Chicken and Salsa

Do you buy frozen chicken but never know how to cook it?  Are you tired of just throwing it in the oven or frying it on the stove?  Or do you even just put it in the microwave because you're THAT lazy?  Well, let me introduce you to the slow cooker (or crock pot)  It may be the easiest thing to use in the entire kitchen.  You put all of your ingredients together, turn it on and when you get home from work, or wake up the next morning, or recover from your hangover, your meal is done.

Slow cookers can range from 30-100 dollars, so if you don't want to spend that on something you use in your kitchen, do what I did and ask for one for Christmas.  Your Mom will think you're all grown up and she'll be happy to get that for you as well as all the PS3 games you've been asking for, too.  Anyway, the slow cooker is the easy way to cook a lot of meals and I'll be using (especially Chili) so I recommend purchasing one.

This meal is easy.  It takes frozen chicken and salsa, combines them and wa-la...your dinner is finished.

 

That's all you need.  And who said delicious meals couldn't be easy?

Fill up your crock-pot with frozen chicken (about 1/2 to 3/4 of the bag) and place it in the slow cooker like this:

 

Then take the salsa and pour it over the chicken, like this:

Do not worry if the salsa is not evenly distributed among the chicken as the salsa is going to thin out.  Take the empty salsa jar and add fill it up with water about 1/4th of the way.  Close the lid and shake it up to get all the extra salsa into the water.  Then, pour that water over the chicken

I realize that pictures are probably not needed to put three ingredients in a pot and push a button, but hey, we like to make things here at GrubDaddy as easy as possible.  Place the top over the slow cooker, set to a low heat, or if your slow cooker is done by hours, use the 8 or 10 hour setting.  Then do something for 8-10 hours:  Shoot hoops, clean your room, go to work, drink a beer, watch TV, call your girlfriend, I don't care, there's just no need to be in the kitchen.
After 8-10 hours, come back to the sweet smell of chicken and salsa permeating throughout your kitchen and it should smell delicious.

 Take the slow cooker and dump everything (chicken and salsa) into a bowl.

There should be a lot of excess salsa and that's OK.  The chicken is very tender right now, but when you come back for leftovers (because there will be leftovers) the chicken will stay very tender in the salsa.  Then when you need to re-heat the chicken, cut the chicken into thinner strips and nuke it with some of the salsa and it'll taste exactly like it did when you took it out of the slow cooker.

Another thing I like to do with this chicken is to take a fork and mash it up and break it apart until it looks like this:

Pour a very small amount of salsa on top of it and you have just made your own chicken salad (except it has a salsa base instead of a mayo base)  Place it on some bread, put a piece of cheese on it and presto, you have an easy sandwich to take to work for lunch.

If you are impressing your lady friend with this meal, I would suggest a nice cool White Riesling Wine to offset a little bit of the kick the salsa adds to the chicken.  If you're eating it by yourself however, I would suggest a nice refreshing Blue Moon as a light and simple meal deserves a light and simple (yet tasty) beer.

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Jambalaya, GrubDaddy style

Have you ever had some really good jambalaya, but were way too lazy to make it?  It's not exactly the easiest meal to make even though it is very delicious.  So while true Southerners, especially people from New Orleans, will scoff at this statement: if you can boil water, you can make a very easy and very delicious jambalaya, thanks to Zatarain's.

Now, is this New Orleans style Jambalaya?  Of course not.  But this is also GrubDaddy, where easy and cheap is preferred.  (Insert joke here)  Zatarian's can be picked up at any local grocery store and is usually in the rice section.  You can sometimes find them on sale for about $1.29 a box but they usually run in the $1.49-$1.99 a box depending on the flavor.  For this meal, you want to pick up the Jambalaya flavor.

This is a very simple recipie.  All that you need is:
1 box of Zatarain's, Jambalaya style
2 1/2 cups of water
2 tablespoons of oil (optional)
1 pound of ground beef
        and/or
2-3 sausage links, cut
Pot, with lid

Your Jambalaya can have sausage, ground beef, or both.  Both is pretty awesome, but for this exercise, I just went with the sausage.

