Tang and Twang: Buttermilk Mushroom Baked Chicken

Someone out there thought to mix buttermilk and cream of mushroom soup, and it’s a brilliant, tangy sauce for chicken. This is an office recipe that was making the rounds. It was literally dictated to me without having to write down the instructions. It’s that simple. And it’s delicious and quite satisfying. I have found multiple versions on the web that slightly vary, but most stick to the basics.

I am going to give you two versions of the recipe – the basic buttermilk and soup sauce and also an alternate version that came from experimenting, and which is even more rich and satisfying, only requiring the addition of sautéing some onion and sliced mushrooms in butter.

Serve this over rice or, perhaps, egg noodles, as the sauce has a stroganoff twang to it.

Enjoy …

Buttermilk Mushroom Baked Chicken

For the Dredge:

1 cup flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp paprika
½ tsp black pepper
½ tsp garlic powder
¼ tsp red pepper, optional 

For the Chicken, Marinade and Sauce:

4 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts
3 cups buttermilk, divided
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
6 TB butter, divided 

To Make It More Rich:

8 oz. sliced, white mushrooms, washed, drained, chopped
1 medium sweet onion, diced 

Marinate the chicken breasts in 1 cup of buttermilk for 30 minutes or up to several hours.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Spray a glass 13 x 9 baking dish with cooking oil, put 4 TB of butter in there and then melt it in the oven.

Mix all of the dredge ingredients in a mixing bowl. Remove the melted butter in the glass dish from the oven and carefully swirl to cover the bottom in butter.

Remove chicken from buttermilk marinade. Run the chicken breasts through the dredge, shake to remove any excess flour, and place in the glass baking dish. Return glass dish to oven and cook 20 minutes.

While the chicken is cooking, mix two cans of mushroom soup with two cups buttermilk in a sauce pan and heat until bubbly. Throw in a pinch of paprika, black pepper, and garlic powder to align with your chicken flavors. Salt to taste. You can stop there with the sauce, and you will get a delicious dish.

If you want to make the sauce richer, before mixing the buttermilk and soup, sauté the diced onion and sliced mushrooms in 2 TB butter. Once the onion is softened and the moisture from the mushrooms has evaporated (about 12 minutes), add the 2 cups buttermilk and 2 cans of mushroom soup to the onion and mushroom mixture, and heat until bubbly.

After the chicken has cooked the first 20 minutes, take it out of the oven and turn breasts over and cook an additional 15 minutes. The chicken will probably stick to the bottom of the dish, but worry not. The dredge serves as a thickener and flavor booster.

Get your rice or egg noodles going.

Take chicken back out of the oven (it has cooked 35 minutes at this point) and add buttermilk mushroom sauce to the glass baking dish, pouring over breasts to cover (depending on the size!). Do not overfill with the sauce; keep any remaining sauce warm on the stove. You will want the additional sauce – I promise.

Return to oven and cook an additional 15 – 25 minutes until chicken breasts are no longer pink and are cooked through. The total cooking time should be 50 – 60 minutes.

Remove from the oven and cool 5 – 10 minutes. Using a fork and knife, cut chicken into chunks or shred it. Stir the melted butter, sauce, and chicken in the baking dish. Serve over rice or noodles.

Randy Balls: A Meatless Wonder

Ground walnuts. Pulverized Saltines. Eggs. Cheese. Onion. Those ingredients should not combine into the wonder that they do: a delicious, meatless ball that stands on its own in a competition against beef and pork.

I got the recipe from my friend Erin. She made them for her husband Randy’s birthday with a recipe she got from Randy’s mother Loretta. When she offered me the plate, her eyes were alight. She knew I would love them. I did. And she knew the ingredients would befuddle me. They did.

I made them, following the exact instructions and served them as an appetizer to some friends who had the same reaction as I. But then, I noticed that when my guests fixed their dinner plate, they threw on a couple of the balls and added them as a side.

But these aren’t just a novel appetizer. They’ve got heft and great texture. I had to wonder: would they stand up to a marinara and pasta?

I Googled the ingredients to see if anyone else out there had a similar recipe. It looked as if “Walnut Balls” had been a popular recipe back in 2009. The ingredients were similar with the only real difference in the amount of egg/egg whites being used. And, alas, someone had commented how great they were with spaghetti and marinara.

So, I made them again, this time for pasta. I made my basic San Marzano and onion tomato sauce, but I did not add the balls to the sauce, nor did I baste the balls halfway through baking with the marinara, as I had done the first time I made them with the sweet and sour glaze. They were nice and crispy, great flavor, and stood up with the marinara. My friends loved them and said it was definitely worth repeating.

