Jump-Starting Supper |
Wouldn't it be nice if you walked in after a long day and found that dinner had just cooked itself? At six o'clock, the last thing most of us need is a long struggle at the stove.
If you're like us, more often than we like to admit, dinner is fast food and takeout. But the alternatives are limited and unfortunately, they include starvation.
After grumbling about this situation for months, Alicia and I, Beverly, decided to conduct an experiment: What if we set our alarm clocks just 10 minutes earlier in the morning and faced the kitchen first thing, before all of our energy was sapped? Could we put together the evening meal before heading to the office?
The experiment required thinking about some of our favorite recipes in new ways and dusting off our slow-cookers. But it resulted in an array of easy and satisfying meals we've come to call Before-Work Wonders.
SLOW-COOKING
My favorite morning miracle is a 1990s vegetable soup that both of our mothers used to make on top of the stove in the 1960s. We take 10 minutes to throw the ingredients into the slow-cooker, and let it simmer while we're out of the house for the next 8 or 9 hours.
This simple soup always gets raves. Here's how it's done: Into an electric slow-cooker that holds 3 quarts or more, put half a pound of extra-lean meat (frozen is fine), such as round steak, hamburger or boneless and skinless chicken. Add 3 cups of water, a can of chicken broth and, if you have it, the contents of an 8-ounce can of tomato sauce. You can also add a can of crushed or stewed tomatoes if you like. Quickly peel and coarsely chop an onion and throw it in. That chopping is the only real work you have to do.
Add 6 cups of assorted frozen vegetables, such as corn, peas, beans, potatoes and carrots. To make this step simpler, look for the large bags of assorted frozen vegetables labeled especially for soup or stew in the freezer section of the supermarket. You can use whatever frozen or canned vegetables you have on hand in any combination, but we find that vegetables with a strong taste, including broccoli, brussels sprouts and spinach, overpower this recipe.
Season the soup with a couple of teaspoons of Worcestershire sauce, a teaspoon of sugar, half a teaspoon each of salt and pepper, half a teaspoon of dried basil and a pinch of dried thyme.
Cook on Low for a full 8 to 10 hours. When the soup is cooked, you may want to remove any large pieces of meat, shred them and stir them back into the pot. This makes enough soup to feed eight adults, and it's good for leftovers, too, since the flavor improves when it's been in the refrigerator for several days.
(If using your slow-cooker seems more trouble than help, chances are it isn't a model with a removable crock. Being able to lift out the crock makes all the difference in cleaning or storing leftovers. I put my removable crockery pot right into the dishwasher. Slow cookers with removable crocks cost about $30--approximately $10 more than the other models--and are well worth the difference.)
MARINATING
Marinades are another good way to put time to work at home while you're away. However, to get a really saturated flavor from a marinade, the 8 or 9 hours of your working day may not be enough. Alicia and I solved this problem by slicing the meat before we put it in the marinade.
For boneless, skinless chicken, we cut each breast half into 4-inch-thick crosswise slices. We like to use the individual quick-frozen, boneless and skinless chicken breasts that come in zip-top plastic bags in the poultry section of the supermarket. Each one has a light ice glaze around it that keeps it separate from the others, making it easy for us to reach in and pull out as many breasts as we need that day. Two minutes in the microwave at full power produces 4 breast halves that are just firm enough to slice beautifully. Whole marinated chicken breasts can be baked right in the marinade for an hour in a 350-degree oven; chicken slices can be stir-fried or threaded onto skewers and grilled.
If your family likes flank steak, buy several and freeze them flat, with freezer paper between the steaks so they can be separated. When you want a steak dinner, take one out of the freezer in the morning, put it in a zip-top bag with a tenderizing marinade and stick it back in the refrigerator. By the end of the day, it will be slightly defrosted, just enough so that 5 minutes under a hot broiler or on the grill will make the outside crisp and the center medium-rare and tender. You can also slice the half-defrosted meat to use in a stir-fry or a fajita.
Marinades don't have to be complicated--2 tablespoons of soy sauce, 2 tablespoons of salad oil and 3 cloves of chopped garlic will do nicely. For chicken, a simple concoction of 3 tablespoons of olive oil, the juice of a lemon, half a teaspoon of dried oregano and a couple of cloves of chopped garlic is a classic solution. If making your own marinade seems too stressful for a predawn activity, there are lots of good-quality bottled marinades on supermarket shelves. One that we all know about--but don't like to admit to using--is bottled Italian salad dressing.
Marinating is practically mindless, but there are a few things to remember: Heavy-duty zip-top bags make excellent containers. If you don't use a bag, use a nonmetal container, cover the food with plastic wrap or a lid, and be sure to put it back into the refrigerator before you leave home for the day.
And by the way: We're talking as though these dishes are only for working mothers. Not at all. Those whose day's work consists of cleaning, carpooling and helping with homework will find them just as useful.
REFRIGERATING
One of Alicia's favorite before-work meals is Italian Refrigerator Chicken and Rice. It's an all-in-one casserole that goes together in the 10 minutes when you're waiting for the children to come eat their cereal. It stays in the refrigerator all day long, then bakes in just half an hour when you get home from work. If you turn on the oven before you take off your coat and kiss the kids, you'll have dinner sooner than you thought possible.
