What's for Dinner....

I should be calling this how to sneak a ton of vegies in on my hubby so that he eats them and can not pick them out as easily...but that title was a bit long. I know I normally also share baked goods, and I will be doing that tomorrow. Dear Middle Daughter was here the other day and I was cooking up a Rachel Ray dish and she said to me "Why don't you post it?" I said to her something to the fact that A) It never looks as pretty B) I normally only like to share sweets. Still since this was such a yummy dish, and it was so easy, and well I am being lazy this Sunday, what with the time change and such , I will share.


The dish is a slow cooker aka crock pot supper. Teriyaki Chicken. I adore those since they are easy, I can get the kitchen cleaned up and I can go off and forget it ...oh and not to mention it makes it so I can buy cheaper meats, and keep supper warm for the hubby till he gets home. I do not normally make any of the Rachel Ray dishes,I think they are great, always think about making them but half the time hubby will not eat anything with a load of vegies and other such good for you ingredients. So though at one time I owned every RR cookbook and subscribed to the magazine, I rarely made any of the dishes. I am like that though, even if hubby would eat more vegies, I collect cookbooks, read through them, drool over them and then....NADA...they become paper weights and decor! Yep, I have become a lazy cook. 


Now first I am going to share the official photo from her site of what it is supposed to look like, then the recipe and well then what I did to it so that hubby would eat it and I could get by on the least amount of time with prep and get back to my Vogue magazine. 

Isn't it pretty???

 Ok here is the recipe from the web site.....

Slow Cooker Meal: Teriyaki Chicken

Ingredients

• 8 chicken legs with thighs attached
• 3 tablespoons cornstarch
• Salt and pepper
• 1 bottle Teriyaki sauce
• 3 tablespoons grated ginger
• 3 garlic cloves, grated
• 3 tablespoons honey
  
• 6 scallions, white and green parts sliced on a bias, but kept separate
• 2 cups rice
• 2 cup water

• 1 tablespoon sesame seeds, toasted
• 1 red bell pepper, cut into thin matchsticks
• 1 cucumber, cut into thin matchsticks
• 1 large carrot, cut into thin matchsticks
• 3 tablespoons cilantro, roughly chopped
• Juice of 1 lime
• 3 tablespoons EVOO - Extra Virgin Olive Oil, divided
  

Yields: Serves 4

Preparation

In a large bowl, dust the chicken legs with cornstarch and season with salt and pepper. Heat a medium skillet over medium-high heat with some EVOO and brown the chicken legs.

In a slow cooker, add browned chicken legs with teriyaki, ginger, garlic, honey and white parts of the scallions. Put the lid on and cook on low for 5 hours or high for 3 hours.

When the chicken is about 20 minutes away from being done, add rice, water, 2 tablespoon EVOO and salt to a medium pot with a lid. Bring the pot of rice up to a boil then drop it down to a simmer. Put the lid on and simmer 10-15 minutes. When the rice is done, fluff with a fork and fold in the green parts of the scallions and sesame seeds.

Just before serving, combine bell pepper, cucumber, carrot, cilantro, lime juice, salt and pepper, and about a tablespoon of EVOO in a bowl.

To serve, scoop a portion of scallion-sesame rice into the bottom of a shallow bowl and top with 2 chicken legs drizzled with a bit of the teriyaki sauce. Garnish with the fresh and crunchy pepper, cucumber and carrot mixture.

(c) MMIX KWP STUDIOS INC. All rights reserved.
132 E. 43rd St., P.O. Box 543 New York, NY 10017
917.332.3100

Alrighty, well let me start with what I did differently...if you been reading my blog when I post recipes, you know darn well I can not leave the darn things alone. Half the time it is my ADD nature and I miss steps, forget steps or don't have the patience for them.

So first thing I did was sub the chicken cut. Thighs were on sale, so that is what I bought. So I used the same amount of chicken pieces, but they were smaller. Then I mistakenly grabbed the low sodium soy sauce and not teriyaki, so flavor profile changed some. Though hubby raved about it I must say. I did not measure the ginger, just grated in as much as I could get out of the medium root I had. I did not grate the ginger, I minced it. Oh and that biased cut thing...yeah did not happen. Just chopped and threw in. 

When I made the rice, I made brown, we no longer eat white rice. Oh I love it still, truly and rice, milk and sugar the morning after ....but brown is healthier. So that was the next thing that I subbed. So on to the garnish. Did not happen. Instead I took the bell pepper and diced it and threw it in with the chicken...I must say it added a lovely flavor to the sauce and hubby ate the bell pepper, which he does not care for , but I keep sneaking in here and there. Did not use cucumber. Do not like them unless they are in the form of pickles. I did not toast the sesame seeds...missed that step. I did however chop up the carrot since I was not making the garnish, and the rest of the green onion and folded it into the rice...I did so at the last minute so they would stay crunchy...hubby will not eat soft carrots.....

Not even uniformed size...really did not matter...as long as hubby would eat it.

So then after I took the chicken out and placed it on the rice, I then sprinkled the seeds over the top...wala garnish!!! 

I think it is pretty, and hubby thought so too! He added more of the sauce on his and so it was more messy, I did not photograph that LOL

So there it is. What was for dinner, and then he ate it again last night and raved about it all over again and insists that we make it a lot. I am fine with that! The chicken was fall off the bone tender, and full of flavor, but not too strong as you would expect, everything was very mild. The rice was wonderful with the crisp carrots and green onions in it...and I liked the seeds un-roasted. For me as I am watching fat and sodium, I was able to remove the skin easily and with using the low sodium sauce and not pouring any over my own plate it really was not that bad and I did not bloat up so always a great thing. So I would high suggest it for an easy week day meal...and obviously you can either do it exactly as it says to do and really make it impressive or be just this side of lazy and have it still turn out yummo as RR would say. 

**** Soon will have a recipe page at the top of the blog that you can click on and there will be all the links to the recipes I have done through out. just give me some time as I have to start from the very first month and go on . Might take me some time. Something to look forward to though right???