- I always say, when life gives you lemons,
make chicken piccata
(funky retro music)
Hi, I'm Andrew.
I'm the Test Kitchen Manger here at Tasty.
And after a long day of working in the kitchen,
there's nothing I like more than sitting down
for a meal with my wife.
But ordering in and going out
can be a little bit expensive.
So today, I'm challenging myself
to make five weeknight meals
for two for only $20.
First things first,
I'm gonna run to the store and see what I can find.
(upbeat music)
All right.
So, I was able to find everything that I needed
at the store for $18.76,
which means I came in under budget.
So the dishes I'm gonna be making are a
sweet potato and chickpea curry,
a one pot, chicken fajita rice bake,
and to close out the week,
I'm gonna make my favorite thing, chicken piccata.
So instead of having five meals for five nights,
I'm gonna stretch my budget a little bit more
and have two meals twice,
and then end out the week with something
a little bit special.
And helping me out today,
are gonna be a few pantry staples,
which I also recommend that you have in your own home.
Those are butter, olive oil, salt, and pepper.
And with all that said,
it's time to start cooking.
(upbeat jazz music)
Okay, so first thing I have to do is
break down this whole chicken,
which it looks a little intimidating,
but it's actually a lot easier than you think.
And, very inexpensive.
You wanna lay it down with the legs facing you.
You'll take your knife and make an incision in the skin
right here between the breast and the leg.
It should just come apart really easy.
Now do the same thing on the other side.
The leg joins are exposed,
so what I'm gonna do is,
I'm gonna put my hands underneath here,
and then I'm gonna pop the thighs right out of the socket.
I wanna take my knife,
and I wanna cut right on the opposite side of that
closest to the breast, very carefully.
Obviously use a sharp knife when you're doing this.
It makes everything easier.
So here, you have your chicken leg,
you have your thigh and your drumstick.
Now same thing with the other one.
Find the ball joint, get in there with you knife, carefully.
And there, you have both separated.
So I'm gonna set this aside, just over here.
I'm gonna bring the legs back to my board,
turn them around,
and you'll see right there there's this fat line.
That's the exact place you wanna cut,
and separate the leg and the thigh.
And you'll actually feel it with your knife.
And just go straight through.
One leg, one thigh.
So now, I'm gonna focus on the white meat.
The easiest way to get the breast off the chicken,
you have your breast plate here,
what you wanna do,
is you wanna cut on the opposite side of that,
closest to the breast you wanna remove,
and just make a small incision.
This part is all about the small incisions,
getting as much meat as possible.
That's obviously the goal.
We wanna stretch our budget.
So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna keep going down.
I'm literally just riding along the rib cage.
Trim back any of this fat from the skin that you don't need.
Remove this breast, go through the skin.
It's all about small strokes.
And there, you have one chicken breast.
The other one, same thing,
ride the rib cage when you can,
trim back any of this fat, cut around the wing.
There you go.
Two chicken breasts.
All right so my chicken is broken down.
And the nice thing about this,
is I'm gonna be able to use all these parts of the chicken
in different dishes to really stretch my budget,
but I'm not gonna discard this carcass.
This is gonna become a delicious chicken stock.
(steady music)
Our chicken stock is really just gonna be
chicken, salt, pepper, and water.
You could use aromatics if you want,
onions, carrots, celery.
Most chicken stocks have them,
but since it isn't in our budget,
we have to work with what we have.
So I add the chicken to the pot.
Then I'm gonna add water, just to cover.
Pinch of salt,
couple cracks of fresh pepper.
We're gonna let this come to a boil,
bring it down to a simmer,
and let it simmer for about four hours
to extract as much chicken flavor as possible.
Guess I'll see you guys in about four hours.
So what I wanna do is strain this out,
get all the chicken bits out,
and just have a nice, clean stock.
Be careful once all the pieces come out.
Let's taste it.
It's actually really nice,
I'm just gonna add a little bit more salt, just for myself.
