Orange Jello Stuff

I'm not sure what to call this.  However, I am certain that it (1) tastes great, (2) can be made quickly and (3) is very difficult to screw up.  All of which makes this a prefect "man" meal.

You will need one package of orange Jello, one package/bowl of Cool Whip (make sure to pronounce the "h" in Whip) and two small cans of mandarin oranges.

Make the Jello and let it sit in the fridge until it is cool.  I know this takes some time, but not actual cooking time so plan on cleaning out the garage or watching a game for a couple of hours. 

Once the Jello is firm, stir in the mandarin oranges and the Cool Whip. It should look sort of like this picture but with more orange and less whip.  Eat.

This is usually good for about a day.  After that some type of weirdness goes on and it gets sort of runny.

I traditionally make this at Thanksgiving but there is nothing to say you can't make it because it's Tuesday.

Enjoy.

Jim

Baked Chicken

My whole idea with Cooking for the Single Man is to show how to make simple food that tastes great.  If it also happens to be good for you, then let's consider that an "accidental plus."

There are two things to good chicken, the skin and being cooked all the way through so as to avoid any emergency room incident which may delay a meal significantly.  So here we go.

Take a dozen pieces of chicken and a rectangular glass cooking sheet type thing.  It doesn't need to be glass or rectangular and you don't need 12 pieces of chicken but you get the picture.

Preheat the oven to 410 degrees.  Spray your cooking pan with Pam and then add the chicken.  Make sure the skin side is up and not overlapping.  Now, add some salt and pepper.  There is a secret ingredient that is not available everywhere.  For the best "chicken" add Costco's "steak" seasoning (don't use their chicken seasoning).

Cook for 40 minutes.

When you remove this from the oven, the chicken will be sitting in a bunch of oil.  Take it out of the oil right away so it doesn't reabsorb too much of it.

Eat.

You will find the chicken is cooked and the skin is deliciously crisp.

Jim

How to boil an egg

Sounds simple right?  Takes some water, add eggs and then boil.

In reality, that is all there is to it.  Almost...

First of all, since you are a guy, supposedly, then you are trying to multi-task.  This is a no-no.  DO NOT start to boil eggs and then turn on a football game.  If you do, you will forget about the eggs until the smell of burnt eggs permeates your apartment.  When this happens, you will walk over to the oven to find all of the water has boiled away and the eggs, once cooked all the way through, began to explode.

While exploded eggs are still edible, probably, they may take a bit of dressing up.

Instead, do it this way.

Put as many eggs as you wish into a pot.  Add enough water to cover the eggs by about an inch or more.  Bring the water to boil, noting the exact time that the water reaches a rumbling boil.  As soon as it gets to that point, turn off the heat and allow the eggs to sit in the water for 11 minutes.

After 11 minutes, dump the hot water out and replace with cold water.  Wait a minute and then dump out the now-warm water and replace it with cold water and all of the ice you can find.  Allow the eggs to sit in the ice water for 5 minutes.

After 5 minutes, peel the eggs under running water.  You will find that the shell comes right off.  If you didn't add ice water or if you waited an hour, then the eggs don't peel as easily. The secret is that the cold water causes the egg and its shell to contract, however, they do this at different rates.  The egg will contract faster and thus, is basically "loose" inside the shell and peels easily.  If you wait too long, the shell will contract back around the egg.  I don't want this to sound too precise.   So long as you peel the eggs within 30 minutes of adding the ice, you should be fine.

And remember, no football until afterwards,

Jim