. In fact, each year the same thing happens. Before Thanksgiving you can’t wait to “get to the bird”, and days later you get tired of eating turkey and turkey and turkey. One of the best things I know is to get around that — besides creative leftovers, I mean — is to vary the leftover meals by having something beefy to switch off from. Meatloaf will work perfectly.

So, that meant I knew what I was going to do with my mushrooms, make a chunky gravy with them. I decided to go for the creamy and the wine version. Yes, it is more of a contrasting gravy than a complementary one, but I think it still works. That said, no, this meatloaf — and this new glaze I tried on it, big yums! — does in no way need the gravy. It’s got a bit of crispness on the outside and it’s moist inside. So, feel free to skip the gravy by all means, you will not miss it. On the other hand, if you want to treat yourself to something extra, something involving mushrooms, heavy cream and wine, I say go for it. You’re worth it.

     

Meatloaf with Tomato-Balsmic Glaze and Creamy Mushroom Gravy
©2007 Harry Kenney

Meatloaf:

2 lbs combination of ground beef, veal, pork

2/3 cup green pepper, cut finely
2/3 cup red pepper, cut finely
2/3 cup onion. cut finely
3 cloves garlic, cut into slivers
2 tbsps worchesterhire sauce
1 1/2 tbsps soy sauce
dash of hot sauce
2/3 cup grated parmegan
1 cup Italian breadcrumbs
1 egg, whipped slightly
1/3 cup ketchup
1/4 cup dijon
to taste:
salt
pepper
garlic powder
onion powder

Tomato-Balsamic Glaze

1/2 cup ketchup
4 tbsps balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp worchestershire
dash garlic powder
dash onion powder
2 tbsps light brown sugar

Creamy Mushroom Gravy

8 oz sliced button mushrooms
1 cup beef stock
1 cup red wine, Merlot
1/2 pint heavy cream
1/4 tsp corn starch
to taste:
salt
pepper
garlic powder

Preheat oven to 400°F. Mix all of the meatloaf ingredients well and by hand in a large bowl. Free-form into a loaf, place on baking sheet and put into oven.

Mix ingredients for glaze and apply to meatloaf, half-way through cooking (the 30-minute mark), covering the top and letting some spill down the sides.

For the gravy, medium heat, oil in pan, a light dusting of garlic powder in the oil, dump in the mushrooms, and cook well until browned, stirring often. Toss in the beef stock, mix, two minutes later toss in the cream and the wine. Reduce by at half to a third. Season. Add cornstarch. Let thicken and reduce until you get a nice gravy consistency.

Meatloaf should be done after one full hour. Check to make sure glaze is not getting burnt, and use a meat thermometer to check for doneness. Serve gravy a top of or on the side of the meatloaf. Makes 6-8 servings.

This began as one of my experiment meals a good decade or longer ago. You go to restaurants, you see various veggies in the rice. Get a box of Rice-a-roni, little carrots or peas in the rice. So, what the heck, one night way back when, I put two dishes together, spinach and rice. They tasted good, looked great together. My mother and step-father Dave who I was cooking for enjoyed it a lot, as did I.

Can’t say it was great, but it was darn good. As time went on I started to mess with it more — aka, perfect it. Adding raw onion was too bitey. Dave thought it was an improvement though. Mom and I didn’t. Then again, Dave could smother so much horseradish sauce on a hot dog you couldn’t see the hot dog.

Eventually, it came to what you see below, with onion nicely cooked in butter and parmesan cheese added. It’s literally funny how much this super-simple combination of basically four ingredients can taste so good and yet it does. I almost forgot to add it here, as, whatever the reason, haven’t made it in a good six months. Maybe it’s because it’s turned Fall that it came back to my mind. Something about it yells robust and warming and soothing.

In any event, it makes a beautiful side. Trust me, once you’ve had this you will make it again and again. Great alongside a starch, though naturally with all the rice in it, this really should be the starch on the plate. I feel like I should write more, but there’s nothing else to say except: it’s true, sometimes simple is best.

