Cooking For Engineers

[bridgman]

Actually worked out pretty well. After an hour the rice and chicken were both cooked, although there were a couple of slightly underdone parts in the thickest part of the largest breasts.

There was too much liquid and not enough visible rice, so I picked the meat off the bones and added it back in small pieces. Then there wasn't enough liquid, so I added another beer and some leftover kimchi... and just to get the flames going again, a bit of half-and-half cream

End result had a pretty good chicken a la king kind of taste/texture. Will try it over toast in the morning.

[Pickelito]

I love this recipe. Thank you. I have been making this exact recipe for about....4 years? Never once thought to write and say thank you. It is one of my faves and always a hit with friends and family. :-)

[adrian alexander]

Politics and Chicken recipes, in one sitting....Mmmm mmmm Good!

[bridgman]

OK, just finished making this one again. Veggies this time were a big diced-up carrot, a couple of onions, ginger, and about half a sorry-looking cauliflower. Oh, and a couple of slices of bacon (my favorite vegetable).

Used a cup of Uncle Ben's brown rice, and added ~3 cups of water to the condensed soup along with good amounts (1-2 TBSP) of curry powder, black pepper, chili powder. Brought everything close to a boil then added 4 skinless bone-in chicken breasts (bone up) and pushed down into the liquid). Granulated garlic on top and into the oven at 350F (not a deliberate change, just didn't read instructions carefully) for an hour.

After about 20 minutes I covered the pot with a pizza pan since I remembered the rice not having enough water last time, then after the hour was up I removed the cover, flipped the breasts bone side down, and put the pot back in the oven for another 5-10 minutes.

Worked out really well. Chicken was "just" cooked enough (ie one spot on the thickest breast could have used a couple more minutes), rice and veggies were cooked just right. Pulled one serving out immediately then pulled the meat off the bones and mixed into the rice to make 3 more good-sized servings.

For all the complaints about the Campbell Sodium Bomb of Death a quarter-can of soup per serving didn't contain quite enough salt to cover the rice and veggies, so ended up having to add just a bit of salt at the end. Adding a packet of Lipton Onion Soup would probably have gone too far, at least for me -- now *there* we're talking about a Sodium Bomb of Death

[bridgman]

Actually the 1/4-of-recipe servings turned out to be too large, given the use of brown rice and 4 large-ish chicken breasts, so we're probably talking more like 6 servings per recipe. That makes the Contribution of Death from the soup something like :

~3.5g of fat, or 30 calories

- a bit under 300mg of sodium, or ~12% recommended daily value

[Dilbert]

given that chickens keep getting larger and larger,,, four pieces of breast would make quite a pile of chow.

I personally don't have issues with using a prepared cream based soup - but it is a point of contention with some cooks. I recall some time back a cook that "introduced" their own version / substitute - and I remember chuckling because if one did the math.... it had more salt. go figger.

Campbell, for one, has introduced reduced / low salt versions of many varieties. I typically reach for those - only because I can always add if the taste is 'off'

[bridgman]

I've been making this with more rice recently but staying with one can of soup -- I find it lets me have more rice per unit of chicken without the rice being too rich.

The batch in the oven now used 2 cups of brown rice, a big pile of onions/carrots/red pepper/celery, some Dave's Insanity hot sauce, generic Garlic Pepper seasoning, too much Chinese Five Spice powder (the lid fell off), white pepper, smoked paprika, and some Dizzy Pig Swamp Venom rub. Basically whatever happened to be at the front of the seasoning shelf when I decided to make this. Used about 3-1/2 soup cans of water, which is probably about 4 cups.

Topped off with just over two pounds of boneless skinless chicken thighs placed on top but pushed down into the liquid while it was heating up. Then I couldn't resist stirring it all up before putting it in the oven and covering with an inverted pizza pan.

Figure I'll give it 45 minutes before checking on it (it's a big pot) and then maybe pull the chicken up to the top and cook for a while longer uncovered.

[bridgman]

OK, now we're getting somewhere. I changed my mind after posting, added another cup of water (so probably closer to 5 cups) and left it in the oven covered for an hour and fifteen minutes then uncovered for maybe 5 minutes (getting hungry). Probably could have done with a bit less water (say 4.5 cups) but rice was nicely cooked and chicken wasn't overdone (it's hard to overcook thighs). The five-spice powder had a fair amount of cinnamon in it, and it really worked well with the brown rice somehow.

I didn't measure the seasonings (ever since I tried a recipe for 5-dump chili my measurements have been pretty approximate) but I figure maybe a teaspoon of Insanity sauce and tablespoon each of everything else.

This is the first time that I've ended up with a decent balance of chicken and veggies/rice, although I still found it a bit chicken-heavy. The richness of the rice is toned down nicely though, to what I would call ideal for me, so "a bit less chicken" might be the right answer rather than "a bit more rice" (since the soup amount has to be an integer number of cans).

I understand that the spirit of the recipe is to have a smaller amount of richer rice then add vegetables on the side, but I really like the whole "veggies in the rice" thing (especially lots of onions) so for me 2 cups of rice rather than 1 seems ideal. I figure 2-and-a-bit pounds of boneless skinless thighs is roughly equivalent to 3-4 pounds of bone-in skin-on chicken parts, so the only real change to the recipe is bumping up rice/water/veggies.

Anyways thanks for a great recipe.

[Dilbert]

if you have a scale to weight the rice and the water, you can keep some notes and repeat with some consistency.

I'm making much smaller batches (just for two, no left overs) so the margin of error is smaller than multiple cups of this and that - my notes have a small/medium/large batch - in grams rice+grams water.

rice can be tricky - different types/brands vary in the amount of water they'll soak up....

'chicken parts' is another problematic buy for small quantities - I typically have a bag of tenderloin / breast / boneless thighs in the freezer - for long slow wet cooking, I use from the frozen first, add from the fresh package, freeze the balance of the fresh.

[robbie53m]

i have to say is that this is the most user unfriendly website that i have ever seen. all i wanted to do was ask a question but it's taken me close to an hour to get here! and i still haven't found the proper place to ask this question. I registered (does this website have government security or what?) followed all the directions. too much security for a cooking forum! guess i'll look elsewhere. KMA!