Rub a Dub Grub

So your going to need some extra hardware for this one... I bought this landscaping brick at Home Depot for $1 and it lives in my cupboard with several layers of tinfoil wrapped around it. Anybody out there fans of AB? So anyways I picked out this brick based on the size of my dutch oven. I wanted something that was bigger than your typical brick but not so big as to not fit in my pot. So start this recipe by setting your oven to 500 and putting your brick in it to get hot. Oh make sure you have wrapped your brick up in several layers of foil.

Here are all the ingredients....
One whole Chicken, two potatoes, one onion, 3-5 cloves of garlic, several carrots, and a few strips of bacon. With these ingredients and My brick there will not be room for hardly anything in my Dutch oven. I use a a 3 quart dutch oven purchased at Ikea You can buy these same pots at some upscale cooking stores but they cost a fortune there.

Chop everything up. I hate the chicken part but its so cheap to buy a whole chicken, this one cost me $4. You have to remove the rib cage and all those bones except legs and wings. It takes me about 15 minutes to do this and I cant keep the chicken together, it ends up quartered, but hey I don't care its gonna get ripped apart before I eat it anyways.

Then chop up the bacon into little pieces and fry it crisp in your pot, and then remove it. At this point you can pour out most of the bacon grease as well, you only need about 1 tablespoon of fat on the bottom of the pan. You can leave it in too if you like, its up to you how healthy your grub is.

Season your chicken with Salt and Pepper on both sides.
Put your chicken in the bottom of hot pot and listen to it sizzle.

Add your hot brick on top of your chicken, your brick should have been in the oven for at least 20 minutes. The goal here is to Brown your chicken on both sides, the pan side and the brick side. Load all your veggies and bacon bits back into the pot around the brick and put the lid on. the whole thing should cook on top of the stove for about 5-7 minutes. Then pop it into that hot oven (500 degrees), and let it cook for 15-20 minutes. Remove from oven, remove brick from pot and your have some good grub for dinner. This is pretty simple and you can substitute all kinds of items. Whatever veggies you want, Cornish game hens instead of chicken. Whatever.

So after your family has devoured this meal its time to take stock of the left overs. My family is quite small so there is always a ton left over. This is always good reheated the next day but even better than that is to make the left overs into a pot pie. So I de-bone whatever Chicken is leftover and load into a casserole dish.

There is always some awesome looking juices in the bottom of the Dutch oven and they are singing out to me to be made into some country gravy.

If you have never made gravy before, its really simple. add a couple of spoonfuls of flour to the pan and whisk it in, Turn on the heat and cook the four mixture until hot and bubbly. I add a little chicken stock to thin it out just a tad, but mainly I add milk at this point and a little fresh ground pepper. You can use heavy cream too for a richer gravy.

Pour the gravy over the top of the chicken and veggies and load that thing into the refrigerator until tomorrow, or you could cook it up now if your still hungry.

Man that was an easy meal. To keep it easy whip out one of those pre made frozen pie crusts and slap it on top. Oh if this has been in you refrigerator overnight, you will want to reheat it before putting the crust on. I nuke it until it is hot all the way through, then put on the crust and bake for about 15 minuts at 400 degrees or until the crust is golden brown. Yum Yum.