Spinach and Rice
©2007 Harry Kenney

ingredients:

6 cups of cooked white long-grained rice (follow box directions)
16 oz cooked frozen chopped spinach (steam or light boil, and do reserve the water when draining)
one onion, diced and browned (preferably in margarine or butter, not oil)
3-4 oz grated parmesan

season to taste:

salt
pepper
died basil
dried oregano
garlic powder (optional and if use, use sparingly)

Boil the rice, lightly brown the onion, cook and drain the spinach, mix with big spoon in pot thoroughly, add spices, stir thoroughly, add parmesan, stir well. When adding parmesan, do to taste and texture, that is, go for the taste you want, but as it also dries out the mix, add 1/8 cups of spinach water to it, keep adding cheese and water as required to get taste and good consistency. When have those where you desire them, one more taste for seasoning (you may have watered that down while adding the water and cheese) so season more as needed, serve. Makes enough for 8-10 servings.

If I say I’m making some homemade Chinese food tonight and I’m using yellow onion and button mushrooms, is your first thought “that’s not authentic Chinese food”?

Good chance you might think that. Sometimes I stop and think that myself. Which gets me to even more thinking. Namely: what is Chinese food as compared to what is Chinese-American food?

Let’s go back to the original question. If I substitute slices of yellow onion instead of scallions, is that less authentic? Then why have I gotten many a Chicken and Brocolli from delivered that’s come that wa? Let’s take another, how about when I substitute button mushrooms because my local market didn’t have shitake this week? Again, I’ve had many a Moo Goo Guy Pan come this way. I’m not even sure the more I think about it, how often delivered Chinese food has had shitake mushrooms? It’s either nether or exteremely rarely. I vagulely think once or twice it may have happened I had sliced shitake in my delivered dish.

So our first thought is: this isn’t authentic, but upon further reflection, it apparently must be. What’s the answer then? Maybe that difference is a Chinese-American difference of using cheaper and plentiful items on hand to replace more expensive or harded to get ingredients. That wouldn’t be the first time in recorded “food’ history that has happened. As a matter of fact that is exactly the way regional foods begin. And, pun intended, that’s just some food for thought.

Here’s some more thoughts. First, I love making Chinese food at home because baby I can control the portions and the quality … quality means I know I am using chicken breast … portions means both the small picture and the large picture as in, not only am I not giving myself shavings of chicken, I am making big meaty chunks, and I’m giving my dish plenty of those, at least a good four times more than the same if I picked up the phone.

Yet another thing I have to mention. Wow do I love the products that can be purchased in supermarkets of today. When it comes to this dish. Heck yeah I got lazy. When I can have a choice between several different versions of frozen stir-fry vegetables? Love it. In this case, the one pound bag I got contained baby peas, baby carrots, baby corn and snap peas. The rest I augmented with some fresh. Why purchase four or six more fresh ingredients or even six different cans or whatever when one bag will do? As my grandfather used to say “You youngsters out there have no idea how easy you got it today.”

Finally, one thing I feel really needs to be driven home to you here: what makes this dish really taste the way it should comes down to the spices and seasonings. If you don’t have these, it will taste very much like an Amercian-version-of. With these spieces, it will taste (and smell) amazingly authentic, and it will be what it’s meant to be: a home-made Chinese dinner that has a ton more chicken and just as much flavor and punch as the take-out variety.

Chinese Chicken with Veggies Stir-Fry
©2007 Harry Kenney

ingredients:

2 large chicken breasts (1.5 lbs), diced into chunks
yellow one, medium, long slices
sliced mushrooms, your choice
one bag frozen stir-fry vegetables of your choice
 (mine contained baby corn, baby peas, baby carrots snow pea pods)
white rice, make enough for to produce a final of 3 cups
peanut oil, for frying (vegetable oil if that’s what you have)

seasonings to taste:

soy sauce
garlic, two or three cloves, sliced thinnly
ginger, about a half inch shredded if fresh (powdered otherwise)
Chinese five spice
dry sherry
salt
pepper

Make three cups of white rice before or concurrent with this recipe. Get our your wok or your stir-fry pan (preferrably), turn the burner on to high and keep it there the entire time.

Liberally put in some peanut oil, wait until hot, dump in the chicken. Liberally add spices to taste, but hold back on the liquids (soy sauce and dry sherry) a while, as that will stop hot cooking. Brown thoroughly. Now add the liquid seasonings. Brown some more. Remember this is “stir-fry”, a dish that you are constantly mixing throughout the entire cooking process.

