Cheezy Noodles and Chickn

Yes I know I spelled chicken wrong, that's the rebel in me getting sweet, sweet release.

So I am about to have some dinner, a salad with some dressing when I decide to make everything a bit more exciting and try and add something fried to the mix. A quick survey of the cupboards and fridge/freezer yielded this huge bag of frozen chicken parts.

I am pretty sure I can fry the crap out of this chicken turning it into something amazing but since it lacks any sort of marinade it might be kinda tasteless. Best thing to do now is take the chicken, smash flour, salt, and some seasoning into it and THEN fry it up.


The best way to make a simple breading for chicken is to put some flour in a big Ziplock baggie. I generally use around 3 tbsp of flour, a tablespoon or so of seasoning salt, and about 5-6 shakes of Italian Seasoning.

I generally blow up the bag like a balloon and shake it around for a few to mix everything together. Then dump the chicken in and shake it up a bit. If your chicken is fresh you are likely not a graduate student; and can stop right here. The rest of us that buy bulk frozen chicken will have to wait a few for the buggers to soften up enough to really get flour and stuff to stick to em.

Once your chicken has lots of stuff stuck to it you may proceed to the next step.

At this point I decided that salad is dumb and I wanted to have noodles. This was quite the change of pace so now I needed some way of combining the chicken with the noodles besides just putting them on a plate together...

Well we know water is needed so put a pan of water on to boil. Drop some salt and a little bit of olive oil in the pan. What this does is make your noodles more delicious. In other words the salt raises the boiling point of the water and the oil keeps your noodles from sticking together. The salt also gets into the noodles, and everyone knows sodium chloride is the best tasting thing ever.

After putting the water on to boil its time to invent some sort of saucy concoction. I really wanted something that would talk back to me but all I could find was the rest of the onion left over from the potato burrito experiment and some garlic. Since I was feeling particularly lazy this evening the food processor gets to come out and play. I threw the onion in the processor and the garlic (post-peeling), hit the pulse button a few times, and joy of joys I had some chopped onion and garlic.


I grabbed a frying pan, threw a bit of olive oil and a bit of vegetable oil in the pan. You could use just olive oil but because this is going to be an extended frying operation I would recommend raising the burn point of the oil by using mostly vegetable oil with a little olive oil for taste.

I threw the onion and garlic into the hot oil. While that was stewing I looked through the fridge one last time, saw some mushrooms, figured why the heck not... After everything was in the pan I pushed it around to make a hollow in the center of the pan.

This hollow is the new home for those pieces of chicken you so painstakingly shook around.


Just let everything fry for a good long time without stirring. Essentially you should be able to let it fry up on medium heat (maybe, I have a gas stove so the heat setting things are guesses). The chicken should be golden brown on a side when you flip it.

Then stir up the surrounding areas and let it continue cooking.


Once the chicken is done cooking you should have caramelized onions, garlic, and mushrooms floating around the edges of your pans. Pull out the chicken and place it to the side; I would suggest cutting them in half to make sure they got completely cooked.

In the pan throw some water in there and stir it up to get all the delicious bits off the bottom of your pan. At this point I killed the heat to let them sit for a second and share flavors for a bit.

While this last step is going on your water should have started to boil, so put some noodles in the pan. I used some thin twisty style egg noodles because the cook fast and its what was in my cupboard at the time.

Off on the side I knew that I would need a sauce base so I took a bit of flour and some milk and whipped them together. I would just use a fork but make sure its all combined adequately, clumps of flour taste gross.


Back in panland turn the heat back on. At this point I decided that cheese would be awesome so I dumped some grated Parmesan cheese in the pan and a layer of oh-so good Colby-Jack cheese.

As it heated back up I stirred constantly to make sure the cheese melted well and didn't burn.

Keep scraping the bottom of the pan as you do so to get the bits of awesome mixed with the cheese. When everything is all melty and thick pour in your milk and flour mix and stir it all together.


Back while your doing this at some point your noodles should have finished cooking. Ideally they would be al dente style, but cook them however you want. Strain them when done.


Now that you have all the components of food done grab a plate, put some noodles on it, arrange some chicken on the side, and put some cheese sauce over the top. Eat, and enjoy.



I thought this was a decent dish, not the best that I ever made. In the future I might add a little more garlic than I did originally to the sauce, but I could just eat garlic like an apple so this is something you will have to adjust for yourself.

Additions:
I would recommend adding some sort of veggie dish to this. I meant to make some french cut green beans for the side but I forgot until the food was all made and cold cheese sauce is gross so I just skipped the veggies tonight. Other styles of cheese will yield different tastes, you could easily make this an Alfredo style dish by using Parmesan cheese and some sort of heavy cream or condensed milk (no flour with the heavy milks though). Just use whatever cheese you enjoy, the rest of the flavors will blend with nearly anything.

Prep time: ~15 minutes
Cook time: ~30 minutes
Ease: 3 out of 5
Things in the recipe:
Flour - 4 tbsp
Lowery's Seasoning Salt - 2 tbsp
Salt - 4 tbsp
Pepper - 1 tbsp
Italian Seasoning (basil, oregano, rosemary, thyme, and parsley) - 2 tbsp
Parmesan Cheese - 1/4 cup
Colby-Jack Cheese - 1/2 cup
Chicken - 3 pieces of frozen "tenders"
Noodles - 2-3 cups
Olive Oil - 2 tbsp
Vegetable Oil - 2 tbsp
Onion - 3/4 Spanish onion
Garlic - 2 cloves
Mushrooms - 1/2 cup
Milk - 1 cup