Rice casseroles usually take an hour or more to bake. Our secret is to use one of the newer brands of "instant" rice that cook on top of the stove in just 5 minutes. You'll need to slice the chicken and microwave it until it's nearly done, but the rest of the recipe is simply a matter of measuring, dumping and stirring.The rice absorbs the broth during the day, so the grains plump up quickly in the oven.
Be sure to use a dish that can go safely from the refrigerator straight to the oven, such as Corningware or Pyrex. Then you can turn the oven to 425 degrees, put in the casserole, and in half an hour, by the time you change your clothes, check the mail, set the table and warm some bread, dinner will be done.
ITALIAN REFRIGERATOR CHICKEN AND RICE
Cooks' notes: We tested this recipe using Uncle Ben's Instant Rice, which has a flavor and texture almost like regular rice.
3 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves (about 1 pound)
1 1/2 cups already-sliced mushrooms
2 tsp. olive oil
One 14 1/2-oz. can fat-free chicken broth
One 14 1/2-oz. can Italian-style stewed tomatoes
2 1/2 cups 5-minute rice
1 tsp. dried Italian seasoning
1/2 tsp. bottled minced garlic
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. black pepper
3/4 cup white wine or water
One 2 1/4-oz. can sliced black olives, drained
1. In the morning, slice the chicken breasts in 1/4-inch-wide strips, cutting across the width of each breast. (They can still be frozen: In fact, that will make them easier to slice.) Place the slices in a 10-by-10-inch casserole dish, such as Corningware or Pyrex, that can go straight from the refrigerator to the oven. Add the mushrooms. Drizzle the chicken and mushrooms with the olive oil and cover with a lid or microwave-safe plastic wrap. Microwave on High for 6 minutes, stirring once after 3 minutes.
2. While the chicken cooks, gather the rest of the ingredients and open the cans of broth and tomatoes. Measure out the rice into a 1-quart glass measure. Sprinkle the Italian seasoning, garlic, salt and black pepper over the rice. Set aside.
3. When chicken has been microwaved, add the broth, wine and rice to the dish. Stir well until all the rice is moistened. Cover and refrigerate until ready to bake.
4. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Remove the dish from the refrigerator and scatter the drained olives evenly over the top. Let the dish rest until the oven reaches the desired temperature. Then bake, covered, for 30 minutes or until steaming hot. Serve immediately. Makes 4 servings.
Beverly Mills and Alicia Ross are the authors of DESPERATION DINNERS, to be published by Workman Publishing Co. this fall.
If you're like us, more often than we like to admit, dinner is fast food and takeout. But the alternatives are limited and unfortunately, they include starvation.
After grumbling about this situation for months, Alicia and I, Beverly, decided to conduct an experiment: What if we set our alarm clocks just 10 minutes earlier in the morning and faced the kitchen first thing, before all of our energy was sapped? Could we put together the evening meal before heading to the office?
The experiment required thinking about some of our favorite recipes in new ways and dusting off our slow-cookers. But it resulted in an array of easy and satisfying meals we've come to call Before-Work Wonders.
SLOW-COOKING
My favorite morning miracle is a 1990s vegetable soup that both of our mothers used to make on top of the stove in the 1960s. We take 10 minutes to throw the ingredients into the slow-cooker, and let it simmer while we're out of the house for the next 8 or 9 hours.
This simple soup always gets raves. Here's how it's done: Into an electric slow-cooker that holds 3 quarts or more, put half a pound of extra-lean meat (frozen is fine), such as round steak, hamburger or boneless and skinless chicken. Add 3 cups of water, a can of chicken broth and, if you have it, the contents of an 8-ounce can of tomato sauce. You can also add a can of crushed or stewed tomatoes if you like. Quickly peel and coarsely chop an onion and throw it in. That chopping is the only real work you have to do.
Add 6 cups of assorted frozen vegetables, such as corn, peas, beans, potatoes and carrots. To make this step simpler, look for the large bags of assorted frozen vegetables labeled especially for soup or stew in the freezer section of the supermarket. You can use whatever frozen or canned vegetables you have on hand in any combination, but we find that vegetables with a strong taste, including broccoli, brussels sprouts and spinach, overpower this recipe.
Season the soup with a couple of teaspoons of Worcestershire sauce, a teaspoon of sugar, half a teaspoon each of salt and pepper, half a teaspoon of dried basil and a pinch of dried thyme.
Cook on Low for a full 8 to 10 hours. When the soup is cooked, you may want to remove any large pieces of meat, shred them and stir them back into the pot. This makes enough soup to feed eight adults, and it's good for leftovers, too, since the flavor improves when it's been in the refrigerator for several days.
(If using your slow-cooker seems more trouble than help, chances are it isn't a model with a removable crock. Being able to lift out the crock makes all the difference in cleaning or storing leftovers. I put my removable crockery pot right into the dishwasher. Slow cookers with removable crocks cost about $30--approximately $10 more than the other models--and are well worth the difference.)
