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I make! Turkey congee edition

You know how I roasted an entire turkey basically for myself a few weeks back, right?  And I’ve basically been subsisting off of turkey sandwiches since (not really)?  Well, I did make turkey stock which I then used to make turkey congee earlier this week.

Congee is a type of rice porridge eaten in Asia.  The type I made is more typical of the Hong Kong style, but I really like the Taiwanese style congee too.  I rather like having congee for breakfast in the winter (because otherwise it’s too hot) because it’s filling but not heavy.  And because I get to eat spicy pickled radish and preserved egg with it.  Also, because you can make it in a slow cooker and not have to worry about scraping the bottom of the pot so the rice doesn’t congeal and burn.  You set everything up at night before bed and in the morning, you have a warm pot of congee.  Yay!

Congee is pretty simple to make.  If you don’t have leftover rice (as is typically my case), you can start from uncooked rice.  You just need more liquid is all.  I prefer long grain rice for congee because of the resultant texture after cooking.  In this case, I used 1.5c (real cups and not those stupid rice cups) of raw, long grain rice, 2qt turkey stock, 1qt water, whatever turkey meat that I salvaged when making turkey stock, some ginger and green onions.  Everything goes into the slow cooker on low for about 8hr.  The next morning, dump in a few more pieces of ginger and more green onion and set it on high for 30min.  Done.

You can always switch up the stock to water ratio depending on what you have.  Or you can use all water.  I typically make this with chicken or fish, but I had all that turkey, you see.  And there are any number of add ins you could dump into the pot at the end.  It’s one of those pantry/fridge clearing things again.

I make! Mini chicken pot pie edition

You know how I have issues with having too much food?  It happened again.  This time with rotisserie chicken.  I had gotten waaaaay too much rotisserie chicken (i.e. two) for the number of people who came over for dinner one time and ended up with 1.25 chickens leftover.  I like rotisserie chicken, but not enough to eat 1.25 birds by myself.  I’m sure the dogs would have appreciated it if I gave them a whole bird, but they’re (read: Horse) getting too fat as it is.  What do?  Make individually sized chicken pot pies.

Of course, you don’t have to make individual ones.  But since it’s just me eating these things, I like to have them portioned already.  I could make a normal sized pie and then cut and store…but then I’d have to cut and store.  I have 1209310293 wide mouth 8oz mason jars.  Might as well use them.

The filling was all the chicken I had left over, random frozen vegetables, some butter and flour to make a roux, random spices I had on hand (thyme maybe some poultry seasoning, salt, pepper), and chicken stock.  I heated that through to make sure the sauce thickened and then distributed it evenly to 7 jars.  The crust was provided by my now defunct local Fresh and Easy (tear).  I picked up some puff pastry at a discount in their final days.  I just used one of the lid rings to punch circles out of the puff pastry and tuck the circles in over the filling.  I topped them with an egg wash, let them cool completely, and then stuffed them all in the freezer.

I’ve never tried doing an egg wash before freezing before.  I was curious how the egg would turn out after a freeze and defrost.  It seems to be ok.  But if you ever freeze hard boiled eggs, the texture of the egg after it’s defrosted is really gross (my mother tried it once).  Soooo…don’t do it.

To heat them, I put them on a sheet pan into the oven preheated to 425degF directly and bake until bubbly, about 30min.  No need to defrost first.  I’ve never had an issue with a mason jar shattering.  I think it could happen if you tried to put a mason jar from the freezer directly onto a preheated oven rack though.  Anyway, it’s easier to move them around when they’re on a sheet pan.IMAG00572