52 New Recipes, week 4 | Skillet Chicken with Orzo
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In 2017, I'm trying one new recipe per week...so, 52 new recipes over the course of a year.
This Week's Recipe
This week, I tried another recipe from my ATK Quick Cooking cookbook (I can't stop!!!).
Unfortunately, this one was a little disappointing.
Basically, you brown chicken, then cook it + orzo in tomatoes and chicken broth, with Parmesan cheese and basil stirred in at the end.
The orzo part of things was flavorful and interesting. But the chicken? Boring.
I thought the chicken would pick up more flavor from the cooking liquid than it did, but it ended up just being very bland.
It's weird...roasted chicken is quite good unadorned, but somehow, this was just not.
So, I dunno. Maybe I'll make the orzo part of this dish again as a side dish for a more delicious chicken recipe.
You win some, you lose some!
Next Week's Recipe
Next week, I plan to make Arroz con Pollo from one of my Cook's Country magazines.
This one stuck out to me because it includes a creamy sauce. And I am of the opinion that creamy sauces make everything better. 😉
How about you?
Did you try a new recipe this week? What do you plan to try this coming week?
A dietitian has put me on very restricted diet for the next four weeks. Tomorrow I will be converting some tandoori chicken into butter chicken. I hope it works well.
I am sorry your chicken was not tasty. It is disappointing when that happens.
I agree! I tried that recipe once an was so disappointed because almost everything else is amazing. The enchiladas (but use shredded chicken instead of ground), risotto with shredded chicken (add frozen corn and a few freshly chopped tomatoes and cut the parm in half), and minestrone are some of our favorites.
I cut the basil down in the risotto because we aren't huge fans. And I leave the cilantro out of the enchiladas because my husband doesn't like it.
I made an easy Dutch dish this week, a riff on boerenkole (ugh, spelling...): potatoes, spinach (because I didn't want to shop for kale), and smoked sausage. Cook together, take the meat out, drain the veg. Mash the veg with milk and butter, salt and pepper, and slice the meat before adding back.
Nothing fancy, but helped me get more veg into my diet this week!
I am doing the same challenge! I actually tried 2 this week: North African Shushaka (poached eggs on a flavorful bed of tomato, herbs, feta and chickpeas) and your egg bread! Both were amazing and big hits!!
It's just my husband and me but I am trying to share with grown kids or neighbors when the recipe makes too much. I have to say, this challenge has already made me more engaged and interested in cooking again; I had lost some momentum making the same old-same old all the time 🙂
This sounds delicious! I not familiar with it but I'll have to give it a try soon.
Last week I made crock pot chicken cream cheese taquitos by just boiling the chicken and adding cream cheese, etc. It was a great way to stretch a little chicken. And Tex-mex. You should also try Cooks Illustrated's Pork Tinga. Yummy. And more Tex-Mex.
Hmm, yeah, it sounds like the chicken wouldn't be super-flavorful. Maybe toss the chicken in a lemon pepper seasoning and sear it for a nice crust? The smokiness and the salt from the lemon pepper might bring it to life a bit.
We're not really trying any new dishes this week, much to Mr. Picky Pincher's chagrin. 🙂 I think next week we'll try to jazz things up. The most creative meal we're making this week is Friday's dinner. We're barbecuing chicken breasts and serving them with creamed spinach and homemade black-eyed peas. Yum!
I made an Italian Wedding Soup by A Year of Slow Cooking. It was really good, but next time I will use low salt beef broth instead of bouillon cubes. I also tried my hand at Scallops, but I may have put a bit much lemon juice into the sauce. That didn't stop us from eating every bite though...
I made fish tacos this week, which was a new recipe. And they were totally, totally amazing! Everyone (me, my husband, my daughter) loved them!
I did try something new, a slow cooker meatball recipe. Loved it. I'm making the extra sauce into soup. 🙂
Yes, two! I tried Kristen's spatchcocked chicken for the first time. I didn't have smoked paprika, just regular, but I did have some lovely smoked salt -- may I suggest you try that sometime? Because it was yummy. I was pleased that doing a chicken this way really does cut down on cooking time. I cooked a (before removing the backbone) five pound, nine ounce chicken in just over an hour. The drippings made yummy gravy.
I used to make hamburger buns for us all the time, but it's been so long since I have, I can sort of call making them "trying a new recipe." I used Kristen's recipe -- so that was actually new -- because mine has disappeared into the mists of time, but it was very similar. My husband can't eat too much bread without wreaking havoc on his blood sugar, so I made the buns thinner and smaller, the way he prefers them. They were delicious.
It was a Frugal Girl's Cookery week at our house, it seems.
Disappointing that your chicken wasn't flavorful! I'm a huge orzo fan though! Sometimes I'll just cook a pot of it and stir through some pesto and feta cheese - delicious!
Your orzo sounds delicious as a side!! I'll have to try that!
That *does* sound good!
I haven't tried anything new yet...well, I made beef enchiladas for the first time without using a recipe, and they were really good. A little spicy, but I like spicy! I think I'm going to see if I can find my Grandma's chicken n dumplins' recipe and make that for tonight. Hers were the best!
I tried an ATK Quick Family Cookbook recipe too - the gingery chicken stirfry with broccoli and water chestnuts. Despite its gingery-ness, I thought the flavor fell a little flat. I had it for leftovers for work lunches and the flavor did improve a bit over time but I am in no hurry to make it again.
It's always such a bummer when new dishes flop. I'm glad the orzo was tasty, though!
This week I tried ATK's recipe for split pea soup. It was delicious! It's supposed to serve 6, but since it's only my husband and me, we both ate it for 3 dinners and 2 lunches throughout the week... we're a little tired of it at this point. 🙂 But I still think it's one for the winter rotation, especially if we have company or if I want to freeze half of it for a quick, comforting dinner at a future time.
This coming week I'm going to try the mango-chicken curry dish from Shauna Niequist's book "Bread & Wine."
My husband found a great recipe for ground pork tacos and black beans. The tacos incorporated zucchini, which we needed to use up anyway.
I haven't tried anything new this week, but I re-cooked a dish that I added to our rotation recently. I've also been cooking at home, which in general is a huge success.
I hate bland chicken-sorry your recipe wasn't completely awesome, but whoohoo for a good orzo recipe!
I tried out the gravy recipe on the side of the corn starch container and was disappointed in the extreme. It was to accompany homemade biscuits & Aldi sausage and added the teeniest reminder of what gravy is supposed to be.
I was vegetarian/vegan for so long, it's like I'm a new cook in many respects. I guess I should stick to online recipes that have lots of good reviews.
This is a great flavorful chicken. We eat it over brown rice.
http://pin.it/BuNSW8m
I made tostadas on Sunday. We do tacos, fajitas, and taco salad quite a bit, so this wasn't much of a stretch. They were good. I hope your arroz con pollo turns out well! That was my favorite dish at a Mexican restaurant we went to when we lived in Virginia.
Hi Kristen, I made Indian Dosa which is a fancy term for Indian inspired vegetarian pancakes. I say inspired because in this recipe the dosa (pancake) is not at all traditional as it's made with a combination of besan and plain flour making it not gluten free, as the authentic dosas are. The filling was super delicious with sweet potato, potato, paneer cheese, toasted spices, coriander and lime. Sooo delicious, I will definitely be making it again, everyone loved it. The actual pancakes are light as air and really tasty. Yeah for another vegetarian recipe to add to my collection, we are trying to eat less meat to reduce our grocery bill. Have a lovely day
I tried 2 new ones this week, both from your website :).
First was the jambalaya. I wanted to make the less spicy version but I only had Rotel tomatoes, no plain ones on hand. My son thought it was too spicy but ate a little of it anyway and picked out all the shrimp for himself. My daughter and I loved it, and we don't care for shrimp, so we were more than happy to let my son take them. I also used leftover shredded turkey that was in the freezer from the holidays in place of chicken. This made a huge amount. We all 3 ate it for dinner the first night, daughter & I ate it for dinner the next night, and I ate it for lunch for 3 days.
The second recipe was the broccoli-cheese noodle soup. My kids thought it sounded weird, but they were hooked after the first bite. Both requested that I make broccoli soup that way from now on and there were NO leftovers at all. Like, my son took a spoon and got the last little bits out of the pan, lol.
Yay! I'm so glad both were successes.
I tried a caprese stuffed mushroom with balsamic reduction recipe. A keeper recipe for sure.
As has been the case for months, I hit the easy button a lot this week. No new recipes, barely any recipes at all. For example, tonite's dinner was steamed broccoli, shrimp (cooked in the broccoli water, natch), and rice.
I did try out my new rice cooker, though. My 12 year old National rice cooker finally bit the dust. None of my usual sources had reviews for rice cookers - CI recommends exactly one and that one doesn't fit my needs - so I bought another National. Let's hope it works for another dozen years.
My win for the week... chicken and spinach bowtie pasta in parmesan sauce. My non vegetable loving husband thought it was fabulous.(But then he thinks I am a culinary genius ) . It was super easy. Baked chicken; drained ,thawed frozen spinach ; cooked pasta; toss in a lovely simple white sauce with added grated parm.... season to choice..love.
I am inspired by all the delicious dishes I read about here! I'm going to have to do some weekend cooking and freeze portions, because I never seem to have the oomph to come home and prepare a meal that involves real cooking (as opposed to assembling) after work. Or maybe if I prepped ingredients on the weekend? Anyone with an 8-5 job with tips for me?
I love using my slow cooker (crockpot) during the week. I can put all the ingredients in a big bowl at night , pop it in the fridge. Then the next morning, I dump the bowl into my slow cooker, set the cook time and it's done when we get home. 🙂
I tried a crock pot beef stroganoff. It was tasteless and I added too much beef broth so it was liquidy. Everyone ate it but I doubt anyone was a fan.
Next week is chorizo potato tortilla tapas. Basically, cooked chorizo/potato/onion/scallion mixed with eggs/sour cream to make a custard type texture. Pour into a mini muffin tin and bake. See how it turns out!
Tomorrow, I'll attempt apple strudel with puff pastry. I saw a recipe and hope it comes out. I've tried using phyllo dough before but it was very hard to work with. I hope this is better.
I recently bought a box of orzo on the clearance rack for .40cents so when I saw your previous post, I said " Oh, I'm going to make that". Maybe if you would brown the chicken a little longer and add more herbs and spices, it would be more flavorful? I'm still going to try it. My spouse is Picky Mrs. McPickster and I think she might like it( sans basil of course). I'll probably make a half recipe.
I love the 52 new recipes idea. I tend to go in bursts with new recipes, so the idea of spacing them out seems so smart!
But, isn't this the second time it's been "week 4" ? 😉
Uhh, that is quite possible. Ha. Whoops.