(Not at my house, natch.)
Friend: This is delicious, [hostess], and speaking of which (turning to me), let’s talk about your blog.
Other friend: What about it?
Me: I’ve been trying to do some cooking.
Friend: (laughing) Ugh, what WAS that ham and lima bean and mozzarella thing?
Me: (hanging head) I’m TRYING.
Friend: You just need to learn a few basics, like soup and chicken.
Me: I tried to bake some chicken. It didn’t work.
Friend: What did you do?
Me: I coated it in a chicken spice and put it in my toast-r-oven at 400.
(peals of laughter from all parties)
Friend: You can’t cook chicken in a toast-r-oven!
Me: Why not? It’s a toast-r-OVEN. Gah!
Friend: How much chicken did you put in there?
Me: Four breasts.
(more peals)
Me: WHAT?!
Friend: So what happened?
Me: I couldn’t get it up to the right internal temperature, so I had to resort to the regular oven, but then it just turned to rubber.
By the way, that was two weeks ago, and it’s still in my fridge. Why do I believe that my cooking, like fine wine, will improve with age?
dogs love rubber chicken.
We have a rubber chicken that, when squeezed or jumped on (ask Nate), it makes a horrific noise. Maybe you should try that with the one in your fridge to make sure it’s dead.
awesome chicken breasts, every time:
brine the breasts (~4) in a 1/4 cup coarse kosher salt (plain ol’ salt works fine, too), 4 cup water mixture for 1-2 hours in the fridge. i do this in a gallon size ziplock bag.
remove from brine, put them in a baking dish, sprinkle both sides of each breast with spice of your choice (recommended: fresh ground black pepper. no salt needed, the brine makes ’em salty enough on their own).
bake at 400 for 20-25 minutes (in a regular oven! although a single breast would probably bake alright in a toaster oven – you are correct about the *oven* thing… kind of :). if the breasts are big, they might need a little extra time. the great thing about brining them first is that it’s almost impossible to overcook (that is not a challenge, btw ;). they should come out moist and delicious. if they don’t, you can blame me & i’ll do bad chicken burpees for time – your call on number of reps. i hate burpees, so that should tell you how confident i am in the above method!
I’ll try it, Shayne! If it doesn’t come out, you’ll do one burpee for every ounce of rubber chicken I have to feed to my dogs.
Hey Amy,
I’m the CFD’er (or as I like to say DCF’er) who accosted you by hug the other day. It seems we have even more in common from reading your recent posts. Frankly now I can’t help but wonder about trends when it comes to daughters of UU mothers kitchen abilities. I wasn’t learned on that cooking stuff myself and I’d love some company for a “meals for dummies” or “keep it simple stupid” cooking class. There might (?) be some local class offerings. Albeit classes probably not advertised in my skillful words. Or maybe Shayne would be up for teaching from the griddle. :)
Can’t-cook-worth-a-damn,
Courtney
Yay, cke! Let’s harass Shayne until she invites us over for weekly cooking lessons!
Done.
come here, amy. i will teach you