I am such a chicken!

... at least when it comes to raw meat. And this is a fairly new development. I don't know what the deal is, but recently (ok, like the last 6 months but over the course of my life, 6 months is pretty recent. No? Whatev) raw meat has begun to really get to me. I grew up in a kitchen where meat was cooked for almost every meal. I was never grossed out by my dad taking the neck and stuff out of the thanksgiving turkey, never minded hamburger meat, thought chickens were even kinda funny looking. 

Who came up with this?

My dad was also the one who told me that the red stuff the ground beef was in was just "juice." (sidenote: I'm the biggest daddy's girl there could ever be and what daddy says is true!) To this day, I still only think of it as juice (which is may or may not be true, jury is out). So what is my deal?!?

IDONTKNOW!!!!

But whatever has changed makes it really difficult to cook sometimes. I think raw ground beef smells funny (anybody else?) but once I get past that and throw it in the pan to cook with some delish spices and what-not, I think it smells great! So thats not a real problem. The problem is with chicken. Raw chicken. Blech! I shiver thinking about it sometimes. This may stem from my encounter with salmonella my junior year of college (chicken may not have even been the culprit, who knows!) but whatever it is, I can't deal. Which leads me to my most recent disasters in the kitchen concerning chicken.

This is probably a sign that I definitely need to incorporate meatless mondays...

Before we get started, I should also mention that I'm super picky about chicken. In my humble opinion, dry, overcooked chicken is one of the very worst things that you could ever have to eat. Yuck! Sometimes ranch can save it but I don't believe that should be necessary (although I do love some ranch on my chicken!) I'm also really worried about undercooked chicken (salmonella say what?) so there is a fine line that chicken walks and it is hard to please me. It's just the way it is. Sorry I'm not sorry.

First off, we have the chicken wing fiasco*

*if you're squeamish and don't like raw chicken, completely skip this post and I'll see you tomorrow!

Some of Dt's fav things to eat are hot wings. In the past, a friend grilled wings for us which we thought were great but when Dt tried to recreate them, they were not exactly cooked through (GAG!) Even though he was willing to cook them more, seeing them a little raw ruined my appetite for them. We haven't attempted since. 

Nope, not our chicken... but this was the goal...

But since we had our last big football game of the season (we still don't speak of the score from that night), I figured I would attempt to make some wings for him in our kitchen. I'm not a big fryer, and I obvi wasn't going to attempt to grill them (that's Dt's department), so I found a recipe for baked chicken wings. Sounds perfect right?!? Well, not so fast...

I asked Dt to stop by the store and pick up some wings the night before the game. He thought he bought what I was looking for (and at first glance, so did I) and this is what he brought home.

Mmmm, raw chicken.

Does anything look a little off to you? These do not look like chicken wings from a restaurant! Ok, whatever, maybe I'm just not used to what they look like raw. But as I'm rinsing the chicken to put in the marinade (I always rinse raw chicken, anybody else?), I started to notice that something was def off. First of all, there were only like 4 actual drumstick and those babies were huge! Weird, but I'll go with it. Then I got to the leg things (yuck, is this grossing anyone else out? I'm dying just thinking about it but I shall proceed for your sake). See them over there in the right corner? Those were super gross looking (and I'd never seen them serve those at Wild Wings) but I knew what they looked like cooked so I kept on keeping on. Then I got to those middle pieces. What the hell where they? They were huuuuuuge pieces of chicken with a bone in them. But it basically looked like a gross chicken breast with a bone in it. After the fact, Dt said they were thighs but either way, no me gusta! So after I had discovered all the weird pieces of chicken I was working with, I decided to go ahead and marinate them because I knew I was just overreacting and my boy was looking forward to homemade wings while watching his last football game. 

Kinda look like normal marinating chicken here

Fast forward to the next day after the chicken had marinated and I'm taking it out of the bag to put in the oven. I lose it! I don't know if I was just grossed out from the day before or if the hot sauce combined with the chicken got me, but whatever it was, I couldn't stop gagging and Dt had to come to the rescue. The poor boy who thought he was just responsible for cheering on his tigers and dancing during touchdowns had to come handle the raw chicken for me. He did a great job and this is what it ended up looking like.

The chicken had actually shrunk to normal size and looked similar to something you would find in a restaurant but I was still scarred from the raw version of it so even though it looked better, I was not eating it. I didn't even cook the final sauce that you are supposed to cover the chicken in. Dt has been munching on this chicken throughout the week for lunch or when I'm at work and he thinks it turned out great (even without the final sauce) but I'll take his word for it because I'm not eating it. Epic fail. 

If you are a grown up and can deal with raw chicken here is the recipe I was originally attempting. I may try again one day with actual chicken wings instead of the combination pieces of chicken that we ended up with but it will take some time (maybe next football season). 

My next attempt at cooking chicken was this stuffed chicken 

I got the recipe from one of the blogs I read and it sounded really simple and delicious. Overall it was, but somehow I managed to overcook it or something because it turned out really dry. Another fail. 

Pre-cooked 

Cooked

Served

The only bad part of this recipe was cutting the chicken breasts in half which is just a pain and kind of hard to do. But the rest of it was pretty easy and other than being dry, it was pretty good. But I love artichoke hearts and mozzarella so it's pretty hard to go wrong. Here's the recipe and hopefully yours turns out better than mine!

Artichoke and Spinach Stuffed Chicken Breasts

4-6 boneless skinnless chicken breasts

1/2 cup spinach (I used frozen spinach and thawed it)

1/2 jar artchokes, drained and chopped

1/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

1/4 cup bread crumbs

Italian seasoning, pepper and salt to taste

Split the chicken breasts in half and stuff each with spinach, mozzarella and artichokes. Top with a few bread crumbs. Season with Italian seasoning, salt and pepper to taste. Cook at 350 for 20-25 minutes.

So, overall I had one disaster and one near miss. As much as I like to brag about my fabulous cooking successes, I think that a lot of cooks have mistakes and it's part of becoming better at cooking so that's why I decided to share these experiences. But don't worry, that broccoli up there in that picture turned out perfect (it's one of our faves!) and I'll post that gem and some successful dinners later this week.