Chicken Chile Verde With A Side Of Chicken Stock

It's January (Happy 2013!), so that means it's been winter for a while.  Everyone has different standards of what qualifies as winter, but for the Adventure Cooker, winter means any day that is less than 70 degrees fahrenheit.  So, what does one do when the temperatures dip, the clouds roll in, and winter plops its generous unwelcome butt in our favorite chair? We make soup.  Chicken Chile Verde soup is an excellent way to kick off soup season, but despair not if you don't have fresh chile in the super market or in your freezer.  Most grocery stores carry it in their canned food section, and while it's not 100% marvelous it's certainly better than no green chile at all, am I right? Huh? >nudge nudge< Huh?

There's a bonus feature to this recipe, that that's a quick side note about making chicken stock from the chicken bones.  Most of the ingredients necessary to make the soup are also necessary to make chicken stock, which can then be frozen for future use.  You can make six to eight cups of chicken stock for just a little more than the cost of one can of store bought stock, but healthier since you can control the sodium content, oil, and other factors.  Piggy backing cooking efforts like this saves time and save a lot of money in the long run.  I don't think I've had to buy chicken broth in over 6 months since I started this practice.

I made this soup back in October, so I had access to fresh chile which I roasted on my grill and chopped up in large meaty chunks.  If you can buy whole chiles in the can, just do a rough chop so you get nice hearty chunks of chile in the soup.  First, though, let's look at the recipe.

Chicken Chile Verde

1 chicken, roasted, boned, and chopped
5 cups chicken broth
1 cup chopped green chile
10-12 smallish tomatillos cut into bite-sized chunks. 
3-4 celery stalks, chopped
1 medium white or yellow onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely diced (or run through a garlic masher)
2 TBSP coconut oil (or olive oil, or butter)
1 TBSP dried oregano
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp salt (or more, depending on your preferences)
1/2 tsp ground black pepper

In a large soup pot over medium-high heat, add the coconut oil. When the oil is hot (but not smoking) add the celery, onion, and garlic.  Sautee until the onions are getting translucent and the celery is bright green. Add the chicken broth and bring to a boil. Add the oregano, cumin, salt, and pepper, followed by the green chile, chicken, and tomatillos. Simmer for no less than 30 minutes, or as long as 2 hours (keeping an eye on the moisture level in the pot).  

This would also work in a crockpot by omiting the oil and sauteeing step and just adding all the ingredients into the crockpot. Turn the crockpot on low for 6-8 hours, or on high for 4-6 hours.

Serve topped with freshly chopped red onion and cilantro leaves.  


Chicken Broth
8 cups of water
Bones from the chicken
The remaining celery stocks chopped into large pieces
1 large onion (or 2 medium onions) chopped into large pieces
6-8 cloves of garlic - peeled or unpeeled makes no difference
3-4 whole bay leaves
2 whole cloves
2 tsp dried thyme
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground pepper

Add everything together in a large stock pot and bring to a boil.  Reduce to a low simmer, cover and let simmer for no less than 1 hour. The longer it simmers the stronger the broth will be, but with boiling comes evaporation/reduction which produces a smaller yield, too.  Strain the broth through a very fine mesh sieve, or through a cheese cloth. The broth will be cloudy and delicious.  It can be saved in the refrigerator for 1 week, or frozen.  

My grocery budget isn't infinite, so more often than not, I'll buy a whole, raw chicken and roast it in the oven, since it usually a few bucks cheaper than buying a rotisserie chicken from the deli.  That said, a rotisserie chicken from the deli would work in exactly the same way as I'm about to describe with the raw chicken.

I don't want the chicken to fall apart in the cooking process which means I'm going to truss it up.  I also don't have any cooking twine so I'll use the chicken itself to serve as the binding tool.  In the flap of skin along the gaping chicken hole between the breast and leg, I'm going to pierce with a knife enough to push the chicken leg through it. 

  

Repeat with the other leg.

Viola! Trussed chicken.  Granted, this leaves the wings unattended, but my pan is small enough to keep the wings pinned in place.  I sprayed my 9"x9" glass pan with cooking spray and put the chicken there in.

I dusted the chicken with some salt, pepper, and put it in the oven at 325F for 2.5 hours. For a moister chicken that doesn't have the lovely golden skin, cover it for the same cooking duration.  This is where my available time to document things and life conflict, so the only picture I have of the completed chicken is this one, after it had been refrigerated for 24 hours.

