Chicken & Biscuits

Today was such a fun day!  My little sister, Amanda, is getting married in May of 2013 so today we spent the day dress shopping!  It was such a fun time to spend together and see how beautiful she looks in her dress.  Amanda moved to Mississippi last year with her fiance, Julian who she met in Boot Camp.

I typically cook dinner for our family at least once when they are in town so I decided to make Chicken and Biscuits for dinner tonight.  I wanted to make sure I had everything prepared ahead of time since we'd be gone all day today.  I tweaked the recipe that Barefoot Contessa uses (Chicken Stew with Biscuits) to fit our tastes.  I also made almost a double recipe so that we had enough for our family--I have three siblings who all have a significant other plus my family of four, my niece and my little cousin that my parents are raising.  We have a small army to feed when I cook so I always have to make double!
The link for Barefoot Contessa's actual recipe is above, but here is what I actually did:

Ingredients:

• 4 split chicken breasts, skin on and bone in
• 6 chicken thighs, skin on and bone in
• Olive oil
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 8 cups chicken stock --2 of the store bought cartons
• 3 chicken bouillon cubes
• 2 1/2 sticks unsalted butter
• 2 cups chopped yellow onions
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 2 cups medium-diced carrots, blanched for 2 minutes
• 2 10-ounce packages frozen peas (2 cups)
• 3 cups diced redskin potatoes, blanched for 2 minutes
• 1 cup minced fresh parsley

Directions

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Place the chicken breasts and thighs on a sheet pan and rub them with olive oil. Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. I roasted the chicken for about 60 minutes, but just make sure that it's cooked through. Set aside until cool enough to handle, and then remove the meat from the bones and discard the skin. Dice the chicken into medium-sized pieces. You will have about 8-10 cups of chicken.  The original recipe calls for Chicken Breasts, but I am a bigger fan of dark meat so I chose thighs.  My husband likes white meat so I compromised and had a bit of both :) 

In a small saucepan, heat the chicken stock and dissolve the bouillon cubes in the stock. In a large pot, melt the butter and saute the onions over medium-low heat for 10 to 15 minutes, until translucent. Add the flour and cook over low heat, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes. Add the hot chicken stock to the sauce. Simmer over low heat for 1 more minute, stirring, until thick. Add 3 teaspoons salt, 1 teaspoon pepper, and the heavy cream. Add the cubed chicken, carrots, peas, potatoes, and parsley. Mix well. Place the chicken mixture in a large roasting pan. Bake for 15 minutes.

**Since I made this ahead of time, I put mine into an oven set to 200 degrees for about 4 1/2 hours. If you look at the original recipe, you can see I made some changes--some things I doubled, while other things I eliminated.  Most of the time, I make my recipes exact the first time I make them and tweak them from there; however, this recipe called for a lot of onions and my husband is not a fan of onions.  I cut back on the amount of fresh onions and replaced the frozen onions with potatoes.  I don't feel that we lost any flavor with my changes--everyone liked it :)  I also took the easy route on biscuits and used store bought canned ones.

 Hopefully you enjoy it!