MARINATING
Marinades are another good way to put time to work at home while you're away. However, to get a really saturated flavor from a marinade, the 8 or 9 hours of your working day may not be enough. Alicia and I solved this problem by slicing the meat before we put it in the marinade.
For boneless, skinless chicken, we cut each breast half into 4-inch-thick crosswise slices. We like to use the individual quick-frozen, boneless and skinless chicken breasts that come in zip-top plastic bags in the poultry section of the supermarket. Each one has a light ice glaze around it that keeps it separate from the others, making it easy for us to reach in and pull out as many breasts as we need that day. Two minutes in the microwave at full power produces 4 breast halves that are just firm enough to slice beautifully. Whole marinated chicken breasts can be baked right in the marinade for an hour in a 350-degree oven; chicken slices can be stir-fried or threaded onto skewers and grilled.
If your family likes flank steak, buy several and freeze them flat, with freezer paper between the steaks so they can be separated. When you want a steak dinner, take one out of the freezer in the morning, put it in a zip-top bag with a tenderizing marinade and stick it back in the refrigerator. By the end of the day, it will be slightly defrosted, just enough so that 5 minutes under a hot broiler or on the grill will make the outside crisp and the center medium-rare and tender. You can also slice the half-defrosted meat to use in a stir-fry or a fajita.
Marinades don't have to be complicated--2 tablespoons of soy sauce, 2 tablespoons of salad oil and 3 cloves of chopped garlic will do nicely. For chicken, a simple concoction of 3 tablespoons of olive oil, the juice of a lemon, half a teaspoon of dried oregano and a couple of cloves of chopped garlic is a classic solution. If making your own marinade seems too stressful for a predawn activity, there are lots of good-quality bottled marinades on supermarket shelves. One that we all know about--but don't like to admit to using--is bottled Italian salad dressing.
Marinating is practically mindless, but there are a few things to remember: Heavy-duty zip-top bags make excellent containers. If you don't use a bag, use a nonmetal container, cover the food with plastic wrap or a lid, and be sure to put it back into the refrigerator before you leave home for the day.
And by the way: We're talking as though these dishes are only for working mothers. Not at all. Those whose day's work consists of cleaning, carpooling and helping with homework will find them just as useful.
REFRIGERATING
One of Alicia's favorite before-work meals is Italian Refrigerator Chicken and Rice. It's an all-in-one casserole that goes together in the 10 minutes when you're waiting for the children to come eat their cereal. It stays in the refrigerator all day long, then bakes in just half an hour when you get home from work. If you turn on the oven before you take off your coat and kiss the kids, you'll have dinner sooner than you thought possible.
Rice casseroles usually take an hour or more to bake. Our secret is to use one of the newer brands of "instant" rice that cook on top of the stove in just 5 minutes. You'll need to slice the chicken and microwave it until it's nearly done, but the rest of the recipe is simply a matter of measuring, dumping and stirring.The rice absorbs the broth during the day, so the grains plump up quickly in the oven.
Be sure to use a dish that can go safely from the refrigerator straight to the oven, such as Corningware or Pyrex. Then you can turn the oven to 425 degrees, put in the casserole, and in half an hour, by the time you change your clothes, check the mail, set the table and warm some bread, dinner will be done.
ITALIAN REFRIGERATOR CHICKEN AND RICE
Cooks' notes: We tested this recipe using Uncle Ben's Instant Rice, which has a flavor and texture almost like regular rice.
3 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves (about 1 pound)
1 1/2 cups already-sliced mushrooms
2 tsp. olive oil
One 14 1/2-oz. can fat-free chicken broth
One 14 1/2-oz. can Italian-style stewed tomatoes
2 1/2 cups 5-minute rice
1 tsp. dried Italian seasoning
1/2 tsp. bottled minced garlic
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. black pepper
3/4 cup white wine or water
One 2 1/4-oz. can sliced black olives, drained
1. In the morning, slice the chicken breasts in 1/4-inch-wide strips, cutting across the width of each breast. (They can still be frozen: In fact, that will make them easier to slice.) Place the slices in a 10-by-10-inch casserole dish, such as Corningware or Pyrex, that can go straight from the refrigerator to the oven. Add the mushrooms. Drizzle the chicken and mushrooms with the olive oil and cover with a lid or microwave-safe plastic wrap. Microwave on High for 6 minutes, stirring once after 3 minutes.
2. While the chicken cooks, gather the rest of the ingredients and open the cans of broth and tomatoes. Measure out the rice into a 1-quart glass measure. Sprinkle the Italian seasoning, garlic, salt and black pepper over the rice. Set aside.
3. When chicken has been microwaved, add the broth, wine and rice to the dish. Stir well until all the rice is moistened. Cover and refrigerate until ready to bake.
4. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Remove the dish from the refrigerator and scatter the drained olives evenly over the top. Let the dish rest until the oven reaches the desired temperature. Then bake, covered, for 30 minutes or until steaming hot. Serve immediately. Makes 4 servings.
Beverly Mills and Alicia Ross are the authors of DESPERATION DINNERS, to be published by Workman Publishing Co. this fall.
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