Dutch Oven Chicken Recipes, Part II

Dutch Oven Chicken Soup, with Rice

OK, it's been a while, but here I am finally posting this recipe. This is what Steve, my friend, cooked at the Taste of Dutch a weekend or two ago. It was really delicious. The way he did it was a "dump meal", so this also qualifies as a great "Basic Dutching" recipe. It's very simple.

Dutch Oven Chicken Soup, with Rice

12" Dutch Oven
15-20 coals below

• 3 potatoes, cubed
• 2 carrots, sliced
• 2 celery stalks, sliced
• 1 c. cubed chicken, cooked
• 1 can tomatoes with liquid
• ¼ c. rice 1
• Tbsp. salt
• ½ tsp thyme
• ¼ tsp. Basil
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/8 tsp. Pepper
• 8 c. water

Put it all in the pot. Put it on the coals and bring it to boil. This will take a while, and it will be easier covered. Then, you'll pull off some coals, just enough to keep it simmering for 45 min. With all those veggies, and 8 cups of water, you could serve a lot of people with this dutch oven chicken soup.

Now, this is the recipe that he brought with him. It really tasted great. Here's a few suggestions for variations:

• Add a sliced up jalapeno. With this much stuff in the soup, one pepper will give it some zing without burning. To keep it tame, seed and core the jalapeno before you slice it.
• Lemon juice would give it a delicious Mediterranean flavor! If I were to do this, I'd give it as much as 1/4 to 1/2 cup, given the amount of water in this recipe.
• And, I, myself, would probably up the amount of chicken, just 'cause I like more and more chicken in my chicken soup.

Thanks, Steve, for coming along and for having a great time with us!

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Chef's Knives - Tools of the Trade

For about the last three months, now, I've been thinking just how cool it would be to have a really decent set of chef's knives. The ones that we've had stuck in our drawers for years and years have served relatively well, but I couldn't help but wonder if a really good knife would be easier to wield.

I started doing some research. I talked with my sister and brother-in-law, chefs whose opinions I trusted. I read articles. I checked out YouTube videos. I took home brochures from cooking stores. I did some serious research. But still I wasn't sure. Would a good chef's knife really make a difference? Would it be worth the money? Some chef's knives are seriously expensive!

One thing I learned is to not bother asking the help at cooking stores what knives to buy. Either they don't have a clue, so they assume the most expensive one is the best, or they have a vested interest in selling you the most expensive one.

My biggest problem was that, as a completely self-taught beginner, I had absolutely no idea how to tell if a chef's knife was truly better or not. The ones I'd been using were the only ones I knew. At the stores, they'd sometimes let me heft them, but you couldn't really cut anything with them and see. How's a guy to tell? Especially if he's really a rank beginner with next to no real experience?

Well, from all that research and gathering of information, I gleaned several points, which I'll include here:

• The Knuckle Test--If you hold the knife in your hand, and you put the edge of the blade on the cutting block, as if you're cutting something, the base of the blade needs to be deep enough that you're not knocking your knuckles on the board.
• The Triangle Test--The shape of a "cross section" of the blade should be a triangle. By that, I mean that from the back edge of the blade to the cutting edge should be smooth. It shouldn't have a bevel making it sharp.
• The Stiffness Test--The blade should be pretty stiff, and shouldn't bend much, if at all.
• The Balance Test--If you hold the blade horizontally, and balance it on your finger, the balance point should be just at about the place where the handle meets the blade, maybe even a bit into the blade.

But keep in mind that I have no formal training, and I have no idea what I'm really talking about.

As I went out shopping to find the chef's knife that matched these criteria, I had to add some additional parameters, like the Budget Test. It couldn't cost more than $40. That's partly because I still think paying $400 for a knife is a bit absurd* (especially at my skill level), and partly because our family budget really can't stretch any farther than that, anyway.

Anyway, in the end, after shopping and looking and hoping for three months, I found a knife in, of all places, IKEA. It fit all of the criteria listed above, and in addition, it looked nice. And, it was only $20 for an 8" french chef's knife. With a little negotiating with the lady of the house, I thought that I might actually be able to pick up a Santuko knife as well!

Well, I got some good spiffs from my work today, and with her blessing, I went shopping. I came home with a 6" Santuko, an 8" chef's knife, and a wood cutting board. All the way home, I was getting more and more excited, and more and more nervous. What if they're lousy knives? What if they're dull? What if...? What if...? I finally decided that even at twenty bucks apiece, they were still going to be better than what I'd been using so far.

