33 Easy Grilling Recipes

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In The Kitchen-Chicken: 1 Bird, Many Dishes

Since both Albertsons and Stater Bros have whole chicken on a good price this week, I thought I'd show you an awesome way to get lots of meals out of a single 4 to 5 lb chicken. No, I'm not kidding.

Roast Chicken


Ingredients:

1 whole Chicken, thawed

Salt

Pepper

Rosemary (optional)

Thyme (optional)



Remove the gizzard and neck from the inside of the chicken and throw them away (if there). Pat dry the chicken with a paper towel and season with salt and pepper. If you want more flavors, add other seasonings like rosemary and thyme, but I don't recommend it since you will use the roast chicken for multiple meals. If you are making stuffing and want to cook it in your bird, add it now.


Put the chicken in a roasting pan or baking sheet lined with aluminum foil (if like me, you don't have a roasting pan). Roast in the oven for 350 degrees. The time will vary according to the size of your chicken. Cook your chicken for 20 minutes per lb of bird PLUS an additional 15 minutes. So for a 5 lb. chicken, cook it 115 minutes (or 1 hour and 55 minutes). If you add stuffing, add an additional 15 minutes beyond your original calculation (a 5 lb. chicken with stuffing should cook for 130 minutes or 2 hours and 10 minutes). To see if it's done, stick a meat thermometer into the high, not touching the bone. It should read 165 degrees F or above. Mine was nearly at 180 when I pulled it out.


Once the chicken has cooked, let it cool for a few minutes then serve!


The next step is the icky gross but worth it part. Once you've served your family and eaten, don't throw away the leftovers! Instead, take any leftover chicken you have and tear into pieces. Remove any chicken left on the bone; keeping the bones in a separate bag (I use a plastic grocery bag for this). Toss any extras like skin or fat in the trash. Put the leftover chicken in an airtight container and freeze or refrigerate if you will use it in the next 2 to 3 days.


With the leftover chicken, you have all sorts of meals! Personally, I use it in chicken enchiladas, chicken soup, chicken tacos and chicken casseroles. Anytime you need diced chicken that's already cooked, you have it done! Add what you need and save yourself a lot of time & effort of cutting and cooking chicken! Side Note: You can add seasoning to the cooked chicken by adding the seasoning, cooked chicken and about ¾ cup water in a skillet. Turn the stove on medium and let the water boil down, stirring occasionally. You'll have seasoned chicken in no time!


You should still have the bag of chicken bones. DON'T THROW IT OUT YET! Instead, throw it into a large pot and cover them with water. Bring the water to a boil, cover and turn the stove to medium-low. Let the chicken bones simmer in the water for about an hour to an hour and a half. Voila! You have chicken broth or stock!

Toss the bones in the trash and allow the broth to cool. Once cool, store in an airtight container and freeze or refrigerate. One awesome thing you can do is pour it into ice trays and freeze it. Once frozen, remove the cubes and store in a freezer bag. This will give you premeasured chicken stock for your various recipes, since a cube is about 2 tablespoons of chicken broth. All you'll need to do is pull one out of the freezer bag and add it to your recipe!


Lots of meals. One chicken. Totally worth it.

In The Kitchen-Peppermint Piece Cookies

This week's In The Kitchen recipe actually comes from a blog I ran previously, A Year of Baking. This is a great week to make this, since Albertsons has York Peppermint Pieces on sale as part of their Instant Savings Sale.

Peppermint Piece Cookies

 Ingredients:
1 cup (2 full sticks) butter softened, or alternately 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter and 1/2 cup shortening
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
2 eggs
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract
1 10oz pack of York Peppermint Patty Pieces (between 1 1/2 to 2 cups)


Turn the oven to 375 degrees.

In one bowl, combine butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and eggs. It should be pretty well mixed using the electric mixer, you should see no egg or butter once mixed.

In a second bowl, add flour, baking soda and salt. Mix well using the large spoon.

Add the flour mixture into the sugar mixture slowly. Add small parts of the flour then mix using the electric mixer before adding more. Otherwise you end up with flour everywhere!

Add the vanilla extract, peppermint extract and mix using the electric mixer. Add the peppermint pieces and mix in using the spatula.

Put the cookies onto the cookie sheets and bake for 8 minutes. Allow them to cool on the cookie sheet for about 3 minutes before transferring them to a plate or container of some sort.

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In the Kitchen

The average person takes 4,000 steps in a day. An active person (and the number recommended if you are trying to lose weight) is 10,000 steps. Yesterday I took over 16,000 steps. Active was an understatement. It also was not much of a surprise that at dinner last night I was exhausted.

It would have been really easy to call for pizza (I tried, Dave wasn't going for it) but instead I made chicken enchiladas. As I stood there I realized how much simpler my meal was because I already had some stuff together. I had precooked diced chicken in the freezer that cut down my actual on my feet prep time in half.

I believe everyone should have a collection of easy prep recipes that can solve the food dilemma. By doing some prep work when you have time, you will save yourself time and money later on. With that in mind, I present to you slow cooker apple sauce. You can make this once a week and have enough apple sauce to use as a side in lunches for a week. It cost me $1.70 for 2.5 lbs of apples, and about $0.02 for cinnamon. So for $1.72 I get my lunch side and I have no preservatives or additives.

Ingredients:

2.5 lbs apples, cored and sliced (and peeled if you prefer. I don't)
A little bit of cinnamon (totally optional. As for how much that's optional too. I added half a tablespoon)

Put the apples and cinnamon in the slow cooker and let it cook for about 5 hours or more on low. Once the apples are soft and mushy, pull the crock out and mash the apples until smooth (I use a mixer on low.) Allow to cool completely in the crock before moving to containers. Done! Enjoy!