You have probably heard of work husbands and work wives. I’ve never really had that sort of relationship with anyone I’ve worked with.
What I do have, and what I hope always to have… is work daughters. I have several sweet, young teachers in my department and on my hall who are just getting started in their careers.
They are bright and funny and never mock me when I send them photos of random articles of clothing and ask them how they should fit or what kind of shoes to wear with them. They explain to me what expressions like “down bad” (that’s terrible) or “that’s fire” (that’s good) mean so that I can look slightly less foolish in front of the teenagers in my classroom.
In return, I offer them old-head advice like “do similar tasks in batches to save time” and “always keep a little chocolate in your desk drawer.”
One thing my work daughters have reminded me of recently is that cooking used to be a lot harder for me than it is now.
I first learned about meal planning in my early twenties. A few years after that, I discovered that I could use my slow cooker for ingredients, not just complete meals.
Both of those revelations were transformative for me as my days grew busier and more complicated, but the need to feed myself and my family persisted. Cooking became less a special event and more a daily necessity.
I realized I needed hacks – and lots of them.
One of the ones I use most frequently these days is cooking my protein ahead of time.
When I need a pound of ground meat for tacos, I frequently cook at least three to five pounds instead, drain the fat, and season it all up. (Pro tip: if you like tiny little beef crumbles, add about half a cup of water to the raw meat and cook it all up together. The steam helps break the meat into little pieces.)
Once we have eaten our fill, I bag up the leftover seasoned meat into quart-sized freezer bags and toss it in the freezer. The meat heats up beautifully in a skillet or saucepan for nachos or tacos another day.
Ditto pulled pork. Boston butt comes in enormous packages when it’s on sale at the grocery store anyway, so it’s a perfect opportunity to make several entrees at once.
I rub it down with a smoked salt and cook it for several hours in my electric roaster until it’s shreddable. (You can do the same in an oven or slow cooker.) The cooked pork, too, gets frozen flat in a freezer bag. It heats up well directly from frozen over low heat.
And then there’s chicken. I’ve cooked it in the slow cooker, shredded it, and frozen it, but honestly I do think it tends to dry out that way.
These days, when I need shredded chicken, I usually make it fresh and then freeze it once I’ve made it into the final product: poppyseed chicken or taquitos or enchiladas.
There was a time when I would boil a few chicken breasts on the stove to make these meals, but now I put them in the slow cooker with a little bouillon and water for a few hours on low.
Usually four to six hours on low yields shreddable chicken breasts. Any longer can dry out the meat.
That timing is not ideal for a teacher, which is why cooking the chicken on a weekend or in a programmable slow cooker is easier. If you don’t have a programmable slow cooker, you can achieve similar results by getting a lamp timer from a hardware store and plugging your cooker into it.
Now that you have your shredded chicken, you can make lots of meals: pulled chicken nachos or chicken quesadillas are easy choices. If you want something that can feed both your family and the freezer, try chicken enchiladas or chicken taquitos.
But for pure comfort food, try poppyseed chicken… a recipe that is so quick and painless that it feels illegal. You might even say it’s fire.
POPPYSEED CHICKEN
Ingredients
2-3 chicken breasts, cooked and shredded
1 can condensed cream of chicken soup
1-2 cups sour cream
1 sleeve butter crackers (such as Ritz), crushed
4-6 tablespoons butter
1-2 teaspoons poppyseeds (optional)
Directions
■ Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a casserole dish or 9-by-13 pan. In a mixing bowl, shred chicken and mix with soup and 1 cup sour cream. Add more sour cream if necessary to reach desired consistency. Spread chicken mixture evenly in casserole dish.
■ In a separate microwave-safe mixing bowl, microwave butter until melted, about 30 seconds. Pour crushed crackers into melted butter and mix to combine. Sprinkle buttered crackers evenly over top of chicken mixture. Sprinkle poppyseed evenly over top. Bake in oven until bubbly and golden, about 30 minutes.
Amelia Plair is a mom and high school teacher in Starkville. Email reaches her at [email protected].
Amelia Plair is a Starkville resident who writes occasional food columns.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 36 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
