Batch Cooking

While Dave and I both like to eat, neither of us is particularly fond of cooking or cleaning up after preparing food. We eat a lot of meat. So the idea of being able to cook a lot of meat at one time with only one batch of cleanup appealed to both of us. Thus, our newest cooking tool:

First, we cooked three racks of baby back ribs we bought at Trader Joe’s. So simple! How simple, you ask? This simple:

Cut each rack into three or four sections and dump them in the crock pot. Dump a couple bottles of BBQ sauce on top of them. Put the lid on the pot and cook for about five hours on high. Done. Makes 9-12 servings depending on how you cut them. Be prepared to dispose of a bunch of juice then wash the one pot, meat thermometer, and fork. Done with cleanup.

Dave likes his leftovers reheated in the microwave but I prefer mine cold. We can testify they are delicious either way.

That went so well we decided to try chicken. In our freezer we had a five pound bag of skinless, boneless chicken breasts we bought from Schwan’s that said it serves twenty on the bag. We threw that in the refrigerator to thaw. The next day we dumped the whole bag full into the crock pot and dumped a can of chicken broth in on top of it. About four hours later we had this pile of chicken:

No that’s not twenty chicken breasts. I guess you are supposed to cut pieces off some to make that many servings. I miss Simek’s; their bags of chicken actually had the number of pieces the bag said it served.

Anyway, sone of these will get cut up to put in salads. Some will get reheated to be part of a dinner. Some will be eaten cold dipped in salad dressings for snacks. I expect they all will be tasty. At least, I know they all will get eaten. Soon.

In the meantime, here’s one of my favorite chicken salad recipes:

Stir together 1 Tbsp mild-flavored olive oil and 1 Tbsp lemon juice. Add salt and pepper or herbs, if desired. Chop up one large apple and stir into juice. Chop up two chicken breasts and add to apple. Stir in 2 Tbsp dried cranberries and 2 Tbsp chopped pecans. Serve immediately. Makes two main dish servings.

You could probably make a big batch of that too but I don’t know what the dressing will do to the cranberries and nuts if allowed to sit since we always eat all of it right away. 🙂

TTYL,

Linda