Scoop out chicken and place in bowl. Leave the small amount of juice in pan and put in onion, about a minute later add in mushrooms. Reseason these with the dry seasonings. After a few minutes of browning, put in the entire bag of frozen vegetables. Mix. Again, season everything. This time liquid as well as dry. (Every time you add something new you season it.) This will take anywhere from five to eight minutes. You may even cover it at this point to promote thorough cooking.

Taste occasionally, taking the hardest vegetable out (in my case it was baby carrots) and when that is done enough for you, then put the chicken back into the wok and mix everything thoroughly. You may add more seasoning (one last time) at this point, or opt not to if it tastes well-seasoned enough to you. Cook together another two or three minutes.

Plate atop a foundation of white rice. Makes roughly four servings.

Note: Just because I purposely made this recipe as a heartier, more chicken than one normally gets from take-out dish doesn’t mean it has to be that way. Obviously these types of dishes were originally concieved to be food stretchers: to use a little meat, a lot of veggies and rice to fill the stomach. So you could easily cut back on the chicken and increase the rice, this could be a super-budget meal that could serve eight.

Mac? As in “Mac and Cheese”. In any event. that’s what I finally decided to call this dish (… after having ten other names along the way.) Yep, this one was tough because it reminds me of so many different combinations of things. It’s down-and-basic super comfort food. It’s so easy I thought not to include it, until a few friends said “gee, I never thought of that”. It’s so easy you could make this in your sleep. It’s so easy a caveman … yadda yadda.

This puppy is part homemade “Hamburger Helper”, part cheesburger meets pasta, part Sloppy Joe Italiano, part pizza meets macacroni and cheese. Whatever you call it, you have to call it: Yummy! Kids will adore it; and that’s kids all the way up to 90 years old!

Seriously though, speaking of children, this is a great meal to do with your kids, esepcially the older ones. This could be their first introduction to actually cooking a meal (under your supervision). Who knows? Start them out now, and in twenty years maybe an old and gray Gordon Ramsey will be cursing at them on national television. LOL!

Pizza Burger Mac
©2007 Harry Kenney

ingredients:

2 pounds pounds ground beef
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
1 8 oz boz mac and cheese
1 28 oz jar spaghetti sauce (meat or garden style)
greated parmesan cheese

to taste: salt, pepper, garlic

In one pan, your favorite cooking oil, fry up some chopped onions to the translucent stage, add minched or powdered or fresh garlic (unless the kids hate it), then the ground meat, season and brown up.

In your large pot, grab your favorite box of macacroni and cheese and make that according to directions. Meanwhile on a third pan heat up your sauce. When all, start placing mac and cheese in until you have the desired mix. (You can either toss it all in or do this as above so that you can have some mac and cheese lefover).

Do likewise with the spaghetti sauce, add until you achieve your desired mix. Stir up and toss some grated parmegana on top, stir some more. Serve (preferrably with toasted garlic and parm bread or rolls.) Depending, should make four to six servings.

If I had my druthers, the best way to do this recipe would be on my charcoal grill with the lid down — the perfect combination of flame and air moving all around the poultry. But that’s not the goal of this recipe. The challenge I set up for myself here was how to get a BBQ-like chicken with savory, crisp skin in the oven. (Cause not all of us are crazy enough to shovel through three feet of snow at 10 degrees F and use the outdoor grill in the winter. Or, for me the day I came up with this, it was was a 98 F day with 85% humidtiy. I’ll take the indoors with AC blasting and an oven on, then cooking by a roaring fire outside, thank you.)

This is one of those ideas that took two trys to nail down, call them version one and two. As I am known to say, you learn as much (if not more) by your mistakes. So I’m sharing it with you because like me, you’ll pick up some ideas when you run across these problems again. I certainly know I’ll be keeping these solutions in mind myself next time and at least avoid these same errors. (As always, you can feel free to skip down to the bottom and get the “unvarnished” recipe. Or take the ride with me and continue reading. Your chice.)

I knew there were going to be “technical details” when I came up with the idea for this dish. First, I wanted BBQ but with Orange and I hadn’t done anything like that before (not a biggie, just mentioning it was one element). Second was I was trying to BBQ inside, and because the pieces were large and thick, I knew I had to abandon the idea of the two-burner kitchen grill. That means grilling in the oven. (strictly speaking that’s not possible if you go by the exact meaning of the words, but I think you get the concept).

I wanted to add OJ to my sauce which make my base not so much ketchup but the orange itself, plus doing so would thin the sauce out. Second problem, getting a good crisp skin, an “eatable skin”, without charring the sauce atop it into black, burn. (When I say eatable skin, meaning I rarely eat chciken skin. But if I did it correctly even I would love it.)