Now, the directions are literally on the box of your Zatarain's, but does it come with handy little pictures?  I don't think so.  So here's how you can make the easiest Jambalaya ever.

First, either cook your sausage or brown your ground beef and if you have sausage, cut them up into small pieces.

Then, measure out the water and oil and put it in the pot and turn the heat on high to bring the liquid to a boil.  For those of you who don't know what boiling water looks like, here are some pictures.

Water Pre-Boil

Water Boiling

Then you're going to want to dump the contents of the box and your meat into the pot of boiling water.  

 Keep the heat of the stove on high until the water starts to re-boil.  Once the water starts to re-boil, turn the heat to low and cover the pot





Cook the Jambalaya on low for 25 minutes, no stirring required.  Once the 25 minutes are up, put it in a bowl and eat up.  Though I really like to eat, one of these boxes usually lasts about 2 meals, so it definitely is worth it. 

 So eat up, because this is probably the easiest most simple Jambalaya you'll ever have.  It is a bit spicy, so a lighter beer would go really well with this meal like a Light Lager from Yuengling or a simple brew from Yards, Fat Tire, or which ever local brew you prefer.
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Burgers and Sliders with Doritos

The inaugural GrubDaddy post begins with two foods everybody enjoys: Burgers and Doritos.  Whether you just want some burgers or are making some sliders for the game, this very easy recipe takes the Doritos, crushes them up and puts them inside the burger. You're probably thinking to yourself "this could be the greatest food in the history of the world."  And you'd be right, it really is a great burger.  You get that nice cheesy Dorito taste and crunch inside a big glob of meat, does life get any better than that? (the answer is no!)


Anyway, this is a very simple recipe.  All that is needed is:
1 lb of ground beef
1 egg
1/2 cup crushed Doritos
Regular buns or slider buns

Yup.  That's it.  It's very simple.  And if you want to make more, just double or triple or whatever everything.  1 pound of meat makes about 4 regular burgers (hence the term Quarter Pounder) or about 8 sliders.  These burgers take about 7-8 minutes to make and another 5 minutes or so to cook.  That's quicker than Mac and Cheese.
First, take about 2-3 handfuls of Doritos and crush them up.  Get a big bowl and put the meat, egg and crushed Doritos together like this:

Then the fun part begins.  You gotta mix up the meat, egg and Doritos, so get your hands dirty.  

After you've mixed up the meat and depending on what type of burger you are making, shape them into meatballs.  The egg will help keep the meat together.  I had two pounds of meat so I was able to make 4 quarter pound burgers (normal sized) and 8 1/8 pound burgers (slider size)

Now, take one of your giant meatballs and flatten it out...like so:

And then cook to taste.  You can put them on the grill, you can fry them, I don't care.  Just make sure regardless of cooking them that you cook them on medium heat and press down on the burgers to make sure the inside gets cooked to taste.  I fried them and they tasted great.  I also used 80/20 meat (which is 80% beef, 20% fat) so I did not have to use any butter or oil to cook them because the natural fat is cooked off and is used just like oil. It's also the cheapest kind of beef, so it'll save you more money, too.  You can add cheese to these burgers, or onions or tomatoes or ketchup and mustard or even BBQ sauce.  Whatever is lying around and you like on your burger will work.

I would recommend, especially since it's September, serving (or indulging on your own) a nice Octoberfest style beer. I'm partial to Sam Adams or Flying Fish, but I'm an east coast guy who drinks east coast beer.

So when craving a burger but don't want to spend 10 bucks on frozen meat, get some beef and make them yourself.  Total cost for the meal is just under 5 dollars and you can likely get 2-3 meals out of it, unless you crush burgers like its your job.   These burgers definitely can and should become a staple of anybody's menu because it's easy, it's quick, it's cheap and delicious. 

That's what she said


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