Yogurt Marinated Chicken – Everybody out of Cupboard/Roll-call

When chicken goes on sale, I like to make a yogurt marinated chicken.

It’s sort of like tandoori or butter chicken, only I don’t use garam masala in the spice blend – mostly because garam masala as a mix is to expensive for me to buy when I’ll only use it once every 3 months, and the other is because it has cinnamon in it and it’s something that my taste buds can’t stand, and other spices that I can’t really taste. That being said, it’s cheaper to make your own mix and there’s plenty of recipes for that online elsewhere.

I call it Everybody out of the Cupboard, or Cupboard Roll-call because it uses all the odd spices that I normally don’t use very much. It’s a great way to use them up, because buying spices at the grocery store is generally a case of -this will expire/go bad/go stale before I use it all- and they can sit in the cupboard for years. What about a bulk food store you say? Public transit, it takes a minimum 3-4 hours roundtrip to get to it, too much a hassle. People clean out their fridges and pantries before things can go off, but never think to do the same to their spice cabinet/drawers.

1. Chicken Breasts – sliced into strips or 1″ chunks, your preference.
   2-3 breasts for these quantities. If doing more, increase your yogurt & lemon juice.
2. 1 cup yogurt – preferably plain, greek style, but I skim the top half of one of those fruit on the bottom types and it works fine enough for me. Vanilla also works.
3. 1 small can/6 tbsp tomato paste
4. 1/4 cup lemon juice – bottled is fine, I can’t afford fresh
5. 1 tsp each of the following spices

• ground ginger
• garlic salt
• ground cumin
• ground tumeric
• cayenne powder
• onion powder
• dry mustard – also known as mustard powder, dry mustard powder, hot mustard powder
• salt
• ground/cracked black pepper

For a more ‘authentic’ taste, you can add ground coriander, ground cardamom, ground cinnamon, ground cloves & ground nutmeg. Together with ground black pepper & ground cumin makes the garam masala mix.

Any spice that isn’t in the thyme/basil/sage etc category can go in the mix really.

1. Throw everything into a ziplock bag and mix together, then refrigerate at least 4 hours but preferably overnight.
2. Grease a baking/casserole dish, then dump in everything from the ziplock bag, including the extra marinade.
3. Cook @ 350 in the oven for 1 1/2 hours. You might need extra time if you’ve added more chicken and depending on the thickness of your chicken.

You could figure out how to adapt it to the IPot, but I’ve tried it a couple different ways and using the Seal Lock when cooking makes an ungodly mess, and without the Seal Lock it takes the same amount of time as it does in the oven, or even longer using the slow cook method.

Serve over rice or your favourite grain/starch, or use as the meat in tacos or pita wraps. I was forced to make a lettuce bowl – it’s there at the bottom, because I tried a cheap brand of pita wraps and they were too flimsy to make a wrap/burrito.

 

For those daring, you can increase the yogurt and lemon juice for volume and even do a whole chicken(either whole or split the spine to spread it out), marinate overnight and then roast it in the oven.

Don’t like using a ziplock bag because it’s plastic/wasteful? That’s fine. You could even marinate it in your baking dish as long as you include 1/4 cup of oil but I find that sometimes the parts on top don’t get marinated enough. Just don’t use a plastic tub container because it’ll ruin the plastic – spaghetti sauce ring like ruin it.

Spice Blend – Chinese Five Spice

Just for my records, can’t keep track of what’s in what and getting confused when people add a blend to a recipe then just call for most of everything in the blend to be added to the recipe separately. Sourced from a post on All Recipes.

Chinese-Style Five Spice Rub
Ingredients
1/4 cup whole star anise pods
5 tablespoons whole cloves
5 tablespoons Szechuan peppercorns
5 tablespoons fennel seed
1/4 cup ground cinnamon
Directions
Grind the anise pods, cloves, peppercorns, fennel, and cinnamon in a 
spice mill or with a mortar and pestle to a fine powder. 
Store in a sealed container in a cool dark place until needed.

Spice Blend – Adobo

 

Adobo Spice Blend – not to be confused with filipino adobo which is a cooking style and not a spice blend, as far as im concerned. That gets really confusing, especially when watching cooking shows on tv.

These Spice Blend recipes are just for my records, and most of them come from posts on All Recipes.

 

Homemade Adobo All-Purpose Seasoning
3 tablespoons garlic powder
2 1/2 tablespoons salt
2 teaspoons ground black pepper 
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
   Directions
Whisk garlic powder, salt, black pepper, oregano, and turmeric 
together in a bowl. Store in an airtight container.

We’ll see how trying to credit/source these things go formatting wise.

Spice Blend – Garam Masala

Garam Masala, this is just for my records really because I keep forgetting what’s in what, or getting confused when a recipe calls for a spice blend but then adds -more- of a spice already in the blend. I’ve seen one recipe in particular that calls for garam masala but then called for 6 of the 7 spices to be added on top of it, which is, rather pointless.

