Chocolate Chicken Mole Here is a sauce you can make, bottle, and refrigerate. Sanjay Thumma shows how. And then microwave for about 3 minutes a serving of your Costco chicken with the sauce added/dribbled on top . Then add Rice, baguette, (or if on no-carbo diet) a green salad to decorate around the chicken piece(s) on the plate. Note: Thumma (the Vah chef) suggests using coco powder, or even regular sweetened chocolate for the sauce. Don't. You can buy unsweetened cooking chocolate in Mexican food stores, or better yet, buy Cocao Nibs from Amazon, dry grind it, and mix it in 3:1 ratio with sambar powder (a mixture of chili and coriander) and use that to make your sauce with vegetable or chicken stock. This would be spicy-chocolate, completely sugar free. A complete lazy-bones would buy a can of Mole-sauce from a Mexican food store, open the can, taste the finger-smudge, and then cook that with a little Ginger-garlic paste, some garam masala, and water. Sauce is done.
Vahchef also has a Butter Chicken Recipe (<==click for video), where the sauce is cooked separately from the chicken. It is not rocket sci to imagine making the sauce and microwaving a leg/thigh/breast of an already cooked rotisserie chicken with a little bit of sauce, and voila... you have butter chicken. I have been taught (over the years) how bottles of Ginger-garlic paste, Cashew Butter (Trader Joe's), Mint Chutney, Coriander Chutney, are very useful premixes for making curry sauces at home. These things in the fridge can help a cook to convert a can of Enchilada sauce into a Butter Chicken sauce in half an hour. One would also need Turmeric, Sambar (chili+coriander) powder, Kasturi Methi, and Garam Masala(mixture of 3C's - cinnamon, cloves, cardamum). All these pre-mix making have also become part of the recipes in OPOS and InstantPot cooking methods. I think a desi spice and chutney Pantry can convert and concoct a whole lot of sauces to make cooked chicken, meatballs (IKEA), or Salmon taste unique and different.
I am trying to teach a couple of easy dump and go chicken recipes to the 12 yr old, my friend's son. I give him a recipe link on YouTube and if needed we follow up with a video call. These recipes do not use precooked chicken. Question - what is the best way for a 12 yr old to check if the chicken is done cooking? I rarely use a meat/food/kitchen thermometer. I check by poking the chicken with a fork. That's what I taught my kids. Kind of hard to teach that over a phone call. Is the temperature check method reliable? I sometimes found the chicken in my chicken pepper fry to be undercooked though the temperature showed 170+.
A 12-year old should NOT be trusted with poking greasy semi cooked chickens. When they are hot, they could slip away on to the floor and cause mayhem. Are we moving on to uncooked chicken ? This should be a different thread. About children messing with uncooked meat in the kitchen. Dump&Go ?!! I have heard of Shake&Bake, never Dump&Go. People who need some fast meat, and don't mind salt or preservatives in their food, should go with Bologna. Perfectly children friendly. It is a beautiful meat. Like Maharishi's one should not seek to discover the origins of a Bologna (or a rishi). Just experience it for its magical boons. Mayo, some lettuce, Tomato, and a few slices of Bologna between a couple of slices of toasted bread can transport a 12 year old into a healthy life. A well balanced meal....carbo, vegetables, and protein from the bologna. I know that wealthier and uppity parents would go to the deli counter of their favorite Whole Foods and buy roasted Turkey meat sliced to make it easy for their teenagers at home to make sandwiches or toss them into their microwave maggi or ramen soups. This is good too. No need to fiddle with thermocouples to avoid ecoli poisoning from a dead bird that is undercooked, or let children deal with any cooking that has real heat or flames. Fork-poke procedure for checking a "done-ness" of a bird: Lay the flat part of a knife blade on the meat and press down to hold it. This will cause pressure within the meat being held down. Poke right adjacent to the knife blade with a fork, and observer the fluid that oozes out of the meat at the poked holes. Does it seem clear ? Then the meat is just done; let it go for another 10 minutes at whatever conditions, just to be safe. Do not have the meat in a shallow plate while testing; it would slip away and fly off. Do not let children do this test.
If a mom had decided to let a 12 year old child cook his own fresh protein meat using hot-plate or flame, here is a very simple, healthier and safer recipe. No raw chicken, but a fillet of salmon. These cook fast, has less issues with the sorts of bacterial infections as factory-coop raised birds. No need to stick a thermometer to measure temperatures. If it is a salt-water fish, undercooking would result in sashimi, and not stomach ache. Flliet of salmon are sold in American big box stores like costco or Samsclub. Also sold in many groceries including the upscale wholefoods. A typical fillet for one meal would be about 1" wide and 4" long, perhaps about 1/2" thick, with skin on oneside. The child would take a small skillet (like an omelette pan) which has a lid. Place it on a hot plate or a gas burner, turn on the burner to medium-low. Then place a small amount of butter at the middle of the skillet, and let it melt. While it is melting, s/he will lift the salmon fillet with fingers, and gently place it over the butter with its skin side down on the melting butter. If the butter is already hot enough, the placing of the meat would produce a sizzle. The child will then take Ginger-Garlic paste from the fridge, and using a butter knife, take a dab of the paste, and put it on top of the fillet, and spread it a little over the surface. No need to coat uniformly or anything. Then the child will cover the skillet with its lid, and wait 5 minutes for the bottom of the fillet to cook. After 5 minutes, the skillet lid would be taken off, and the fish fillet would need to be turned over to the Ginger-Garlic paste side. This is best done with a (hamburger/dosa) flipper and a spoon. Hold the spoon on the side of the fillet, slip the flipper underneath the fish, and gently put it down on the opposite side. That is it. Close the lid, and cook for another five minutes. Same medium low. After five minutes, Switch off the flame/hot-plate. And let the fish rest in its skillet-closed state for another 10 minutes. [ Closing the lid of the skillet helps to "steam" the top of the fish, while the bottom is being seared. A lid helps two kinds of cooking at the same time] No salt, no pepper, nothing else needed. Just butter and some ginger-garlic paste. Your protein can be served with salad, and rice. Or with salad and a toast.... to make the meal "balanced". Aside: Fish eating cultures have natural vitamin E and D. This gives them an edge when it comes to fighting such things as the corona virus infection.
Hmm.. I think a tall'ish 12 year old can safely cook and check chicken in an Instant Pot. If a 3qt one is set aside for non-veg cooking, that means the cleaning also can be done by putting the lid and inner pot in the dishwasher. That's what I read in some cooking websites. I guess I cook chicken way too well. By the time I declare it done, there is no way any fluid oozes out. I only hold a small or medium piece with a fork, balancing it with the wooden or silicone spatula. Testing the chicken with the fork shows whether or not the inside are separating into enough "threads" or "strands" like we test sugar syrup done-ness between two fingers. : ) The IP's inner vessel is quite deep. : ) I wouldn't trust a kid with any other cooking appliance, skillet or pan etc.
That bachcha is not going to being using a skillet anytime soon! But I will try this recipe. I have a bag of Norwegian salmon fillet with skin I bought and my usual recipe doesn't work well for this. Thank you. Really appreciate the feedback. : )
when skin is wider than about an inch, then you would score-slit the skin with a sharp knife, these slits being about an inch apart, no need to be as close as Gordon Ramsey shows. No need to use salt in this; the garlic brings in the hot'ness, therefore no need for pepper. Just simple GG paste, only on the non-skin side.