Stock is all strained out, it's seasoned to my liking,
I'm gonna use this in the majority of my cooking today,
whatever's left over I'll keep in my fridge for a week
and then I'll throw it in the freezer
if I don't get around to it.
So now it's time to dive into our first recipe.
First thing I'm gonna make is
a sweet potato and chickpea curry.
This is gonna be enough for two dinners for the two of us.
So first thing we wanna do, get our heat going.
Let's go over medium heat.
We'll add some olive oil.
So once your oil is nice and warm and shimmering,
we're gonna add in some diced onion.
I'm gonna give this a stir
just to get the onions all coated in the olive oil.
I'm gonna season it with a little bit of salt,
just because I like to season every step of the way,
it's guaranteed excellent flavor.
We don't want the onions to burn,
we just want them to sweat out a little bit
and soften, just to bring out their natural flavors.
While those are cooking, I'm gonna grate some fresh ginger
right into the pot.
Most people think you have to peel the ginger,
but I find that it's a bit of a taxing step,
so we're just gonna grate it straight in.
I'm gonna give this a stir.
Get those flavors all together.
Looks like our onions are good to go.
What I wanna do now is I wanna add in
some freshly minced garlic.
Again, just adding in extra flavor, give it a stir.
You just wanna cook it until it's fragrant,
you don't wanna burn it, it'll get really bitter.
Nobody likes that.
so now we're gonna add in our curry powder.
What we're doing is we're toasting the curry powder.
We're really drawing out that flavor
and making the flavors really warm.
Now it's gonna taste good the first day,
but the leftovers are gonna taste even better.
When these flavors have had time to marry
and sit in the fridge together,
there's nothing better than that.
The curry is nice and toasted,
so what I wanna do now is add everything else.
So we have our chickpeas for a little bit of protein,
and we have our sweet potatoes.
I'm gonna season.
All right, so we're gonna get these vegetables coated
in that beautifully toasted curry powder,
and now I'm gonna add some coconut milk,
give that a stir.
I'm gonna do a little seasoning,
and next we're gonna take this delicious chicken stock
that we already made, we're gonna add this right in here.
Now, we're using chicken stock because we wanted
to stretch the chicken,
and save our budget,
but if you do have it in the budget to buy some
vegetable stock, this would be a wonderful vegetarian dish.
We're gonna bring this to a boil,
we're gonna reduce it down to a simmer,
let it simmer for about 15 minutes until
the sweet potatoes are perfectly cooked through.
My curry is simmering away.
I'm actually gonna toast some extra curry powder
just to add a little extra flavor
so we can get some curry in a hurry.
We have our heat, our oil, just a little bit.
So now the oil's nice and hot,
I'm gonna add in our curry powder,
and we're just gonna carefully toast this
until it starts to smell fragrant and nutty.
Like I said, this is gonna add so much curry flavor
to this already delicious curry.
This'll happen really quick too, so don't even blink.
Safe to say that that is smelling fragrant and delicious,
and it's ready to get added to our curry.
Now I'm gonna add in some spinach,
and I'm just gonna cook it for about two minutes
till it gets nice and wilted.
Careful when adding this in, it's gonna look like a lot
but it's gonna shrink down to nothing.
And then, just to finish this off a little bit,
I'm gonna add a little bit of acid.
So I'm gonna add some lime juice.
All right, this looks really good.
I have two Tupperware containers here full of cooked rice.
Rice is really inexpensive,
and I'm also gonna use it in another dish I'm making today.
If you wanna check out our Tasty 101 video
on how to cook rice, click below.
So what I'm gonna do is I'll spoon my curry over the rice.
Do it over the put, curry'll stain your countertop.
This is gonna be really really good in a couple days.
So I'm gonna let these cool,
I'm gonna transfer them to the refrigerator
for later on in the week, the rest of this,
I'll heat up later on when my wife comes to try.
Let's move on to the next recipe.
The next recipe we're gonna do is
a one-pot chicken and fajita rice bake.