And so came try numero uno with it’s mistakes and problems:

Mistake one … putting in large baking dish … for one, wasn’t exposing underside to air heat … two as it would fry, juices and fats would mix into bbq sauce … In short, I was cooking this like a chicken in a sauce dish. Why, I dunno. I had to make this it’s original intention: BBQd tasting chicken, crisp skin, in the oven. Silly me. So in version two (my second try at this the next day) I ended up removing and placing on wired grill atop baking sheet as should have

Problem one … As mentioned, the OJ made sauce too thin. (I think that’s one of the reasons I made the other error of putting it in a deep baking dish, because it would “hold” to some degree to the chicken, but not as much as I wanted, and I didn’t want a big mess.) So version one solution tried, helped a bit, some cornstarch. Cornstartch is a nice thickner which unlike flour does not require heat as an element. (Sure heat would help the thickening and did during the actual baking.) The answer I found was to reduce the sauce. More concentrated flavor and it thicken more to my liking.

Problem two: Skin did get crispy … but … could be cripsier … problem, at it’s best, would have left in any longer and bbq sauce would have burnt … how to more scripy without burning? Doing it in the casserole deep dish was the mistake. The simple answer was doing it atop the grill on sheet increased both the crispieness and let dry heat get under the poultry. One thing I did get right the first time, scoring the skin; second time I went from a few scores to around on dozen on each quarter.

Yes, I’ve done my best to ignore the option of placing it in the broiler for a quick bit at the end. Why? Too easy in one way. Too “dangerous” in another. How so? Remember, you can go from slightly crispy to burnt in as little as 20 seconds. Remember those of you who are masters of the outdoor grill this isn’t going to be 100% perfectly identical … but we’re trying for 95% or so and it gets there.

Now two challenges for you. First, see if folks don’t think you did it on the outside grill. See their eyes perk up when you tell them you did it in the oven. Second, those who love to eat chicken skin are going to think this is incredible; and while not all, some people who never eat skin, ask them to try this. I’m betting there will be one or two converts.

One last (and probably obvious observation to share) This is definitely a cost-cutter meal: cheap to buy and then you take it home and make it extra flavorful.

Roasted Orange-BBQ Chicken Leg Quarters
©2007 Harry Kenney

ingredients:

Four or five large chicken leg quarters (theighs and legs together)

mini rub:

1/2 tsp cayenne
1 tbsp chilli powder
1 tsp cinnamon
3 tbsp garlic powder
2 tbsp onion powder
1 tbsp paprika
1-2 tsps salt (this helps dry the skin as well as add flavor, that’s why a bit more than normal)
2 tsps pepper

sauce:

1 cup ketchup
3 tbsps worchestershire
4 tbsps honey
1 tbsps dijon (or brown)
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tbsp horseradish sauce
dash of salt
dash of pepper
1-2 tbsps lemon or lime juice (totally optional)
zest of one large orange (as much as you can get out of it)

Make many small scores through skin of top side of chicken. Mix dried ingredients and apply the rub to top of chicken; don’t neglect putting some on the under side. Put in plastic wrap and place in refrigerator for about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the BBQ sauce as listed, placing all the ingredients in a small pot. As the OJ will have thinned the sauce, reduce it down until you get to a somewhat thicker consistency (such as that of say, steak sauce).

Preheat oven to 425. Baste chicken with sauce. Place on shallow wired rack atop baking sheet and place in oven. Expect this phase to take roughly 45 minutes (depending on your oven, size of chicken, size of bones, etc.)

15 minutes into it, turn chicken over. After 15 more minutes, again turn chicken over. Lightly cover the top of chicken with more of the BBQ sauce (not too thick, we want crispy skin.)

After chicken has been in for about 40 minutes, check with internal thermometer every 5-7 minutes until temperature is 150F. At this point turn oven to highest setting (often 500, some ovens go to 525 or 550). Skip checking with thermometer for now and instead check every 5-7 minutes for color and doneness visually. You will start to have a smoky kitchen at this point, that is normal.

When you feel it looks right and is done, again check internal temp. You must achieve a minimum of 165F to safely eat chicken. So when you are between 165-175F it’s perfect. Remove from oven and let rest at least ten minutes then serve.