![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsOver the weekend, Omaha and I had to have dinner but didn't have a good plan. As a last-minute thing, we decided to check out one of those pre-assembled, "cook at home" meals sold at our local grocery. This one was from the Home Chef Collection, and it was "Chicken breasts with fig sauce, with peas & rice."
What you get in the box: two pre-packaged chicken breasts, a tub of peas, a vacuum-packed container of pre-cooked rice, a pat of butter, a small container of fig sauce, and a baggie of parmesean cheese.
The packaging doesn't lie: if you are a highly experienced home cook, you can do the entire recipe in 20 minutes. If you're not, it's going to take somewhat longer. The only real timesaver in the entire recipe is that the rice is pre-cooked; that means that you can assemble and heat-through the rice, peas and cheese mixture while the chicken is cooking.
I made one change to the recipe: After removing the chicken from the pan, I put a splash of white wine into the pan to deglaze it before adding the fig sauce and water, which added to the flavor and made cleaning up beforehand. "Deglazing" is not something the recipe mentions or goes into.
But the rice is the only timesaver; otherwise, everything in the recipe could be assembled at home by an ordinary mortal, and it wouldn't cost $18 for two people; at most, you could cook that meal for two for only $8. I do appreciate that the chicken breasts provided were on the small side; most times, when you buy fresh chicken, the breasts provided are huge and more than one person could possibly consume. And the rice is easy to make; you just have to be willing to sit in the kitchen for an extra twenty minutes.
Instead of this route, I strongly recommend picking up A Dinner a Day and learning how to cook from that. It has meal plans, ingredient guidelines, weekend buying lists, and leftover management plans, and it actually teaches you a think or two about using pots, pans, and knives. Go through it for a year and you'll be able to cook anything you want after that.
What you get in the box: two pre-packaged chicken breasts, a tub of peas, a vacuum-packed container of pre-cooked rice, a pat of butter, a small container of fig sauce, and a baggie of parmesean cheese.
The packaging doesn't lie: if you are a highly experienced home cook, you can do the entire recipe in 20 minutes. If you're not, it's going to take somewhat longer. The only real timesaver in the entire recipe is that the rice is pre-cooked; that means that you can assemble and heat-through the rice, peas and cheese mixture while the chicken is cooking.
I made one change to the recipe: After removing the chicken from the pan, I put a splash of white wine into the pan to deglaze it before adding the fig sauce and water, which added to the flavor and made cleaning up beforehand. "Deglazing" is not something the recipe mentions or goes into.
But the rice is the only timesaver; otherwise, everything in the recipe could be assembled at home by an ordinary mortal, and it wouldn't cost $18 for two people; at most, you could cook that meal for two for only $8. I do appreciate that the chicken breasts provided were on the small side; most times, when you buy fresh chicken, the breasts provided are huge and more than one person could possibly consume. And the rice is easy to make; you just have to be willing to sit in the kitchen for an extra twenty minutes.
Instead of this route, I strongly recommend picking up A Dinner a Day and learning how to cook from that. It has meal plans, ingredient guidelines, weekend buying lists, and leftover management plans, and it actually teaches you a think or two about using pots, pans, and knives. Go through it for a year and you'll be able to cook anything you want after that.
