Friday, November 11, 2016

Squid Cooks: Broiled Boneless Chicken

My wife was out of town for a few days last week, leaving me in charge of dinner.  Just so all of you understand, I'm not completely useless when it comes to cooking.  I know how to make a few things just fine: burgers (as discussed last week), pasta, stir fry, salad, etc.  I would not starve left to my own devices.  But I am lacking in some fundamental skills, including meal planning.  When my wife's away, I usually default to something easy but with my current goal of expanding my culinary capacities, I took the opportunity to learn a couple of new recipes, both out of Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything: The Basics.  The first night was the burgers.  The second was broiled boneless chicken.

Both recipes involved the broiler, a first for me.  With the chicken, it actually made me a little nervous: a fair amount of oil awfully close to a flame.  But it more or less worked.  The resulting dish was not especially interesting, though serviceable.  As Bittman points out, broiling chicken breasts is a good thing to know how to do for other recipes, like chicken salad. 

My wife's brief absence also provided an opportunity to indulge in something my daughter and I enjoy more than she does: Star Trek!  I'd recently taken my daughter on a tour of my own top ten TOS episodes (see here).  On broiled chicken night, we started TNG from the beginning.  So, she got to meet Q!

Have a great weekend, everyone.

10 comments:

  1. You have a great weekend, too. Chicken's nice any time. I usually stir fry it with lots of veges and curry. Yummo!

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    1. Stir fry is actually how I first learned to cook chicken.

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  2. Not my favorite way to make chicken. Neither that nor baking. And it doesn't much matter what you do to the chicken, it just turns out bland. Well, flavored like chicken, which is bland.

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    1. Chicken parm is one of my guilty pleasure dishes. My wife typically makes it for my birthday and/or Father's Day.

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  3. It is hard to broil chicken without the skin or even bake it unless you cook a sauce with it. We stirfry or curry it. But for a chicken burger it is perfect.
    I am such you sharing the evening with Daughter and Star Trek made it more tasty.

    cheers, parsnip

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    1. I enjoyed the company and the Trek more than the chicken, to be honest.

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  4. Broiling chicken or watching Star Trek, definitely both. You guys totally had the best time.

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    1. It was fun. We've been exploring Firefly recently, too. My wife is far more keen on that one.

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