Buffalo Chicken

I'm cooking all the freezer meals we have prepped so I can clean up some room and reorganize my chest freezer. Saturday I cooked up the buffalo chicken and since I had a batch of pizza dough leftover I decided to make buffalo chicken ranch pizza. My son isn't a fan of spicy food but the ranch mix I used instead of pizza sauce canceled out some of the spiciness without lessening the flavor so he devoured his slice. Dinner can be a struggle with him so I'm always happy when I find something that we all like. We used the leftover buffalo chicken to make quesadillas for lunch the next day and they also turned out tasty.

Buffalo Chicken
1 lb boneless skinless chicken breast
1 cup buffalo sauce
Cook in a slow cooker on low 6-8 hours. Shred chicken, return to juice and let cook 30 more minutes.

Buffalo Chicken Ranch Pizza
1 pizza dough, broght to room temperature and shaped
1 cup shredded buffalo chicken
1 cup shredded mozzarella
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup mayo
1 packet Ranch seasoning
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Mix sour cream, mayo, and ranch seasoning. Spread a thin layer of the mixture on the pizza dough; save what's left for dipping sauce. Sprinkle on the cheese and chicken.
Bake for 12 minutes, or until crust is golden brown.

Carnitas Two Ways

I knew when I made the carnitas a few days ago that I was going to make carnitas pizza with the leftovers, but I had so much left after I made 1 pizza that I decided to make creamy taquitos too. I used a recipe from the CPK cookbook for the pizza dough and we loved it; I'm excited to try their honey wheat pizza dough recipe next.

Carnitas Pizza
Pizza dough (I made my own but store bought it
1 cup carnitas, shredded
1 cup shredded cheese, mexican blend or mozzarella
1/2 sweet onion, finely sliced
1/4 cup verde salsa
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Cook the onion until soft without browning it.
Stretch the dough into a circle.
Spread on salsa, cheese, onion, and meat.
Bake for 10 minutes.

Carnitas Taquitos
2 cups carnitas, shredded
1/4 cup sour cream
1/4 cup mayo
1/4 cup salsa verde
1 avocado
tortillas
Smash the avocado with a fork, then mix in the sour cream, mayo, and salsa.
Add the meat and combine.
Put a 1 inch wide line of meat on the tortilla and roll it up.
These can either be baked at 350 for 15 minutes or fried.

The sauce I mixed up for the taquitoes can also be used as a sauce for the pizza; just double the salsa so it's not so thick. The taquitos freeze and reheat well so you could make a batch to freeze and then microwave for 30 seconds when you want one. Hubby likes to microwave and then pan fry them when he comes home for lunch.

Carnitas!!!

My mouth is watering just thinking about them. I feel like Homer Simpson thinking about a doughnut. Winco had pork carnitas on sale last week so I picked up a pack. Once I got home I looked for a recipe because I've never made them before. I found a few for carnitas tacos and it looked so easy (and sounded so delicious) that I went back and got 3 more packs. The recipes I found all called for the meat to be cooked MUCH longer than needed so I came up with one I thought would give the carnitas a nice crispiness without drying it out. They turned out great and now I'm going to make carnitas pizza to use up some of the leftovers.

Carnitas Tacos
Approx. 4lbs carnitas, cut into 2' chunks
1 cup orange juice
Juice from a handful of limes
1 Tablespoon salt
1/2 Tablespoon cumin

Put everything in a cast iron dutch oven and add enough water to cover the meat.
Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to simmer. Cover and let cook until the meat is falling apart.
Once the meat is done remove the lid and kick up the heat so the liquids boil off.
Continue to cook, stirring when needed, until the meat has had a chance to fry in its own fat.

We served on tortillas (flour because it's all we had) with a little cheese and salsa.

Easy Make and Freeze Meatballs

It recently dawned on me that I've never made spaghetti & meatballs. Meatballs are great so I'm not sure how this happened. They're so versatile; you can make meatball subs, add them to spaghetti, cook them in a wide variety of sauces, and they freeze and reheat well. So while hubby was at work I put Baby Boy in the carrier and got to work mixing up a big batch of meatballs. I had been looking for a recipe online and wasn't happy with anything I found so I made my own.

