Friday, July 24

Bacon Mushroom Parmy Chicken

Tonight's dinner experiment was a variant mix of a few recipes I've had before. It uses one prepared item, about half a jar of alfredo sauce. It has dairy but no gluten. The measures vary depending on what you want so I don't have a solid nutrient count. The kid declared THE BEST MEAL EVER(TM) so I thought maybe I should blog it, though it's not all that original.

Bacon Mushroom Parmesan Alfredo Chicken

(Doesn't that title make you think that recipes are named like German words? Although if it were really like German it would be more like Baconmushroomparmesanalfredochickencookedinsquarepan -- all one word, haha.)

Ingredients
3 very big skinless boneless chicken breasts or equivalent
6 strips of bacon cut in half (and their drippings from frying)
~1 package of mushrooms (from 1/4cup to 1.5cup, whatever you have)
1/2 cube butter cut in thin slices (that's 1/8 cup or 4 oz for those without cubes)
handful of shredded parmesan cheese (1/4cup to 1cup, whatever you have)
half a jar (or 6-8oz homemade) alfredo sauce or some variant on that
baking pan (I used square 8")

Instructions
heat oven to 350 degrees F.
cook the half bacon slices (you want 3-4 per chicken breast) until ~ 1/2 or more done
put slices of butter over bottom of baking pan
put sliced mushrooms over the butter
put part of the parmesan lightly sprinkled over it all
cut fat off chicken breasts (if you wish) and season them both sides with onion powder, garlic powder, and the herbal season of your choice (I used Green Goddess dressing base from Penzey's, italian seasoning would work too) and place the chicken breasts on top of the mushrooms
sprinkle the rest of the parmesan over all of it, chicken too
place the strips of bacon over the top of the chicken breasts
pour the bacon grease from your few strips into the bottom of the baking dish
pour the alfredo sauce lightly all around the pan both on chicken and in the other areas (it should be enough to make it a little saucy but not enough to drown it)
Bake it at 350 for about 50-60 minutes.

When you're done, if you like you can take the pan drippings and mix it with sour cream, or cream cheese, or coconut flour, or some blendered cooked cauli, or NotStarch/ThickNThin, or whatever you like to use to make gravy-like concoctions. It is pretty edible even without the extra sauce though. Alternatively if you have one of those oil separators used for gravy, used that on the drippings and then just pour the non-oil part of that over the chicken before serving.

No nutrient counts here. Chicken and bacon = 0 carbs. The rest of the ingredients have some carbs but very few especially when it's divided up into servings.

The mushrooms were unusually tasty. Kid raved about them and I had to admit they were really good. Some mix of butter, bacon grease, and parm, plus a bit of the spices on the chicken just above, combined to make that unusually good.

I haven't really felt like cooking in eons but suddenly have the enthusiasm and energy. I haven't felt like doing anything to my house in months either, but woke up at 4am this morning and was inspired to clean out a few cupboard shelves and drawers and make tea and so on. Although I don't feel anywhere near ketosis yet (this is day 12 of re-starting low-carb), something must be working since I apparently have a lot more energy than before!

Maybe I will finally get off my butt and use my pressure cooker. I'm really crazy about the idea of coming up with a low low-carb pressure cooker recipe series. Just being able to cook a whole lot of meat in a very short time, and cook tasty but cheaper cuts so they are tender, seems like it would make the PC ideal for LC eating.

PJ
.

No comments: