Sunday, November 2, 2008

Dutch Oven Herbal Chicken and Potatoes

Yesterday, I was really needing to cook.

My life is seriously stressful right now, and I needed to unwind. One of the best ways for me to do that is to cut up some food and put it over coals. Then, I get to watch it while the coals burn down. That all adds up to some serious relaxing.

So, I didn’t want to dig up something new. I didn’t want anything that would particularly challenge me or make it very difficult. I just wanted to cook something. I also wanted it to be something that I knew I could do well, and something that I knew I could really do better than I’d ever done before. I also didn’t want to go shopping for exotic ingredients, so I knew it would have to be done with stuff on hand.

Thank heavens for frozen chicken, onions, and potatoes. You can do almost anything with those three basic ingredients and it’ll work.

Dutch Oven Herbal Chicken and Potatoes

12” Dutch Oven

12 coals each below and above

  • ½ lb bacon, cut into 1” pieces
  • 1 large onion
  • 1 tbsp garlic
  • 1 lb boneless chicken, cubed
  • 2-3 medium to large potatoes, quartered and sliced
  • 2 stalks of celery, sliced
  • Liberal shakes of parsley, thyme
  • Salt, Pepper
  • ¼ cup lemon juice

I started by lighting up 25-30 coals in a pile, and letting them get white edges. While those were heating up, I started cutting up the bacon, the potatoes, the onions.

Once there were enough hot coals, I spread them all out underneath the dutch oven, and added the bacon pieces, separated into the pot. I kept a few coals aside, to light other coals later. It took a while to crisp up the bacon, and I also added the garlic in to roast up as well. After the bacon was crisp, I added in the onions, and cooked them until they were translucent. By this time, the coals were burning down, so I added a stack of fresh charcoal to my side fire.

Once the onions were done, I added everything else. At that point, I pulled half the coals from the bottom and put them on top. From then on, it was just a matter of stirring it every 15 minutes or so until it was all done. That took probably about 30 to 40 minutes. The chicken was cooked and the potatoes were soft.

As it was cooking, I got to thinking that it would be tasty to serve it on rice, and to have some desert, so I put a cup of rice with 2 cups of broth into my 8” dutch oven. Then I made a dump cake with peaches, yellow cake mix, sprinkled with brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg.

It all cooked up great! It was nice to have it all turn out well.

3 comments:

  1. Mark, I enjoy reading your experiences. It encourages me to do more. Thanks for the effort you put in to your blog.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks! I hope you like the dishes, too. Let me know what you cook up!

    MRKH

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sweet potatoes stand in for the carrots and cornmeal is added to the dumpling recipe for a Southern style dish. Your recepie seems to be easy and simple. I surely try it at home and let you know the feedback. I suggest it to my friends.
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    Angelinjones
    Interactive Marketing

    ReplyDelete

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