After getting my kids in bed, I settled into the kitchen to give it a try. I got out some carrots, because I knew that it would be a good test. Carrots are stiff and kinda harder to cut sometimes. I peeled three or four and set them on the chopping block. I pulled one toward me and got it in position to cut. I positioned my left hand like I'd seen in the YouTube videos, and like I'd been practicing over the last few months. I took a deep breath, lifted the blade, and cut the carrot.

It felt like I was cutting air. It was the most amazing feeling. I made one cut and stood there, dumbfounded. I just stared at the knife and at the carrot. It was sooooo coool. I got my left hand back on the carrot and started chopping, making the circular up and down motions with my right. I could hear the clacking of the blade on the wood, but I wasn't feeling resistance. It was smooth and quick, and I was in heaven!

Then I tried it on potatoes! And on tomatoes! And onions! And chicken! I sliced, I diced, I minced, and I tried everything I knew how to do. I ended up making a chicken soup out of everything that fell prey to my new sword. ...A darn good chicken soup, too, if I do say so myself...

I am now convinced. A decent chef's knife DOES make a big difference.



*My father has a fountain pen he paid $400 for. Now THAT's absurd.

Dutch Oven Chicken Recipes, Part I

Dutch Oven Fried Chicken, Wrapped in Bacon

In an effort to start establishing some "pillar content" here at the black pot, I'm embarking on a series of series. Each one will be three to four entries long, and I might even mix them up a bit.

There are three basic types of typical meat dishes, and I'll be cooking and publishing some good ones of each kind: Chicken recipes, beef recipes, and pork and ham recipes. When all that's done, I might just add in some seafood recipes.

Sorry, vegans. I'm a carnivore.

The first one is a very delicious and very, very simple one, too, so it also falls in the "basic dutching" category.

Jodi and I were attending a local expo, and there were some cooking demonstrations going on. I, of course, was enthralled. Jodi, not so much. But she sat there and endured it, and when the chef was all done and she tried what he'd been cooking, she was enthralled, too. We exchanged glances, and it was clear to both of us what I'd be cooking for sunday dinner!

Dutch Oven Fried Chicken, Wrapped in Bacon

12" Dutch Oven
18-22 coals underneath, no coals on top, lid off.


1-1 1/2 lbs chicken breasts (about one piece per serving)
1 lb thick-sliced, peppered bacon (you can use thin, unpeppered, if you must)
Salt
Juice of 2-3 lemons

You'll also need some wooden skewers


This one was so simple it was almost embarrassing. But it is soo, sooo good.

I used boneless, frozen chicken Breasts. The chef at the expo used chicken Tenderloins. If I'd had any, I probably would have, too, because they're already the size and shape you need. As it was, I had to use breasts.

I thawed them, and once they were thawed, I lit up the coals. I came in and sliced the chicken into thirds in such a way as to have them be shaped in long, thick strips.

Then, I picked up a skewer, and a strip of bacon, and poked through one end of the bacon strip. Then I skewered through the chicken piece, so the skewer ran through the length of the chicken and came out the other end. I wrapped the bacon tightly around the chicken to about half way, when the strip ran out. Then, I stuck another piece of bacon on the skewer on the other end, and wound it tightly back to the middle. I shaped it a bit with my hand, and it sayed pretty well.

Finally, I broke off the skewer so that there wasn't much wood on either end of the chicken. Just enough to hold the bacon in place. I put that into my dutch oven. I repeated that process until I ran out of either chicken strips or bacon strips. In this case, I had one strip of chicken left over, and no room left in the dutch oven.

By then, my coals were hot, so I poured a bunch of them out of my chimney and onto my little dutch oven table. I put the dutch oven on top, and soon they started frying.

This is really so simple, because really, I was using the dutch oven as if it were a skillet.

Before long, it was crackling and sizzling. Bit by bit, I turned them with a short set of tongs (don't use, please, the same tongs you use for the coals!). If I were to do this again, I'd let them cook pretty well on each side before turning them, because that would help the bacon to stay in place. As it was, I was impatient, and some of the pieces unraveled a bit.

After they'd been cooking on a couple of sides, I got out the lemons. Actually, this time, I had a bottle of lemon juice, but if I'd had them, I'd have used fresh lemons. Nonetheless, I splattered some juice over the chicken pieces. That, of course, set up new waves of sizzling, and a lucious new wave of smells, to mix with the bacon, the chicken, and the pepper. Finally, after 20 to 30 minutes, it was done, and I brought it in.

It was way, way delicous, and it was so simple. You can't go wrong with this one. I also made a potato salad out of bacon and blue cheese. The chef at the demo had also done this. It was great, and also simple, but I'll save that recipe for another day!