Obtain your soup and stock pots

Skin and debone the chicken.  Toss the bones into your larger stock pot for making chicken stock and rough chop the chicken meat and set it aside.

Since the goal is to make broth and soup in this exercise, let's get the rest of our basic ingredients together: celery, onion, and garlic.

Here is where you, the cooker, have two options.  You can cook your stock fresh and use it to make your soup, OR, you can use chicken stock you already have on hand.  This all depends on your available time.  In my case, I had stock already in the freezer so I was doing these activities in tandem.  Because the stock takes longer I got that working first.  In the stock pot where the chicken bones rested I added the rough chopped celery, large onion, and whole unpeeled garlic, along with the other spices listed in the above recipe, and started it to simmering.

While the chicken stock simmered, I did the rest of my chopping and gathering of spices.

Then, with great fanfare and with the delicious smell of simmering chicken stock to motivate me, I began to sauté the onions, garlic, and celery.

To this I added my chicken stock, green chile, and spices.

And, to that I added the chicken.

I like using both the light and dark meat of the chicken.  Partly so I'm not wasting food, and partly because I can fish out the dark meat pieces which my children are more willing to eat, saving me the hastle (and bad habit) of cooking them food that is separate from the general evening meal.

OOO! Lookie! Simmering chicken broth!

Here's the part when everything is going along nicely and I grab my ears and yank in alarm because I have very nearly forgotten to add the tomatillos to the soup.  These are very important.  Don't forget the tomatillos.

Peel and chop these little veggies up and add them to the soup.

Let the soup simmer for no less than 30 minutes, but obviously, the longer it can stew together the better the overall taste will be.

I served this soup up paleo style, thusly.

But, if you're clean eating, gluten free, or otherwise able to consume dairy you could also top it with sharp cheddar and/or sour cream.  Matthew and I ate a leisurely dinner, or as leisurely as Matthew ever eats.  I cleaned up my kitchen and put the kids to bed all the while the chicken stock simmered.  Ultimately, my stock cooked for 4 hours before I strained it.

I got this sieve at IKEA (where else?) for less than $20 and it works very well for this purpose.  The resulting broth yielded 6 cups of stock that I froze in 1 cup increments.

Try this.  It's really not much extra work if you're already messing around with the foundational ingredients of chicken, celery, onion, and garlic.

Red Wine Beef Short Ribs

I say, "SHORT RIBS!" You say, "DEAD COW!"  SHORT RIBS! >DEAD COW!< SHORT RIBS! >DEAD COW<! YAAAAY!!!  That is going to be our cheer for this recipe, so break out your pom poms and your glitter eye shadow and get ready for some melt-in-your-mouth beefy goodness.

Allergen Notes: None

Lifestyle: Paleo, Clean Eating

Red Wine Beef Short Ribs

3 lbs boneless short ribs (or 4 lbs bone-in short ribs)

1 large onion sliced thin

4 small turnips peeled and cut into your preferred size of chunks (not too small, though, or they'll dissolve during the cooking process). 

4 stalks of celery cut into thick slices

8 ounces of whole baby brown mushrooms (sometimes called pearls)

6 ounces of small/thin baby carrots (actual baby carrots would be awesome, but the commercial kind work, too)

1 cup dry red wine (not cooking wine, actual drinking wine, please)

1 cup beef broth

1 TBSP coconut oil (or olive oil)

3 tsp fresh thyme (or 1 tsp dry)

1 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp mustard powder

salt

pepper

1. Spray the crockpot with some manner of spray oil, largely to help with the cleaning process later. 

2. Prepare the vegetables, keeping the onions separated from the rest. 

3. Heat a large frying or griddle pan with the coconut oil until the oil is almost smoking (smoke point of unrefined coconut oil is around 350F). Generously salt and pepper the ribs and then brown the short ribs on all sides. 

4. Place the first round of ribs in the crockpot and top with sliced onions and some of the veggies. Repeat this layering process until all the beef and veggies are in the crockpot.  

5. Mix together the red wine, beef broth, thyme, garlic, and mustard powder.  Pour over the ribs and vegetables.

6. Cover the crockpot and cook on low for 8 hours, or on high for 6 hours.  

Beef short ribs are a relatively inexpensive cut of meat that come from, y'know, a cow.  Specifically, they are cut from the rib and plate primals of the animal. 