Garam Masala

• cumin
• coriander
• cardamom
• black peppercorn
• cinnamon
• cloves
• nutmeg

Quoted from All Recipes, and I have no idea how to do Source Credit or Footnote post in here.

1 Simple Spice Mix, 8 Thrilling Indian Dishes

“The Spice Mix: Easy Garam Masala

Garam masala is a fragrant blend of ground spices that comes in countless variations. This basic recipe combines cumin, coriander, cardamom, black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. Compare it with Kashmiri Garam Masala, a dry-roasted spice blend that includes those seven spices plus bay leaves, fennel seed, and mace; or Tandoori Masala, which includes the seven plus garlic powder, ginger, fenugreek, and mace.”

Everybody Out of the Cupboard – Spice Blend.

Make a Dent in the Spice Cupboard spice blend.

This works great as a spice rub for pork or chicken, or in a yogurt marinade for chicken.

Start at 1 tsp for 2 servings of meat, double the quantity of spice every time you double the meat portion.

• ground ginger
• garlic salt
• ground cumin
• ground turmeric
• cayenne powder
• onion powder
• dry mustard – also known as mustard powder, dry mustard powder, hot mustard powder
• salt
• ground/cracked black pepper

IPot – Lemon Butter Fish & Potatoes

You’ll need an “oven-safe” Dish* that fits your IPot, and a Steamer Rack*.

Ingredients:

• Fish Fillet* – any white fish will do.
• Butter – a stick/block of butter, cut into ‘pats’ or ‘squares’.
• Lemon Juice – 1/4 cup, ish.
• Spices: 1/2 tsp Dill, 1/2 tsp Cilantro, salt & pepper to taste.
• 2 cloves garlic – peeled, crushed & sliced/diced.
• Potatoes – a handful of small/baby potatoes, or however many you think you’ll eat.

1. Cut your fillet so that it fits in the dish. If you have to stack them on top of each other, that’s okay, but wait till you sprinkle your spices over them.
2. Spice your fillet/s, sprinkle with salt & pepper to taste, and the dill and cilantro.
3. Arrange the fillet/s in the dish, placing butter pieces between the pieces if you have to layer the fish to fit.
4. Throw the garlic over the fish, and arrange the butter pieces however you want them.
5. Pour the lemon juice around the edge of the dish and not over the fish as to not disturb the spices.
6. Cover your dish, if it doesn’t have a lid that’ll fit, aluminum foil or seran wrap will do.
7. In the bottom of your IPot, place your potatoes and arrange your steamer rack. Cover the potatoes at least half-way with water. Then place your Dish on the steamer rack.
8. Set the lid & sealing value, turn on manual for 20 minutes to be sure the potatoes cook all the way thru. If you skip the potatoes, you might only need 10-15 minutes, else you’ll overcook your fish.
9. Try not to burn yourself or spill anything when getting your Dish out so that you can get to the potatoes.

I also meant to put Celery Salt on this but completely forgot. If someone wants to try before I make this again and report back on the taste, let me know how it goes.

I could also recommend that you try adding milk or cream instead of the lemon juice, and adding lemon to taste when you put it on your plate. But I don’t normally have dairy in the apartment since it’s just me, it’s a waste of money because it spoils to fast.

*Potatoes – I recommend using yellow baby potatoes, but I used blue potatoes because I had to. The cheapest bag of potatoes for me is a ‘local’ 5lb bag of small/baby potatoes that’s a mix of blue, red & yellow that costs 3.99$, the only problem with it is that I find that blue potatoes -do not- keep, at all, as in they rot within a week. They do not sprout, they ROT as in goey/juicey Rot. So I pretty much cook the blue ones the same day I get them home out of sheer paranoia.

*Fish Fillet :I used a Hake fish fillet today, because it was cheaper than Cod or Halibut. You could use tilapia, or basa. Any white fish would work really. I also see no reason why it couldn’t work from frozen other than getting it to fit in your dish. You could use a fish like salmon, but the spices would likely need to be adjusted.

*”Oven Safe” Dish : Finding these to fit a 6qt or especially the 3qt IPot’s are -hard-, especially one that’ll fit on top a Steamer Rack. Finding one that isn’t a burn hazard of a nuisance that you can get out while it’s hot is even harder. You might have to do your potatoes separately, and skip the dish all together.

*Steamer Rack : Anything in Stainless or Silicone covered, that raises your dish off the bottom of the pot, above the water line and still allows you to put your “dish” in the pot. If you skip the potatoes, it can be a stainless steel trivet. If you have a shallow “dish”, then you could possibly even get away with using one of those stainless beer can chicken stands. I picked up mine from an asian grocery store, they had two with different heights and also had a trivet version. Why the emphasis on stainless, because anything else like copper or cast iron can react to your recipe and ruin your IPot Insert, and who knows that the hell is in the painted ones.