since this is our first go-round with our grub club, i thought i would stick with a single dish. the mister and i watched paula deen make these on the food network last week. they looked yummy and i wanted to try them...so here goes nothing.
- 3 cups chopped, cooked chicken
- 1 (8-ounce) package shredded Colby and Monterey Jack cheese blend
- 4 ounces cream cheese, softened
- 1/4 cup chopped red bell pepper
- 1 jalapeno, seeded and chopped
- 1 tablespoon ground cumin
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 1/2 teaspoon pepper
- 1 (15-ounce) package refrigerated pie crusts
- Water
Directions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
Lightly grease a baking sheet. In a large bowl, combine the chicken and next 7 ingredients. Unroll 1 piecrust onto a lightly floured surface. Roll into a 15-inch circle. Cut out rounds, using a 3-inch cookie cutter. Re-roll dough as needed. Repeat procedure with remaining piecrusts, making 12 to 15 circles total. Arrange 1 round on a clean, flat surface. Lightly brush the edges of crust with water. Place 1 heaping teaspoon of chicken mixture in the center of the round. Fold the dough over the filling, pressing the edges with a fork to seal. Repeat with the remaining rounds and chicken mixture. (Up to this point, the recipe can be made ahead and frozen for up to 1 month). Arrange empanadas on the prepared baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes.
recipe and photo from Paula Deen on Food Network
Posts
Yum. I am looking forward to making these. It looks like it is pretty easy - and I would have guessed that they would be more time intensive. We will see how it goes....
ReplyDeletelooks yum! Good choice, Pickel. Chez Brooklyn will have our little empanada adventure this weekend-- can't wait!
ReplyDeleteooh, i am glad ya'll are excited. i did think that they looked rather easy, which is what caught my eye. do note that the chicken has to be cooked ahead of time. i am going to cook the chicken myself, but i did have the thought that if one was short on time, you could probably use canned chicken to make these. and paula noted on her show that you could use any pre-cooked meat...she was just using chicken because that is one of the most common fillings.
ReplyDeleteI just read a recipe for crock-pot chicken taco meat, so we might try this approach for cooking the chicken:
ReplyDeletehttp://prudencepennywise.blogspot.com/2008/09/slow-cooker-sweet-and-spicy-chicken.html
but maybe without the seasoning, at least for the first empanada attempt.
oh thank you thank you. lifesaver you! i spent about 30 minutes this afternoon trying to come up with a solution to "cooked chicken"..i settled on simmering in a pan and even went so far as to defrost some chicken we had in the freezer. too bad i forgot about it and it sat in the microwave for 3 hours. ooops. throwing out that attempt, because this is 'simply grub' not 'simply salmonella'.
ReplyDeletemiss prudence even says she doesnt bother with defrosting...yay! i have bookmarked her blog, because it looks positively darling and i am hooked just from the title.
Scrumptious! The end result was absolutely delicious. I poached a couple of chicken breasts to get the cooked chicken, but misjudged and only got 2 cups. Even with that, we had tons of extra filling. We will use the extra filling for another dish tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteMark and I enjoyed this. Thanks!
ohh exciting, kelly! we've got them on the schedule for tomorrow. I'm going to try starting the Miss Prudence crock pot chicken in the morning and hopefully the timing will all work out. Isn't her blog lovely? And I am so glad that apparently you can start with frozen chicken. Pickel, I am so glad you avoided making salmonella empanadas :)
ReplyDeleteyay!! the first meal has been cooked. how exciting!!! like chez brooklyn, the nmb cafe has this on the menu for tomorrow. i can't wait. still debating poaching vs. crock pot. i have never actually poached anything, so ms. gingko, i might be calling for some pointers! :)
ReplyDeleteWell, if you want to know a little more about poaching I guess that is exactly what this little forum is for... I hope I am using the term poaching correctly, but anyway this is how to do it. Take a frying pan, add a tiny bit of oil and get it hot - between medium and high heat. Then set the thawed chicken breasts on the hot frying pan for 3 minutes. Next, flip the chicken breasts over and add approximately 2 cups of water at the same time. Let them boil and cook for about 5 min. Check to see if they are white all the way through. Depending of the thickness of the chicken breasts, I recommend slicking them length wise to expose the maximun uncooked portion, and set them back in the pan for another 1:30. Now, The chicken was done. Not bad for only 10 minutes and because of searing the outside, and using water the chicken is still moist.
ReplyDeleteExtra hint: The other day, I was cooking chicken like this to add to a salad and wanted some more flavor. So, I added some soy sauce to the pan right at the flip point and just before I added the water. It was a nice subtle flavor that worked well. Hope this is an easy way for you to cook chicken for various circumstances.
By the way we are going to serve the extra Empanadas to friends coming over to watch the Super Bowl today. How perfect!
So, I have now looked all through Miss Prudence Pennywise's Blog, and I think I am in love. Wow! Anne Marie, Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteokay, so i ended up grilling the chicken in a frying pan. i put some frozen chicken breasts in the refrigerator to defrost, but apparently that is a LONG process, because the buggers were still fleshsicles after five hours. booo. at that point my patience was shot, so i did a microwave defrost. since the chicken was not 100% defrosted i decided to go with my tried and true grill method, which can overcome even a fully frozen chicken breast. tasted perfectly fine in the recipe...i don't know why i worried so much, because it seems that this recipe will truly lend itself to any type of leftover meat.
ReplyDeleteanyhow, the result was delectable. we will be eating empanadas again in this house, because both myself and the mister enjoyed them a lot.