one-pan meal

[colorwheel]

i'm having a good time lately cooking boneless chicken in a pan with some water and adding pasta right to that pan. i also put in a little bouillion for flavor.

it's not chicken soup because the liquid ratio is low. it's lots of protein with a small amount of soup-tasty liquid. actually i would call the liquid soup, there's just not the amount that we associate with soup.

i use dark meat chicken because it never dries out so the cooking time can be anything.

the first time i made this, it felt so reckless and daring to add dry pasta right in there instead of cooking the pasta separately! but it really works, and the pasta is extra tasty because all the flavors are married (so to speak).

at the very end, spinach can be added. i bet lots of other things could be added. i'm just so into it being only one pan.

Comments

[mdlbear]

You can do this with rice or barley as well -- barley is especially good with beef or lamb. My Mom used to make curried chicken this way: put uncooked rice and something over twice as much water in a pot, add curry powder and a whole chicken, bake for an hour.

You can also make lasagne with uncooked noodles -- blew my mind when I first realized I could get away with that.

[colorwheel]

barley! i forgot about barley! thank you!

[fred_mouse]

I used to do almost the same dish in the oven, in a roasting pan -- the pan could go on the stove, so the chicken (I used to use legs, because that is what got eaten) could be browned, and then everything else went in, and into the oven it went. If covered with aluminium foil, it could be pretty much ignored for an hour or so, and be fine (I probably used to stir it occasionally). I used to cheat on the flavour though - a cup'a'soup sachet allows for variety.

[tedeisenstein]

Fresh mushrooms (i.e. not those awful canned ones); either whole if small or quartered if large.

Pasta: I discovered that when making pasta sauce, or meatballs, you can save a goodly portion in the fridge for later use - but keep some in the pan and as soon as the pasta is cooked, drain it well and then dump it into the sauce still in the pan. Smoosh it around for a few seconds. For some odd reason it always tastes better than pu[tting pasta into serving dish, and adding sauce onto top.