This recipe is really nice
because we can use the majority of the chicken
that we already broke down,
and then we can use the other half of the rice
that we didn't use during the curry recipe.
And, like with the curry,
this is gonna cover two meals during the week.
I'm just gonna add a little bit of our olive oil.
You're gonna wanna use enough to just coat
a nice thin layer on the bottom of the pan.
So, season our chicken, salt and pepper on both sides,
so we'll flip it over with some tongs.
We're gonna use two of the drumsticks, two of the thighs,
and one of the chicken breasts.
The other chicken breast we're gonna save
for our final dish of the week.
We're just gonna use a store-bought packet
of fajita seasoning.
I'm gonna use about 1/3 of it to season the chicken,
and then I'll use the remainder of it later on in the dish.
Same thing, we'll go in on both sides.
We really wanna get as much flavor out of this as possible.
And these fajita spice packets, I grew up on these things.
Everything my mother made had a spice packet
whether it be tacos or chili.
Okay, so now I'm gonna rub the chicken.
Get all those spices into it,
get under the skin if you can.
Any excess spices on the sheet tray
you can just pat right onto there.
Just wanna make sure we're getting every inch of this
delicious chicken that you spent all the time breaking down
coated with the spice.
If you have any extra left over,
just do the same thing, dump it on,
we'll really get it in there.
Our chicken is all seasoned, it's time to sear it up.
So I'm gonna add everything in skin-side down
so we can get that nice crispy skin.
You could use skinless chicken thighs,
but I just really really love crispy chicken skin,
and a lot of the fat is gonna drip down into the rice,
which is gonna make it taste so good.
Evenly spaced apart, you don't wanna crowd the pan too much.
So I'm gonna let this go for
about two to three minutes per side,
just till it gets nice and golden brown, we'll flip it over,
and then we'll finish off the dish.
I'm just gonna take a little peek under the chicken
just to make sure it's getting nice and brown, not burning.
If it starts to burn, you can move it around the pan,
every pan kind of has a different hot spot, so.
Cool, we're almost there.
You don't really have to worry about
cooking the chicken through at this point,
you're really just getting some color on the skin,
it adds a lot of flavor, cooks out a lot of those spices.
A lot of the cooking is gonna happen
a little later on in the recipe.
Our chicken is nice and golden brown on one side.
Oh that's perfect.
So we're just gonna do the same thing on the other side,
let it go for about two to three minutes.
I'm gonna go ahead and take it out of the pan,
transfer it to a nice clean sheet tray.
I know you can't smell it,
but this smells so good.
And you don't have to tell anybody it's a fajita packet.
Our chicken's done,
so I'm gonna finish off the rest of the dish.
We're gonna start with our vegetables.
Sliced onion, and green bell peppers.
Green is actually the cheapest one in the store,
so that's what we're workin' with today.
We've already built all this flavor in the pan,
you've got chicken juices,
you've got some of the flavor from that,
I'm just gonna add the vegetables to our pan.
We're gonna season with salt.
And then we're just gonna cook these down
until they're nice and softened, about two to three minutes.
We don't have to worry about
cooking these all the way through
because it's gonna finish off in the oven.
Just give it a nice toss,
get it all coated in that already built flavor in the pan.
So while these onions sweat,
they're gonna release a lot of their natural juices,
which is gonna pick up a lot of that
really nice flavor in the pan.
So to these vegetables,
I'm gonna add about a cup and a half of rice.
I like to add the rice in at this step
just so it toasts a little bit, gets a little bit of nutty,
also adds extra flavor.
And then to this, I'm gonna add the remainder of that
fajita packet I was talking about earlier.
Give that a stir, get everything coated.
So once all the rice is nice
and coated in the spices,
we're gonna add in our home made chicken stock.
We're gonna go in with about
two and 1/4 cups of this chicken stock.
Give it a mix, let it come to a little simmer,
scrape off the bottom of the pan
if there's any nice brown bits.
All right, this is simmering, so I'm gonna go ahead
and add our chicken pieces back in.