If you happen to have recently acquired an elk or deer recently (I'm looking at you, Jerry and Melissa), I'm guessing that venison or elk would work just as beautifully in this recipe as beef.  I am completely uneducated at cooking with game meat, so I can't make a serious recommendation on which cut of the animal would work best.  My initial guess would be to suggest using a roast chunked up so it would cook up like stew meat.  

For our purposes, we are using boneless short ribs because they were on special at my local grocery store, but bone-in would work just as well, and would likely create a richer, beefier output as the marrow from the bones cook into the broth and vegetables.  You can read everything you'd care to know about short ribs here.  The plan here is to slow cook these in the crockpot, so go dig yours out of storage, or lift it off its gilded pedestal (which is where mine is kept).  

Next, find your griddle pan or frying pan.  To get the best searing effect, I like to use either a heavy cast iron skillet or my ribbed griddle pan.  I got mine from IKEA for $15.   But the bigger question is WHY use a ribbed griddle pan? So we can get hoity-toity grill marks on our meat, that's why.  Heat this pan up with some oil in it until the oil is just about smoking.  It needs to be plenty hot so when the meat hits the surface it immediately sears. We want to sear the outside without cooking the inside.  

Generously salt and pepper the beef.  

  

Line up your vegetables and crockpot, um, crock so the assembly process can go smoothly.  Everything is there: Onions, mushrooms, carrots, and chopped up turnips and celery.  As a note, you could replace the turnips with rutabagas or even parsnips if you wish.  For a very hearty fall-tasting final product use all three root vegetables along with the others listed in the recipe.   

Now, BEGIN! 

 

Lay only a few pieces of beef into the hot pan at a time, searing the meat in batches.  If you overcrowd the meat then it'll steam, not sear.  Keep at least 2 or more inches between each piece of meat to avoid making the steam versus sear mistake.  And, if you have a ribbed griddle pan then lay the meat at a diagonal to make an even hoitier-toitier set of sear lines.   After about 90 seconds on one side, turn over and brown each of the four available sides.  

See?! How awesome is that.  It almost looks like something you'd see on a cooking show! Only, YOU did it! In YOUR kitchen! 

Lay this first set of ribs in the crockpot and top with a generous amount of onions and then its your discretion how many vegetables you want to lay in.  I strongly encourage layering meat and vegetables so both get to take advantage of each other's benefits.  The produce will soak up all that beautiful beef flavor, and the beef will get seasoned beautifully by the vegetables.  If it's all meat on top and veggies on the bottoms (or vice versa) then you'll end up with bored ribs and mushy depressed vegetables. And, a mushy depressed vegetable can really ruin a person's day.  

By the time all the meat has been seared, you should end up with a pretty full crockpot that looks something like this: 

Pretty, don't you think?  I think so, too.  But before we get all chest puffy we need to add our spices and red wine.  Slow cooking beef is a marvelous smell, but slow cooking beef in red wine is especially marvelous.  Pick a drinking wine to cook with instead of cooking wine.  Cooking wine is more vinegar than wine to preserve its shelf life.  Uncork a nice pinot noir, cabernet sauvignon, or burgundy for this recipe and you'll still have enough to drink with dinner.  Alternately, buy a four pack of small bottles and you've got  four one-cup pre-measured servings, which is nice for cooking, but less nice if you're hoping to have something to swill later.  Note: if you don't have any red wine handy, any fortified wine will work like cognac or brandy, just be aware that if you're eating the Paleo lifestyle that the only compatible alcohol materials are wine and tequila.  

Now. Let's talk about broth for a moment.  

 The common thought is that buying organic broth is best, which is true, but there is a lot more to consider, especially when buying beef broth.  For our gluten free friends, most commercial beef broths have MSG and there are even some organic brands that use MSG, too.  Once you find a non-MSG-using beef broth, you'll still want to read the label because Pacific Rim uses evaporated cane juice in theirs, and Swanson Organics uses refined sugar in theirs! If you can't make your own beef broth from scratch then take the time to be super picky to find an organic beef broth that a) does not have MSG; b) does not use sugar or other sweeteners; and, c) does not have any added food dyes.  As you can see, the closest to the beef broth trifecta that I could find still has organic caramel coloring, which won't work for those who are working hard to stay dye free.  But, for my family the lack of MSG and sugar was more important.  

Mix together the broth, wine, and spices and pour over the beef and vegetables.  Cover and cook on the low setting for 8 or so hours, or on high for 6 or so hours.  The final product will be meat that is forkable, falling apart at the slightest touch, soft aromatic vegetables. Yum.