Thanks, Rachael Ray. I never even liked you anyway.
She always kind of annoyed me. And by kind of... I mean, I think she's the fakest personality alive. Although, I guess I'd take her over Martha Stewart any day of the week... But this receipe-cooking-distaster was her fault, so I'm on a anti-Rachael Ray kick for the moment.
ANYWAY... lol... Jason & I were looking for a receipe to make for dinner on Valentine's Day, and this sounded delicious: Crispy Chinese Lemony Chicken. See? Sounds yummy, right? :)
http://www.rachaelray.com/recipe.php?recipe_id=2496
Well. It sounds easy... but easy it was not. (grumbles)
For whatever reason, we either cooked it way too little... or it burned. Horrifically. We couldn't get the temp. right at ALL. We tried different levels of heat, different amounts of oil in the pan... everything... and one after another... burned, burned, burned. And I felt so bad for Jason, because he was trying so hard with it... and it just wasn't coming together. So we ate Rachael Ray's Burnt-to-a-Crisp Chinese Lemony Chicken for Valentine's Day Dinner... around 1 a.m.
So I guess, techinically, Rachael Ray didn't ruin Valentine's Day... but rather February 15th. lol Do any of you have any suggestions for pan-frying something? I mean, I may be cooking-challenged, but he definitely is not so I don't know what to make of it!
In other news tho!
My friend, LaLa, has the most AMAZING take-to-work or party-treats you could ever imagine! They are the simpliest things ever and taste amazing. I don't think they have a name, so lets call them...
Rollo-Covered Pretzels!
(I'm doing this from memory so here we go..)
Ingredients:
-- Small pretzel-shaped...pretzels
-- Rollos
(Unwrapped, obviously! Thats the biggest pain of the whole process!)
-- Small pecans
(As far as amounts go, buy as many as you want to make. LaLa & I bought 3 bags of rollos and used them all... one bag of prezels is MORE than enough... and a small to medium bag of pecans is plenty.)
Preheat the oven to 250 degrees.
Arrange all of the pretzels on a cookie sheet, and place 1 Rollo in the middle of each pretzel. Once arranged, melt in oven for ~5 minutes. Remove from oven and instanly push 1 pecan into the middle of each rollo. Let cool for a couple hours, as the chocolate/carmel hardens. Place in little baggies to pass out, or in a giant bowl to serve at a party.
Seriously, they are the best things EVER. My coworkers LOVED them, as did hers. She also brought them to the Superbowl Party our friend had and people couldn't stop eating them. So good!
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2 comments:
Kari, I'm so sorry Jason didn't have success with it! It does sound really good! I have cooked chicken and shrimp in oil in the skillet and really haven't had a problem. We have a gas stove, I wonder if that makes a difference? For me, for a piece of chicken, it is usually 3 or 4 minutes per side. For my oil, I usually just dump some in and it usually covers like half the pan and i keep moving the chicken around and always have to add more when I flip them over. I wonder if it had more to do with the seasonings? I've never done anything with lemon zest or sesame seeds, maybe they were your culprits! Ok, so this may not be a good suggestion, but another way you might be able to prepare this is to make the dipping sauce and marinate the chicken in that and then bread it and stick it in the over. Regardless, it's awesome that your man cooks until 1am trying to get it right! We would have been to Wendy's long before then!
Andrea's seasonings hypothesis sounds pretty good, because that's strange that chicken would burn so quickly! Did you use plenty of oil? I cooked with sesame seeds once and wouldn't be surprised if they burned after not too long. Same with the lemon zest, it's so thin. But in any case, I agree, kudos to both of you for sticking it out til 1am!!
The only other thing I wondered was how thick your chicken was. Sometimes with really thick pieces of chicken the outside burns before the middle gets done when you are cooking in a skillet. Two solutions- 1) I usually put a paper towel over really thick pieces of chicken and pound them thinner to avoid buring the outsides. Or 2) After browning the outside of the chicken as long as possible, transfer the chicken to the oven at 350 for a few minutes to let it finish cooking on the inside without the outside burning! But then again if you cut the chicken into strips before cooking it this might not apply.
But an important lesson I learned from disaterous recipes is TRY IT AGAIN!! Otherwise it will hang over you and you are very capable of defeating the difficulty of the recipe! It sounds really good and I'm sure you'll knock it out next time!
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