So I'm just gonna nestle these in here
just to make sure that it cooks all the way through.
And don't forget all these beautiful juices.
So I turned up the heat,
I'm gonna go ahead and cover this with some foil.
A fun little trick to make sure
the foil gets nice and tight,
pinch the bottom and twist.
All right, and this is good to go.
We're gonna transfer to a
400 degree oven for 35-40 minutes,
until the internal temperature of the chicken
is 165 degrees Fahrenheit.
Oh my God, that looks so good.
I'm gonna take half of this,
and I'm gonna save it for later on in the week.
Let's get the thighs, my favorite cut of the chicken.
That should be enough,
and then we'll get some of this delicious rice
and vegetable situation.
Oh my-- it smells so good.
I don't know if I can wait until later on in the week.
So when it's time to serve, I also bought
sour cream, salsa, and some lime
to really jazz up the flavors a little bit.
All right, I'll serve this later when Claire comes here,
and now we're ready to move on to our final recipe.
Our final dish of the week,
one of my all time favorites, chicken piccata.
So first thing's first,
we gotta tackle this lemon.
I always say,
when life gives you lemons, make chicken piccata.
I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna
cut this lemon in half cross-wise.
I'm gonna cut this guy in half.
These guys I'm just gonna
cut into really thin slices about 1/8 of an inch thick.
So a little trick when you're cutting any vegetable or fruit
is to just keep your hand in a nice claw formation.
So I'm gonna go ahead I'm gonna transfer these
to a really small bowl.
These are gonna go into our sauce later on in the dish.
And the juice of this is actually gonna
go into our sauce later on as well.
So that's our lemon, now we're gonna move on to the chicken.
We have our last chicken breast here.
You're probably wondering
"Why do you have one chicken breast?
"How is this gonna make two meals?"
We're actually gonna go ahead and cut this in half
and it's gonna make two thinner chicken breasts.
So to take off the skin,
you don't really have to do anything fancy,
you can really just peel it back.
Use some force, and voila.
So to get two cutlets out of this one chicken breast,
you wanna take your knife,
you wanna use your other hand as force,
and then really thin strokes through
the center of this chicken breast,
making sure that we get all the pieces,
and you can kinda see,
you can open it up this way and then slowly slice away at it
till you get two perfect chicken cutlets.
One, and two.
We're gonna pound these out really thin.
It helps the chicken cook a little bit faster,
and it's also very traditional to chicken piccata.
I'm gonna take one large piece of plastic wrap,
and I'm gonna place it over top of these chicken breasts.
With the flat end of the meat mallet,
we're just gonna pound away at these chicken breasts.
What I like to do is instead of going directly down,
I like to almost go in an upward motion.
And I would say you're looking for these chicken cutlets
to be about 1/4 of an inch thick.
This may seem like a really small amount for two people,
but it's gonna be over a bed of pasta,
it's gonna have a really delicious and buttery sauce,
so you'll be all good.
So I'm just gonna season it with salt and pepper,
give it a little flip-a-dip.
Lil' sprankle.
A little peppa.
I'm so excited for this,
this is literally one of my favorite dishes.
Gonna put some oil in the pan.
We have to dredge our chicken in a little bit of flour.
So we used all-purpose flour here,
very inexpensive at the store.
And I'm gonna add this to the pan.
Lay the chicken cutlet down away from you
so the oil doesn't splatter.
Gonna get this guy nice and coated.
And now we're gonna cook these for
two to two and a half minutes per side
get nice and golden brown,
then we'll flip, do the same thing,
and then we're on to our sauce.
All right, our chicken is done.
Nice and golden brown on both sides.
Just gonna transfer this to a clean plate
with a pair of clean tongs.
All right, so it's time to make our sauce.
Into the same pan,
we're gonna use all the chicken drippings as our oil.
We're gonna cook some garlic.
About two cloves of garlic.
We just wanna cook that until fragrant,
we don't want it to burn.
We're already starting to brown,
so I'm gonna add in our capers.
