When I first became a wife and a mother, I knew nothing of cooking. I could literally burn water. I think all that I knew how to make was scrambled eggs, grilled cheese sandwiches, and Kraft Mac n Cheese. That's all well and good if you're a kid, but when you've got kids, it's not so great. In my attempts to learn how to cook, I just got into the kitchen and started throwing stuff together. Eventually, it got to the point that even neighbors were showing up for dinner as the smells wafted through the neighborhood.
One favorite, that I haven't made in about a decade, is apple stuffed chicken. When I made this for the kids before, they would eat an entire chicken all on it's own. I used to have to make five or six at a time. One for the kids. One for me to have a bit of and the kids eat the rest the next day, and then four for neighbors who "just happened to come by to visit." And yes, when my kids were just 2 and 5, they would eat an entire chicken all on their own.
It's actually very simple to make. The prep itself is what takes the longest.
Get one medium sized onion
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
2 to 3 teaspoons of brown sugar
half a tablespoon of butter
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
5 to 6 large apples, or 10 to 12 small ones (any kind of apple you like)
1 whole chicken
Peel those apples, core them, and cut them up. You want to dice the apples to about 3/4 of an inch in size. Chop only half of that medium sized onion, and mix it in with the apples. Put these into a sauce pan. (Not a tiny sauce pan either!) Next, add your butter, cinnamon, vanilla, brown sugar, everything but the actual chicken. Mix this together and add in two to three cups of water. It's okay to get your hands messy. That's what soap is for!
"Wait! That sounds like applesauce, except for the onions!" Well, that's because it IS applesauce; even with the onions. We're going to simmer this on the lowest setting possible on your stove. We want to simmer for about 3 to hours. We want to simmer it long enough for the apples to be firm, and have a texture like boiled potatoes do when you are making mashed potatoes. But you don't want to simmer for so long that they are terribly soft. By the time these are done simmering, there will be just a hint of that sweet onion flavor, without the bite of an onion. Most people won't even realize there is onion in it at all!
Once the apples are exactly how you want them, you're going to let them cool. Seperate them into one cupful "batches." (I love paper plates!) The reason you're seperating is because you want to be able to use what's left over as a dressing for the cooked chicken. Can't do that if there is raw chicken in there from stuffing.
Grab that chicken out of your fridge. For those that have never worked with a whole chicken before, you're gonna need to reach inside of that cavity and pull out the neck and giblets. EW! Gross! Yup. Again, that's what soap is for! Go ahead and pick it up by the wings. Make it dance on the cutting board. I know you want to. May as well have FUN in the kitchen, right?
You could use a spoon of some sort to try to stuff those apples into the chicken. Honestly, it's going to be easier and faster to just use your hands. Make sure to wash them very well first and grab that first cup of apples. Stuff those things in there. Don't pack them overly tight as you'll need the air to circulate through the cavity of the chicken to get the flavor in the meat itself. At the same time, if you don't put enough, you won't have that nice sweet taste in the meat.
Now lift up the skin on the chicken breast a bit. Put some stuffing up under that skin also. Put some tin foil down on your baking dish. This is to help with clean up later. Rub some olive oil onto the tin foil so that the chicken doesn't stick to it. Put your chicken into the baking dish breast side down. (Breast side, for those not used to working with these things, is the "top" of the chicken. We're gonna bake that sucker upside down!) The reason we do this is so that the juices from the apples, and the natural chicken juice runs through that breast as it cooks. Otherwise, its going to wind up very dry.
Cover it loosely with tin foil and toss that bird into your preheated 375 degree oven. Why 375 degrees? Well, quite honestly, because I don't really know what temperature to bake a chicken at, and 375 has always worked well for me. If I don't know the proper setting, I stick with that one. It works. It may take a while longer to get there, but hey... as long as it's cooked and yummy, that's all that counts.
So how long do you cook it for? Well, that's kind of hard for me to answer. Again, I learned this just by doing it. You cook it this way until the meat is pulling away from the leg bones (but not falling off just yet). You should also do the poke test. If you poke it, and it bleeds, it ain't done yet! The juice from the chicken should be nice and clear. There should be no hint of red, pink, or any other color. If you get green, you definately did something wrong!
Once meat is starting to pull away, you're going to very carefully flip that bird back so that it is breast side up. We want that skin to be a nice golden color. That's not gonna happen breast side down. Don't worry about recovering it with foil either. We want this pretty bird to have a nice, golden tan. Another 15 to twenty minutes in the oven should accomplish this. And, at the same time, it'll make the meat ready to fall off of the bones!
"Wait! This recipe sucks! No exact amounts for ingrediants, no real oven temperature setting, and you don't even know how long to cook it for!"
You're right. The recipe does suck. So try it out for yourself. Experiment with it. Make it your own. That is, after all, what cooking really is!
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