These balls deserve a better name than “Walnut Balls.” My friend Randy was central to my discovery – his birthday party, his mother’s recipe, his wife made them. And the adjective “randy” describes them perfectly. They are definitely frisky. Therefore, as Queen of the Corkscrew, I hereby dub these “Randy Balls.”

Enjoy.

Randy Balls

1 ¼ cups cracker crumbs (Saltines, about a sleeve)
¾ cup walnuts, ground (buy chopped and crush them)
¾ cup grated cheese (your choice – cheddar is good)
1 sweet onion, small, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, pressed (or equivalent garlic powder)
4 eggs
½ tsp salt
1 ½ tsp sage
3 TB minced parsley 

Sweet and Sour Glaze

¼ cup vegetable oil
¼ cup lemon juice
Zest of one lemon
¾ cup apricot or apricot/pineapple jam
½ cup ketchup
2 TB brown sugar
2 TB onion, grated
½ tsp salt
½ tsp oregano
Dash of hot sauce and/or a pinch of red pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cover a cookie sheet in foil and spray with cooking oil.

For the balls, double bag a sleeve of Saltines and beat the hell out of them with a rolling pin. Then, double bag a little over a cup of walnuts and beat the hell out of them. Measure those and all of the rest of the ingredients, except the eggs, into a mixing bowl.

Whisk the eggs then mix them into the dry ingredients. Let it all sit for a couple of minutes for the dry ingredients to absorb the egg. Form them into 10 – 14 balls about the size of a golf ball, and place them on the cookie sheet. The balls will seem loose, but they will hold together. Place in preheated oven for 20 minutes.

Mix all of the sauce ingredients in a sauce pan and bring to a boil then cut off heat.

Take the balls out of the oven after 20 minutes. Baste the balls with the glaze.

Return to the oven and cook an additional 15 – 20 minutes.

Remove from the oven and baste again. Enjoy!

Notes

• You can substitute white vinegar for the lemon juice and zest.

• Substitute Heinz chili sauce for the ketchup for a nice little kick.

• The recipe calls for grated cheese, but shredded works fine, too.

Carrot and Chicken Broth

Years ago while learning to make chicken and dressing, I came across a Paula Deen recipe that is the basis of this Carrot and Chicken Broth. This broth is very rich, and once made, can be turned into an amazing soup or used as a kicker for any meal. 

Beware the color: it’s golden orange from the carrots!

Around the same time, I found a great kitchen hack: freeze broth in ice cube trays then store them in a freezer bag, and when you need a wonderful background flavor for potatoes, rice, or other vegetables, throw in a few cubes from the freezer, and you are good to go.

The key in this recipe is to blend the cooked vegetables. Immersion blenders are relatively inexpensive. I think that we paid $10 for ours at Wally World. And they can change the way that you make sauces and gravies. But if you just have a regular blender on a stand, that should work, too.

Carrot and Chicken Broth

4 – 5 lb. whole chicken
4 – 6 carrots, peeled and cut into chunks
4 ribs of celery, cut into chunks
Medium sweet onion, cut into chunks
4 cloves of garlic
Seasoning salt
Pepper
Poultry seasoning, if desired

Remove the gizzard bag from the chicken and discard or save for another use. Put the chicken in a Dutch oven and add the carrots, celery, onion, garlic, and pepper. Add as much water as possible, up to 2 quarts. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and put the lid on then simmer for 45 minutes. Cut the heat off and let the chicken and vegetables sit for 30 minutes with the lid on. 

Remove the chicken to a cutting board. Let it and the broth cool completely. 

Once the broth is cooled, blend all of the vegetables with an immersion blender. Be sure and wait until the broth is cool enough as the blending may splash some. Taking your time, work the blender up, down and around and scatter a million bits of the vegetables and flavor into the broth. 

Go ahead and add your seasoning, just don’t add too much salt. It is best to salt the broth at the end. 

Remove meat from the chicken, putting all bones, skin, and fat, and, ultimately, the whole carcass back into the pot. Use chicken meat for whatever you need, whether you finish the broth and use it for soup or a dressing, or for any other recipe.

Add more water to the pot – around 2 cups or so. We are shooting for 2 quarts of broth, more or less. Bring the broth back to a boil then reduce the heat and simmer for another 30 minutes.

Remove all chicken parts. Strain the broth through a wire strainer. Add salt and taste it coming to life! 

Let the broth cool and skim off the fat from the top. Use it immediately for any recipe, and freeze any remaining broth in ice cube trays. Once frozen, put the cubes in a freezer and keep there until ready to use!