The capers are nice and briny
to add a nice salty note to this chicken piccata,
also one of the classic ingredients in the sauce.
I'm gonna add in our lemon slices, these are gonna cook down
and release their juices naturally.
So when your garlic starts to get a little too golden brown,
we're gonna add in our chicken stock.
This'll stop the cooking,
it'll also bring out a lot of the flavors.
Lemon is the very iconic flavor in chicken piccata,
so just to really drive that home a little bit,
I'm gonna add some freshly squeezed lemon juice.
So we're just gonna let this cook down for a couple minutes
until it's reduced by half.
So the thing about chicken piccata and me is
this is actually the first thing
I actually learned how to make,
I think I just kind of always gear towards
the lemon flavor of things.
I really love super acidic things,
so when I first learned how to cook I was like
"That's the first thing I'm gonna learn how to do."
So the sauce is reduced down by half,
I'm just gonna turn off the heat,
and then we're gonna add our butter.
So this is about two tablespoons of butter,
ideally a nice cold pad of butter.
And what I like to do is I actually like to swirl it
into the sauce, this way it gradually just kind of
thickens the sauce, stops it from breaking.
I can smell the capers, the garlic's really coming though.
You can see how creamy and emulsified
that butter is in the sauce.
It's really really nice.
All right, that looks perfect.
Our sauce is done, it's exactly where I want it to be,
just to add a little bit of color I'm gonna throw in
some fresh chopped parsley.
Save a little bit for garnish, too.
Turn off the heat,
and now, it's time to plate it all up.
I'm gonna serve it over pasta,
pasta, really hearty, super inexpensive,
so pasta on the plate,
and then I just wanna
gently place the chicken breast over top like so.
And then use our delicious sauce,
spoon all of that over top.
This is also gonna become the sauce for the pasta, too.
Make sure we get it right on nice on top there.
I'm gonna put more capers on mine 'cause I love capers.
I'm just gonna finish it off with a little bit more
fresh parsley just for some color.
And that's it, the final plate of the week.
Now, my wife's on the way here, so I'm gonna go ahead
and plate everything else up before she arrives,
and then we're gonna taste it
and we'll see if she can guess how much it all costs.
We did it!
We've got everything plated up,
we've got five weeknight meals for two,
for just under $20.
Now all that's left to do is to have Claire come in
and try it.
(upbeat music)
- Hi!
- Nice to see you.
- Aw, nice to see you too.
- So--
- Oh, wow.
- Right?
So do you think this enough meals
for the two of us for the whole week?
- I mean, I would think so, yeah.
I live off of leftovers.
- So we'll start with the first day.
- Okay.
- So this is a sweet potato and chickpea curry.
- [Claire] Ooh.
Mmm.
That's delicious.
- Hearty enough for--
- Oh yeah.
- And you could eat this two days out of the week.
- Done.
- We have a one-pot chicken fajita rice bake.
- [Claire] Perfect.
All right, ooh, good color.
- Thanks. - You taught me that.
I don't know what I'm talking about.
- Good?
- Yeah, that's really good
Wow, that chicken is cooked perfectly.
- This is like our first four days,
and then finally, on Friday I made you my favorite.
Which is the chicken piccata.
- [Claire] Ah, Italian.
Makes sense.
Mmm.
- Good, right?
- Oh my gosh.
- Big question is,
how much do you think all of this cost?
- This is a lot of food.
All of this,
what, like,
25 bucks?
- 18 dollars and 76 cents.
- What?
- Under $20. - $18.76.
- That's impossible, you're a magician.
- Yeah.
- Wow, good job sweetie.
- Thanks, yeah.
- Thank you for cooking for me.
- Oh, any time.
- I so appreciate it.
- Any time.
So it just goes to show that even on a tight budget,
you can still make it work, make it delicious,
and maybe even impress a pretty lady.
- Aw.
- If you guys have any occasions that you want us
to attempt on a budget,
please let us know in the comments below.
Take care.
Oh yes!
(upbeat music)