Michelle Can Cook!
I do many things, but when I'm doing what I love – it is cooking! Welcome to my happy place filled with all things delicious!
Easy Chicken and Dumplins (that’s right, there is no ‘g’ where I’m from)
One of the South’s most popular comfort foods has got to be chicken and dumplins. At least it has always been one of my favorites. I have been known to, truly, have had a bad day and craved chicken and dumplins as a ‘pick me up’.
While I’ve seen recipes that have vegetables in them (and I do love vegetables), I would – personally – never call that chicken and dumplins. For me, chicken and dumplins is just that – chicken and dumplins, no veggies needed.
Certainly, you could make homemade dumplins, but I’ve always made mine with canned biscuits – couldn’t be easier! I use 2 cans, generally, and just cut each biscuit in 6-9 pieces. I find that if you use butter flavored biscuits, like these, it adds a lot of depth to the chicken and dumplins.
For the chicken – while I love chicken breasts – chicken thighs are the only way to go for chicken and dumplins. I cooked 5 chicken thighs in my instant pot and shredded them. I’ve blogged about how I do shredded chicken before – you can check it out on this post.
Once I have the chicken shredded, I added it to a large dutch oven, along with 4 1/2 cups of chicken stock, 2 cups of milk, 3/4 tsp of salt and 3/4 tsp pepper – and bring it up to a boil. I then add in the ‘dumplins’, stir through, reduce the heat, cover and let it cook for about 30 minutes (that is about the time needed if you cut the biscuits into 6-8 pieces each).
While this does reheat well, if you’re feeding a family, good luck with leftovers!
Chicken and Dumplins
5 chicken thighs, shredded
4 1/2 cups chicken stock
2 cups milk
2 cans butter flavored flaky biscuits
3/4 tsp salt
3/4 tsp pepper
- Cook and shred chicken thighs
- Cut biscuits into 6-9 pieces, per biscuit
- Add shredded chicken, chicken stock, milk, salt and pepper into dutch oven – bring to boil
- Reduce heat and add in ‘dumplins’
- Let simmer for about 30 minutes, until dumplins are done (I actually kept the heat on for 15 minutes, then turned it off and let the dumplins sit, covered, for another 15 minutes)
Caramel Apple Quesadilla
I bought some delicious Caramel Apple cheese spread by Alouette from Aldi the other day. On it’s own, it is delicious. My oldest likes to eat it with slices of apple. I was trying to think of another way to use it and decided to make a caramel apple quesadilla in my air fryer.
I started with 1/2 of a honey crisp apple, sliced thin, the caramel apple spreadable cheese, cinnamon sugar, avocado oil spray and 2 flour tortillas.
I didn’t measure anything, but I put enough of the caramel apple spread on each of the tortillas. I put a thin layer of apples on one tortilla, sprinkled a little cinnamon sugar on top and put the other tortilla on top.
I sprayed both the top and bottom tortilla with a little bit of avocado oil and sprinkled some cinnamon sugar on both sides. I put the quesadilla in the air fryer and cooked @ 400 degrees, for 8 minutes.
A very fast and delicious little snack!
Easy Asparagus
Asparagus has to be one of our favorite side dishes. And this is a super easy and tasty way of making it.
Just cut the ends of of your asparagus and arrange on a sheet pan (I line mine with foil for easy clean up).
Spray with oil of your choice (I use avocado oil) and top with seasonings of your choice (I use Trader Joe’s Everything but the Bagel seasoning). Sprinkle on a little parmesan cheese and bake in the oven (at 400 degrees) for 20-25 minutes.
We were so ready to eat, I only have a picture from before it was cooked.
Bangers and Mash
When grocery shopping this week, I saw a pack of five sausages and decided to grab them – not really sure what I’d do with them. But, they looked good and it was a good price, so into my basket they went.
I thought about just doing sausages with peppers and onions and eating on a roll, but decided – instead – to make some ‘bangers and mash’. Seemed like a relatively easy and quick dinner for a weekday evening.
I started by browning the sausages in a skillet on the stove.
While the sausages were browning, I thinly sliced 2 onions.
After the sausages were browned, I transferred them to a foil lined sheet pan and put them in a 400 degree oven. They stayed in the oven for 30 minutes.
In one tablespoon of butter, in the same skillet that the sausages were browned in, the onions were cooked until caramelized and then removed from the skillet.
The next step was to work on the gravy. This started with the oil from browning the sausages (with a little more added) and flour to make a roux.
To the roux, I added some chicken stock. I do think that beef stock might have been better, but I had chicken stock already opened, so that is what I went with.
I allowed the gravy to simmer for a few minutes, then added the onions back in and covered the skillet.
After the sausages had been in the oven for 30 minutes, I removed them from the oven and added them in the skillet with the onion gravy. I let them simmer in the gravy for another 10 – 15 minutes.
