Delicious Meatballs- Minimal Effort (because I'm lazy)

Wednesday night for dinner we had meatball subs- a hearty and simple meal that we all love (when I say we all I mean my husband and I- my son has been anti-meatball lately and my daughter is pretty much anti-meat).

I have made meatballs baked in the oven, simmered on the stove and a mixture of both methods but my favorite way to prepare them is in my trusty Crock Pot! They always come out unbelievably tender with no crusty outside layer (I am like a five year old and do not like my food burnt or crusty).

As for my ingredients, I use whatever I feel like at the time. A little of this and a little of that usually suits me well. This time I used 97% ground beef that was marked down at Target, whole wheat seasoned bread crumbs, an egg, grated Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper (if I have onions on hand I use them too but they're not something I will go buy just to make meatballs).

I throw everything into the bowl into whatever amounts look right to me and then get my hands dirty and mix it all up.

Yum, a big ball of meat. Once mixed I roll the mixture out into balls.

Then plop- the meatballs get thrown into the slow cooker with a jar of sauce (no homemade sauce in this house- I have time limitations called two kids who won't leave me alone for more than a mere minute). Once in the slow cooker, cook on either high or low depending on how much time you have. Cook meatballs until they reach 160 degrees on an instant read thermometer.

Not only does making the meatballs this way make them tender and delicious but it also frees up precious time before dinner. I can make these earlier in the day and then when it is time to eat we have fresh cooked meatballs ready to eat instead of me rushing around trying to throw everything together. Plus, the house smells wonderful all day- yum!

What's for Dinner...

Tonight for dinner we had roasted butterflied chicken, roasted potatoes and steamed zucchini for dinner.

Why, you may ask, would I ever contort a chicken to look like that? Well, it cooks faster and it makes it seem like I know a little something about cooking instead of just throwing a chicken into the oven.  

To butterfly a chicken is pretty easy- you flip it over so the breast side is down and then you take kitchen shears and cut out the breastbone. Once the breastbone has been removed flip the chicken back over and push down on it until it flattens out. For more detailed instructions you can go here.

I know that I said I've had an aversion to chicken since being pregnant but I thought I would try eating it tonight- eating beef for almost every meal gets a little boring. We just bought a new instant read thermometer that Cook's Illustrated recommended and I figured if I saw that the chicken was cooked all of the way then I may be able to eat it without gagging. And guess what? The chicken came out delicious and was perfectly cooked. 

Tomorrow night we will be having pasta, homemade meatballs (from the freezer- I made a big batch a few weeks ago) and homemade focaccia bread (the recipe is from Cook's Illustrated and is to die for- I'll share it tomorrow).

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Bundt Pan Chicken

Tonight I made bundt pan chicken with parmesan bacon potatoes. I know it looks silly but the chicken came out delicious! There is really nothing to cooking a chicken in a bundt pan- you just plop the chicken on the pan, grease it up with some olive oil and cake on some pepper and salt.

As far as the potatoes go I used this recipe for them (less the chicken part of the recipe). Instead of cooking the potatoes for 30 minutes before adding the chicken I put everything in the oven at the same time. I also periodically mixed the potatoes to make sure the ones on top didn't dry out.

We also had parmesan asparagus- well I had it because no one else in my house shares my love for asparagus. The non-asparagus lovers had beets in vinegar instead which i find to be gross.

Here is what the chicken looked like on the plate- a little less silly.

After dinner I took all of the leftover meat off of the chicken to use on Wednesday night for buffalo chicken wraps.

But wait, there's more.

To get even more out of the delicious chicken I decided to make my own chicken stock with it. I put the chicken in a large stock pot and added some onions that were almost expired, a few bay leaves, salt, pepper and some carrots that were in the freezer (they were going bad so I froze them awhile ago). I simmered everything for a couple of hours- it made the house smell wonderful!

I then put a colander into a smaller stock pot, lined it with a plain white paper towel (you should use cheesecloth but I don't have any and paper towels seem to work well for me- I just have to make sure to change them out frequently) and poured the stock through. Once done it looked like this. I let it cool on the counter and when it was cool enough I put it into the fridge. Tomorrow I will skim off any fat and may boil the stock down a bit if I don't think the flavor is strong enough. Then I will freeze it in one cup increments to use in future recipes. Not only is this a very cheap thing to do (most of the stuff I used would have just been thrown away) but it is so much more healthy to make it yourself because you can control what goes into it.

So, from one 5 pound chicken that I paid about $2.50 for (gotta love markdown meat) I will have gotten two really tasty meals and a ton of chicken stock to use in future recipes.