Classic Chicken Dinner Ready Meal

Cook for now or prepare for tomorrow

Classic Chicken Dinner Ready Meal

Feeds 1

Ingredients

• 4 Small Potatoes
• 1-2 Carrots, sliced in matchsticks
• Few green beans
• 1 chicken breast. Sliced diagonally
• ½ lemon, sliced
• Basil/rosemary/parsley
• 2 cloves garlic, sliced
• Salt and black pepper
• Bit of white wine/stock/apple juice

Recipe

• Boil potatoes for 4 minutes. Add carrots, beans and boil for further 2 minutes. Drain. Squeeze gently to bruise/crack them.
• Lay a large sheet of foil out in front of you. Fold edges up a bit before setting out the components of your ready-meal.
• Lay out chicken pieces. Slip lemon slices in between. Arrange veg, herbs, garlic around. Season.
• Drizzle in wine/stock/juice, bit of olive oil. Pull foil up and over. Scrunch top firmly to parcel. Chill for later/next day, or cook 20 minutes at 220⁰C/425⁰F/gas 7

You can

• Add a bit of ham/bacon, peas, broad beans, cream, asparagus
• Do a Chinese-style ready meal on foil/baking paper. Parcel up chunks of chicken in mixture of oyster/hoisin sauce, crushed garlic, bit of sesame oil, rice wine, spring onions. Bake 20 minutes at 220⁰C/425⁰F/gas 7. Delicious.

Taken from – Sam Stern’s Student Cookbook - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sam-Sterns-Student-Cookbook-Survive/dp/1406308188/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323618933&sr=8-1

Review

Chicken, for the cooking illiterate one of the scariest and most dangerous meats to cook with. Being a self confessed rubbish cook I decided to leave the ‘You can’ bit of this menu alone.

In terms of cooking it wasn’t too hard to get this dish served up, even for someone like me with little cooking expertise, and when I say little I mean basically none. I found it a bit fiddly putting the lemon slices into the chicken but I managed it. 

The problem I found from actually cooking this is that for something that is labelled as a ‘ready-meal’ it really is a lot more effort than an actual ready meal. Obviously this is to be expected but let’s face it if you’ve just come in from a long day at university do you really want to have to put a lot of effort into your cooking.

It does taste very nice I have to admit, but nice enough to warrant the extra effort and cost? I’m not too sure, I’d have to say try it for yourself to see whether or not it is worth it.

By Matthew Hancocks