Tag: spring rolls

BBQ chicken

I remembered to take a picture!

My dad likes to stock up on meat over the winter when he knows we are coming to visit in the summer…sorry(don’t want to be a Karen) story after the recipe.

Chicken – it doesn’t matter what kind. Get what you like. No skin, bones are fine.

BBQ sauce. See Best Fucking Ribs for a tirade on BBQ sauce.

Put chicken in a large pot (best is cast iron, like Le Creuset or Staub) with a lid. Add ½ a jar of BBQ sauce. Cook at 2500 F for 3 hours.

Let it cool off before you shred it. Then eat it on buns or with a fork or store it for the next day. Slaw also goes well with it. I tend to avoid slaw because it involves chopping…and my husband has a strong aversion to mayo so we don’t do store bought. Sometimes I have the “right” leftovers and I can make it work.*

As for my dad and his hording of meat: we are a family of 5 so yes we eat a lot of food. The kids keep growing (I can’t wait till they hit the teenage years and those food costs). My dad looks for meat on sale over the course of the year and freezes it. Which means that when I get here, I go through the freezer to figure out what we are eating for the next month. I feel a sense of accomplishment when I can finally fit frozen waffles or a pizza in the damn freezer. This year I have two exceptionally large packages of chicken thighs with the skin and bones. However, my kids are currently on a chicken strike. I have to “trick” them into eating it and I’m often not successful. I think it’s a texture/in-their-head thing. So, for the massive packages of like 9 thighs I pulled all the skin off and threw it in the Staub with BBQ sauce. My dad then shredded and de-boned it and put it in the fridge. Tonight, I’m reheating and boiling off the excess liquid and we will try BBQ sandwiches.  

*I also took the leftover spring roll veggies (carrots, cabbage, cilantro, green onion and celery), chopped them up (have I mentioned how much I love chopping?) and mixed lime and olive oil and salt into them. That is the extent I will do slaw. (My husband adores this, non-creamy slaw. Like, it’s kind of creepy how much he likes it.)

Update:

I’m so pleased. The oldest loved it and has now eaten the BBQ chicken for several meals. The other two hate life as we know it when they are forced to eat this. As I’ve said before, I’m a great mom.

chefmckean

Spring Rolls

Spring Rolls are a fucking pain in the ass. My father now understands why you pay for these fuckers.

Plus, my kids are shits. Well 2 of the 3 are. The girl ate these things up. My husband goes nuts for them.

The beauty of these pains-in-the-ass is that they are low calorie, delicious, and filling. They aren’t difficult to make, but they are fucking tedious.

Cut veggies and fruits into sticks: like avocado, mango, cilantro, green onion, cucumber, and carrots (buy the sliced ones and save yourself some sanity in the already-insane prep).

For protein use cooked shrimp you have leftover from the office Christmas party that has been sitting in the freezer. Or imitation crab. Or you could go vegetarian, too.

Follow the directions on the rice paper wrapper. It’s like making small, fiddly burritos with a tortilla that tears easily. Fun, fun, fun!

As we’ve seen before, my husband is convinced it’s all about the sauce. I apparently made one years ago and didn’t write it down so now it lives on in his head as a standard I’ll never achieve. Thankfully, there’s nothing else in our marriage like that.

Here is an easy sauce or two:

  • lime, honey and ginger – mix together till it tastes good
    • lime, honey and sambal – mix together till it tastes good

See the theme?

Turns out that for 6 people you need more than one package of 14-16 wraps (even if there are 2 kids who only take one bite—my husband thinks I’m misremembering this, but did he do the cooking? he can STFU). So I substituted the leftover nori we had from “sushi” night (that’s another “disaster” I’ll write about). This was a horrible idea. Nori in small amounts is delightful, like around sushi rolls. Making fiddly burritos with it is awful, and I can’t emphasize this enough. It’s chewy and smelly and we ended up shaking the insides out into bowls to eat with a fork. It worked; not what I planned but still edible.

Since I still had all the filling I made ceviche out of it to use up the shrimp and crab. Chopped up all the last bits, mixed with the lime, honey, ginger sauce I had left, added more lime. Next time I’m doing this from the start and skipping the fucking rice paper folding. Meaning, I won’t do the fiddly wrapping again (my husband can make his own damn spring rolls; he loves ceviche anyway). It’s not like the kids will eat it in either form. And I still have a shit ton of veggies leftover that might turn into fucking slaw.

chefmckean