The previous night I found myself remembering that I need to eat food because I knew that I would wither away if I didn’t. I looked in the freezer and pulled out a package of frozen boneless chicken breasts. Well, our microwave is piece of junk and there’s just no way to know how to correctly thaw out frozen meat with it. So, being the creative fool I am, I thought to myself, “I bet I could thaw a piece of chicken out by boiling it in water.” Ok, great idea! I put a pan of water on the stove, added salt and a drop of oil, and turned the burner on. Once the water was boiling, I added one chicken breast. 20 minutes later, I poked the chicken breast with a fork. Lo and behold: a thawed out piece of chicken.
I had fried some vegetables up in a pan with some oil and various spices. Then I cut the boiled chicken into cubes. It was thoroughly cooked all the way through. Success! Well, not really. Boiling chicken essentially sucks out all the juices of flavor and though you may have a nicely cooked piece of meat…it essentially comes out blande and dry. I rarely complain about the flavor and experience of a meal, but I’ll admit that there are definitely better ways to cook a piece of frozen chicken when you have forgotten to lay it out overnight or while you’re at work.
So here’s what I did tonight and plan on doing occasionally in the future.
Ingredients:
- Frozen chicken breast (boneless or bone, probably doesn’t matter)
- Tomato sauce
- vegetables (I only added garlic, but any and all vegetables would simply add to the dish)
- salt
- pepper
- spices of your choice (I added rosemary and dried onions)
- parmesan (optional, of course)
Instructions (total cook time: 1 hour 45 minutes)
- Preheat oven to 375 Fahrenheit for 2o minutes
- Place frozen chicken breast in an oven-safe glass or metal container
- Cover chicken with tomato sauce, making sure it is fully coated
- Add vegetables of choice
- Add salt, pepper, & spices (Amount is up to you. We all have our preferences.)
- Place in oven for 60 minutes (that is the same as one hour, whoa!)
- Pull the container out of the oven and sprinkle parmesan or your favorite cheese if you desire that sort of thing
- Cut into the chicken while you have it out and using a spoon, pour some of the sauce from the container over the cuts so that the inside of the meat can soak it up a little
- Place the container back in the oven for 25 minutes
- Pull it out and let it cool off for 20 minutes
- Dig in
