Mutant casserole!

[kalquessa]

In a last, desperate attempt to avoid working on my Hammond fic (and because rabiagale requested it) I give you the recipe for the most awesome chicken casserole with mushrooms and white sauce EVER! This is actually a recipe that my sister green_tea_lady took apart to see how it worked and put back together again, only better (thus it came to be known as "Mutant

Comments

[jd3000]

since it will have thickened to a viscous gloop

Cousin of Augustus.

*I have no idea why you have to do this

Hot liquid will integrate better with a roux, but I've made good bechamels starting with cold liquid, so it might be just erring on the side of caution. :-)

I put butter and minced garlic on mine, to keep them moist, but use your own favorite method for yummy chicken.

If you use chicken breasts with skin and bone on and then roast them, you will have the most flavorful and moist chicken possible under the laws of the universe. Only a bit more work when it comes to chopping them, but easy and hey, you can eat the roast chicken skin!

What you also could do to skip the roasting step is slice the chicken into chunks beforehand and wok them up with olive oil, and some garlic and onion powder, maybe a little hot sauce. Then, add the mushrooms when the chicken is nearly done.

-JD

[kalquessa]

Cousin of Augustus.

LOL!

I don't know from roux and bechamels because I am not cool enough. I should take a cooking class one of these days so that I know more about the actual cooking beyond "This is what my sister said to do." Heh.

I am terribly, terribly lazy, and roasting, with the bones, is too much work for something that also involves chopping up other ingredients. The only time I roast chicken is when I plan to serve it as-is, on the bone, because then I don't have to do the work of shredding it and everything.

[jd3000]

I don't know from roux and bechamels because I am not cool enough.

Heh, well a roux ("roo") is the flour and butter mixture, really all you need for a roux is a starch and a fat, but the above are used most often for consistency and flavor. Cooking the starch in the fat allows it to open up and absorb some of the liquid and make a thick sauce.

Bechamel is the snooty name for your general "white sauce", one of the four French "mother sauces", from which many other sauces descend.

You must start watching Good Eats, because geek + cooking = extreme ruleness.

-JD

[kalquessa]

Ah! Excellent, I know snooty lingo! Good Eats sounds fun, alas for the no tv. Do you know if they have stuff online? Maybe I should look them up on youtube.

[jd3000]

Holy cow, this is officially the second best collection I've ever found on YouTube (after the 100+ episodes of MST3k, of course). This appears to be nearly EVERY SINGLE EPISODE of Good Eats, in two parts each. The earlier-season episodes have the more basic subjects and dishes, later on the more esoteric and fun stuff pop up.

http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=LikeTheHat

Here's one of my favorite "concept" or silly episodes, "The Big Chili", in parts 1 and 2. Keep an eye out also for "Mission Poachable" and the Garlic episode, filmed from Count Dracula's POV.

-JD

[kalquessa]

AWESOME!