2 lbs ground beef
1 lb ground pork
1 onion, minced
1 egg, beaten
1 Tbs salt
1 1/2 cups milk
1 1/2 - 2 1/2 cups quick oats

Mix everything except the quick oats. Then start adding in the quick oats until you've reached the correct consistency. You want it to hold together when formed into a ball.
Next form the mix into balls. I like to make smaller, bite sized meatballs but if you want them bigger just remember to increase the cooking time.
Finally put them in a baking dish and bake for 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees.

Buffalo Chicken Garbage Bread

I have been in the mood for recipes with buffalo chicken so we've had lots of it lately. The latest one is buffalo chicken garbage bread.

uncooked pizza dough
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, diced up
1 cup shredded cheese (I went with a mozzarella/monterey blend, but use what you like)
1/2 cup Frank's buffalo sauce, divided
1/4-1/2 cup ranch dressing (depends on how hot you want it)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Cook chicken in 1/4 cup Frank's.
When done mix chicken, the rest of the Frank's, and the ranch together.

Spread the dough out into a rectangle on a baking sheet.
Spread the chicken/sauce mix on the dough and sprinkle the cheese on top.

Roll it up into a log. Pinch the dough on the ends to seal.

Bake for 20 minutes, or until browned. Let it cool 5 minutes then slice and enjoy.

Hubby wold like me to point out that the finished bread looks like a graboid. Please excuse the less than great pictures; I was taking them while holding a hungry baby. And I'd like to add that the finished bread is golden brown, not crispy burnt like it looks in this pic. Once it was cool we sliced it up and served it with green beans. Hmmm now that I'm thinking about it this would be good if you cooked cauliflower with the chicken and then you'd have the veggie in the garbage bread. I feel like we don't get enough vegetables so I try to add diced up veggies to other things.

Chicken Cordon Bleu

Since Liam made his appearance I have been all about slow cooker/one dish meals. I need tasty, healthy meals that I can put together quickly during the week (since I'm getting everything done with a squirmy baby in the ringsling).
Last night we had slow cooker chicken cordon bleu. I didn't take a picture, mainly because it didn't look very nice, but it was delicious. Everything was layered in the crock at 11 and dinner was ready to go when Hubby got home at 5.

Crockpot Chicken Cordon Bleu
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 can full of milk
3-4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts - cut in 1/4
6-8 slices ham - cut in 1/4
6 slices swiss cheese - cut in 1/4
1 package dry stuffing mix
1/2 stick butter/margarine - melted
Mix the cream of chicken soup and the milk, pour 1/2 into the slow cooker.
Place chicken evenly in the crock, then the sliced ham on top of the chicken and the swiss on top of the ham.
Pour remaining soup/milk mix on top.
Evenly pour the stuffing mix on top and then drizzle the melted butter over the stuffing.
Cook on low 4-6 hours or high 2-3 hours.

I love chicken cordon bleu but Hubby has always hated it. This, however, he loved. Even my picky 4 year old cleaned his plate; if you knew how rarely he wants to eat dinner you'd know what a miracle this is.

Mini Dutch Babies

Last year I saw an episode of Good Eats about popovers, and one of the recipes he made was for a dutch baby. We made one later that week and it was good but lately I've been looking for small, single serving things to make for breakfast. It feels like I've seen everything made in muffin tins lately so I decided to make mini dutch babies.

The recipe is very basic:

• 6 eggs
• 1 cup milk (I used 1% because that's what we had)
• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup sugar (I use less and sometimes skip it completely)
• 3/4 tsp kosher salt

Spray your muffin tin with a nonstick spray. Mix all the ingredients together and fill the cups 2/3 full. Cook in a 400 degree oven for 15 minutes, or until they're lightly golden and fluffy. Once they've cooled remove them from the pan. Serve by drizzling with lemon juice and sprinkling a little sugar on top.

My first batch was slightly overdone so the centers didn't deflate like they should have. The second batch was so good it was gone before I had a chance to take a picture. The recipe made 18 mini dutch babies but that number will vary depending on how full you fill the cups.

These came out soooooo good. As an added positive: they freeze and reheat well too. I froze the leftovers and later on my son wanted more so I put them in the microwave until they were warm and he gobbled them up.