Friday, July 30, 2010

From My Kitchen: Italian Chicken


This chicken dish is super fast, super easy and super yummy. It was borne out of desperation one day when I needed to get some supper together in a hurry.

I thawed some chicken breasts, grabbed a can of seasoned tomatoes, tossed in some additional garlic and turned out a delicious meal in 20 minutes. Eat my dust, Rachael Ray!

If you aren't a fan of garlic, you can skip the extra, but for my taste it needed a little more kick.

I'm not sure this even qualifies as a recipe, but here it is:

Trippin' Mama's Italian Chicken
1 1/2 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken (breasts or thighs)
1 can diced tomatoes with basil, garlic and oregano
1 clove diced garlic
1 C. chicken stock or chicken bouillon

Salt and pepper chicken well. In a deep skillet brown the chicken in olive oil, a couple minutes per side. Add the garlic and cook for one minute. Add tomatoes (juice and all) and chicken stock (or water and chicken bouillon) to the pan and cover. Poach for approximately 15 minutes, or until chicken is cooked through.

Note: It is important to poach the chicken. That means your liquid should only come up a little less than halfway on the meat. If you don't need all of the chicken stock, that's fine. If you use too much liquid you will be boiling the chicken, and I find that it loses the nice juicy, meaty bite. It can even turn out a bit slimy. This is one reason I don't like to cook chicken in the slow cooker.

Remove chicken from pan and slice. If you didn't use all of your chicken stock earlier, or if you want a little more sauce, throw some extra in the pan now. Put roughly a tablespoon of cornstarch in 1/3 C. cold water and stir to combine. Pour into hot tomato and chicken stock mixture and stir to thicken. Return chicken to pan and stir to coat.

Serve over thin spaghetti or vermicelli. Top with parmesan cheese or even a little mozzerella if you're feeling especially indulgent. Add some nice crusty bread to soak up the sauce and revel in the fact that sometimes simple really is best.

We love to serve up the leftovers by piling the chicken and tomato sauce on some nice crusty rolls with a slice of provolone or some mozzarella for a knockout sandwich.

Enjoy!

© Trippin' Mama 2010

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Love that this is so simple! Thanks for the idea and recipe!

Anonymous said...

I made this last night and it was delicious and so easy! Thanks for the idea :) Nothing like a quick, no thinking involved recipe.