Serve over mashed potatoes. For my recipe for mashed potatoes, check out this post where I detailed how I make them.
Bangers and Mash
Mashed Potatoes – see my recipe here, or make mashed potatoes however you normally make them.
Sausages (I used a package of 5) – I used a pork sausage, but think I will try chicken sausage next time
2 tbsp Olive Oil
2 onions
1 tbsp butter
3 tbsp flour
1 tbsp Umami seasoning
1 1/2 cups stock
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp salt
- Make mashed potatoes
- Brown the sausages in skillet on stove
- Once sausages are browned, transfer to a lined sheet pan and put in a 400 degree oven for 30 minutes (flip halfway through)
- Put butter in pan and add onions, cook until onions are caramelized – then remove from pan
- In skillet that sausages and onion were in, make gravy by starting with a roux (if you don’t have enough oil from browning the sausages and caramelinzing the onions, add a little oil – up to 2 tbsp, if needed), then add the flour (up to 3 tbsp) and stir until well mixed and starting to brown (allow it to bubble for about a minute, ensuring that the flour is cooked)
- Then add in the stock and whisk to ensure there are no lumps
- Return the onions to the pan – and allow the gravy to simmer and thicken
- Once 30 minutes are up – remove the sausages from the oven and place in onion gravy mixture – allow to simmer for about 10 minutes
- Serve sausage over mashed potatoes, with some of the onion gravy
Apple Pancakes
Continuing with the apple kick – we had apple pancakes for breakfast / brunch on Sunday. I can’t seem to get enough apples, these days! I’m already thinking of other things – and planning to buy more apples, this week.
The apple pancakes started pretty much the same as the banana pancakes that I’ve posted, before, but with some quick, and delicious, apple compote as part of the mixture and on top of the pancakes!
Apple Pancakes
Batter
2 eggs
1 cup milk
3 tbsp melted butter
1 1/2 cup self rising flour
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
3/4 cup cooked apple mixture
Apple Compote
4 small apples, chopped
1 tbsp butter
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
- Prepare apple compote over medium – low heat, by combining ingredients and allowing to simmer, covered, 5-10 minutes
- Prepare batter by mixing wet ingredients (eggs, milk and butter) – then add in the dry ingredients (flour, sugar and cinnamon), mixing well
- Fold in the 3/4 cup of the apple compote
- Cook on hot griddle (or pan) that has been lightly oiled – 1/4 cup of batter for each pancake
- Remove pancakes, when bottom is golden brown
- Top with apple mixture and enjoy!
Oven Baked Apple and Cinnamon Rice Pudding
I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, but every now and again, I do. I thought I would do a small rice pudding to see if that satisfied the sweet craing I was having. I didn’t have any raisins, but I did have some honeycrisp apples, so I decided to do an apple rice pudding.
I used basic ingredients, with the addition of the apple.
In a large bowl, I whisked the eggs, milk, cinnamon, salt, sugar and vanilla together.
After that, I stirred in the rice and apples.
The mixture was added to a 5×5, buttered, baking dish and placed in a water bath and cooked in a, preheated, 350 degree oven for 1 hour.
When the rice pudding was one, I removed it from the oven and stirred it up to ensure that the apples were well distributed.
Oven Baked Apple and Cinnamon Rice Pudding
1 – 1 1/2 cup cooked rice (depending on how wet/dry you like your rice pudding)
3/4 cup milk
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
3 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1 small honeycrisp apple, diced
- In bowl, whisk eggs, milk, cinnamon, salt, sugar and vanilla extract
- Add in Rice and apples and mix
- Butter small baking dish (I used a 5X5 baking dish)
- Pour mixture into baking dish
- Bake for 1 hours, in a water bath, at 350 degrees
- Fluff rice pudding when it comes out of the oven, add a little more cinnamon to each serving if you like
{Not A Recipe} – A Bit Of A Review from Trader Joe’s
This isn’t a recipe, but a review of some delicious findings at Trader Joe’s.
I’m much more of a cookie person, than a cake person – and, these were all right up my alley. I found the Apple Cider Cookies, Benne Wafer Cookies and {MY FAVE!} – Georgia Pecan and Butterscotch Chips cookies. They were all delicious! If you haven’t tried them, yet, give them a try. They were all less than $4 each. But, a warning – once you open them, it will be hard to stop eating them (especially the Georgia Pecan and Butterscotch Chip)!!
I would assume the Apple Cider cookies are limited edition, for the fall – not sure about the others.
Who Is Michelle?
I’m a mother of two teenage daughters, who loves to cook and loves to go to Disney World. We also enjoy time at the beach.
I started this blog as a place to write down my recipes – I often throw things together and, far too often, forget what I did – and can never recreate the dish I made. This blog will help with that! And, hopefully, others will try my recipes and love them too!
If you try one of my recipes – I would love to hear what you think!!
