Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Beau’s Sis came to see Jesse yesterday, so I fixed a lunch for us to enjoy together. And I just realized that we never took any pictures of her with him - I’m sorry I forgot about doing that!

Anyhoo, I wanted to make my mother’s no fail chicken recipe, but it calls for cream of mushroom soup. Beau’s milk allergy prohibits cream of anything soups, so I had to figure out a way to make this chicken without milk. I’m learning to make a lot of things that call for milk without milk - it’s been fun trying to think of ways to modify my old recipes. I managed it with the mushroom soup and the chicken turned out perfectly.

For the mushroom soup, I made a roux (I used a combination of olive oil and Smart Balance with flour) to which I added onions and garlic, sauteing them until soft, and then adding chicken stock to start a sauce. When that thickened, I added canned mushrooms (draining half of the juice and using the other half for flavor) and about 2 tsp of dried thyme. I let that simmer for about 20 minutes - it thickened a bit more - and then I added a small amount of oat milk (or you could use rice milk), mostly for richness than for flavor, and I let that simmer about 15-20 minutes longer. Season to taste with salt and pepper and you have a nice mushroom soup.

For the chicken, I placed two packages of chicken thighs (with skin and bones) into my crock pot (Mom bakes her chicken for 3 hours, but I didn’t want to do that with the tending to the baby and not knowing exactly what time Beau’s Sis was going to arrive). I then sprinkled 2 packets of Lipton onion soup mix over the chicken and poured the soup into the pot as well. I started it on the high setting and then lowered it after 3 hours. The chicken was perfect, tender enough to fall off the bone.

The difference between mine and Mom’s is that she uses the condensed canned soup, which is much thicker than my soup turned out to be. And my soup thinned out as the chicken fat and juices rendered into the crock pot. Mom’s resulting sauce is heartier than mine, so I need to work on a thicker soup mix, but the flavors were exactly the same. And I can’t tell you any measurements since I didn’t measure anything in the soup, except the cans of mushrooms.

I served it with rice and veggies. Beau also made roll dough, so we had some of those fabulous rolls that we had a few weeks ago, too. It was a delicious meal, if I do say so myself. And we have plenty of leftovers. Yummy!

[UPDATED (5:15 pm)]: Mom’s actual recipe is in the comments.