Chicken and Rice Batch Style

I couldn't decide what to do for dinner tonight so I decided to whip up a batch of chicken and rice. It's easy to make and I realized that I could make a huge batch and freeze more meals!

So, I started by putting about 3 lbs of chicken breast in my huge Pampered Chef sauce pan. I threw in 2 chicken bouillon cubes and put the lid on to seal in the moisture and heat.

I know that 2-3 cups of rice makes one meal for my family so I put 16 cups of water in my huge stock pot and 8 cups of rice. If you want to use this recipe, keep in mind that I used the regular long grain rice, not the instant rice. Instant rice you would use 1 cup of water for 1 cup of rice. I put the burner on high and brought my rice to a boil. Once at a boil, I reduced the heat to keep the rice simmering (not boiling over) and set the timer for 15 minutes.

I used frozen chicken breasts so as they thawed, I pulled the breasts out and diced the meat. I didn't do anything fancy. I just wanted the pieces bite sized. To speed up the cutting process I could have used my chopper but I shy away from using my meat in it.

I did use it for the frozen broccoli! My kids always complain about the broccoli being too big and they can't eat it. To avoid having that conversation again I threw the pieces in the chopper and after a few whacks I dumped it in the pot with the cooked chicken. If I had to guess, I'd say I used 3 cups of diced broccoli.

About this time the rice was ready. I poured in 2 cans of cream of mushroom soup. I only added 1 more can's worth of water though. The reason is I like my chicken and rice creamy, not soupy.

After mixing in the cream of mushroom soup, I took the pan of chicken and broccoli and dumped everything in the rice. Even the stock. The bouillon cubes I placed in there while the chicken was cooking added wonderful flavor to the dish.

After more mixing, the meal was ready. I took the whole stock pot to the table to see how much the family actually eats. We ate about a fourth of the pot which meant I had 3 more meals. Yes!

I took a picture of the dinner. I'm looking at my plate and realizing that I forgot a fruit but other than that we had a wonderful, well-rounded meal. The bread is a rosemary and olive foccacia loaf that I traded some lotion for at the farmer's market on Wednesday.

Needless to say, the meal was yummy and I have 3 more in the freezer for another day. Trying to calculate the price per meal was a little tricky for me. The rice was the conundrum. I buy rice in large quantities through my church's provident living program. I cannot remember what I paid the last time I bought rice.

Since you might not have access to this program, I decided to try to find another source for buying a large quantity of rice to give a better idea of the cost per meal. I found one at Amazon.com. Emergency Food Supply, Instant White Rice I use the equivalent of one of these packets in this batch meal so the rice would cost $4.91 to make the 4 dinners.

Hopefully you can find an even better deal somewhere else. I would look on the bottom shelf in the rice area at your local grocery store and see how much the big bags are. Just store the remaining rice in a sealed container and the rice stays good for 20 years or so. Lowes has sturdy paint buckets with lids that seal for around $5.00!

But I digress. In this scenario of buying the rice from the amazon.com resource, my cost per meal is $3.75. It isn't down to $3.00 a meal yet but I also didn't buy anything on sale and I know I paid less for my rice since I didn't have to worry about shipping.

Anywho, happy cooking and let me know if you have any recipes my family should try!

Meatloaf in mass

I didn't like meatloaf growing up. To be fair, I'm not sure my mom cooked it that often so maybe it was alright but didn't leave a great impression. As an adult, I was blessed to try my mother-in-law's meatloaf and I was hooked!

As I planned what I wanted to try for freezer meals, I figured that meatloaf would be pretty easy. I gathered all my materials and I multiplied by 5 when pulling out ingredients.

The recipe I think is close to what my mother-in-law told me (because I can't find where I wrote it down) is:
1lb hamburger
1 cup oatmeal
1 egg
1TBSP ketchup
1TBSP Worcestershire sauce
miscellaneous vegetables
additional ketchup

I had a 5lb roll of hamburger so I threw the whole thing in the big metal bowl. I took the carrot pulp from the other day and dumped in about a cup. I added 5 eggs, 5 cups of oatmeal, 5 TBSP of ketchup and 5 TBSP of Worcestershire sauce.

For the miscellaneous veggies, I grabbed what I had in the fridge. I always try to keep a couple peppers in the fridge because they are easy to add to any recipe; especially because I have a Pampered Chef Chopper! (Again, Pampered Chef fan here.) My hand cutting consists of slicing the pepper into manageable portions and removing the seeds. Then I pop the top a few times and I have lovely chopped veggies!

Usually I have an onion to throw in my food as well but unfortunately, I didn't have any in the fridge. I bought mushrooms to put in the meatloaf and after chopping those as well, I had everything I needed to start mixing.

Mixing is probably the worst part of the whole process. You can use a spoon but after the cookie dough x 4 experience, I decided to roll my sleeves up and get dirty.

It only took about 3 minutes of mushing before it looked and felt completely mixed together. The egg needs to be spread among all of the meat to help hold the loaf together when you are serving it. If you are worried about germs, the meat is in the oven for an hour. Any germs left over after washing your hands don't stand a chance.

I purchased disposable bread pans just for this experiment. I lined the bread pans with plastic wrap then added the meat on top. After the pan was filled, I wrapped the remaining plastic over the top.

I ended up with 4 loaves. I'm a little disappointed. I thought with 5 lbs we would get 5 loaves but these pans held more than a pound of meat. A good friend of mine suggested that I bulk up my meat further by adding lentils. She said it doesn't change the texture but it does make the meat go further and adds a couple more nutrients. I will try that next time.

I cooked one of them at 375 for 1 hour, added a drizzle of ketchup on top and cooked them for another 15 minutes. If I may say so myself, it was tasty! I added mashed potatoes and fruit to round out the meal.

***Note: Pull the frozen meatloaf out of the freezer the night before and let it thaw in the refrigerator before cooking. If the meatloaf isn't thawed, it will take much longer than 1 hr and 15 minutes to cook.

The ingredients cost $19.22 and made 4 meals. Again, I'm right around $5.00 per meal. Next time, I will buy the meat on sale, add lentils and possibly fill the pans a little less.

I need to do enchilladas in the next couple of days so the meat doesn't sit too much longer. Also, I will be posting about the wheat fiasco soon. (I'm still rolling my eyes.)