Monthly Archives: July 2018

Dutch Oven Mushrooms & Asparagus (adapted for Keto)

Dutch Oven Mushrooms & Asparagus

I first had this dish when I took the Dutch Oven Cooking class from from Kent Mayberry through the Canyons School District continuing education. Kent was 1999 World Dutch Oven Cookoff champion. If you’re new to dutch oven cooking, I highly recommend his class.  I liked it so much that I took it twice.  He teaches how you can have great foods from the very simple to the incredibly complex.

Below is my rough adaptation of the recipe for Zac’s birthday dinner.  For the award winning version, I recommend Kent’s cookbook, American West Dutch Oven Cooking.  The stuffing recipe is the bomb!  And sometime I need to try the Crown Roast recipe!

 

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 cube butter
  • 1 spoonful minced garlic (I used bottled garlic)
  • 1 1/2 onions, sliced into rings
  • white mushrooms – 1 large package
  • brown mushrooms – 1 large package
  • better than boullion – beef flavor – 1-2 large spoonfuls
  • 1 package of asparagus (mine was a Costco package, so probably equivalent to about 2 grocery store bundles.)
  • 1 lemon

For this dinner I used my “Big Bertha” dutch oven. It’s a 15 in. deep-style and weighs in at 33 lbs. empty.

I also used a dutch oven liner for easier cleanup. It was smaller than Bertha, so I just pressed it down into the pan and flattened it out a bit so the bottom of the liner fit the size of the dutch oven.

Food Preparation:
Remove all the stems from the mushrooms, and place the stems in one bowl, and the caps in another bowl.

To prep the apparatus cut or break off the woody portion.

Cooking:
I began by warming the dutch oven by setting my coals up using the ring method.

Spray the dutch oven liner with non-stick cooking spray.

Add butter, onion and garlic to dutch oven and saute.

Arrange all the mushroom caps on the bottom of the dutch oven, stem-side-up. Mine had enough mushrooms that I needed to add a second layer of caps.

Once you’ve placed all the caps, add the stems on top

Cover and cook to release moisture from the mushrooms (about 8-10 min?)

Add better than bouillon and stir.

Cover and let cook another 10ish minutes.

  • Recipe Adaptation for Keto:
    Normally you would thicken the gravy at this point using a corn starch slurry, but I left that part out to make it more keto friendly.

Add Asparagus

Cover and cook for about 8-10 minutes   (reduce heat below and add more heat to the top)

Squeeze lemons onto asparagus
Place the squeezed lemons on the asparagus as a garnish

Serve

 

Dutch Oven Chicken Bacon & Veggies (Keto-Friendly)

For Zac’s birthday dinner he requested some of his favorite Dutch oven dishes, Chicken Pot Pie, and Mushrooms & Asparagus (a family favorite).  Since a couple of us are following the keto way of eating (avoiding carbs), I also made this Chicken, Bacon and Veggies dish to be keto friendly.

(Side note – as I’m writing this, I’m also enjoying some of the leftovers from this dish for my lunch.  I topped it with some Creole seasoning, shredded cheese and fresh spinach leaves.  Then when I heated it up in the microwave, the spinach leaves wilted down nicely.  Then a splash or two of chipotle tabasco sauce and enjoy – it was delicious.)

I also modified the Mushrooms & Asparagus to be keto friendly so we could enjoy them too.

Dutch Oven Chicken Bacon & Veggies

Chicken & Veggies 18.22.07

Ingredients:

  • 1 package of bacon cut into 2 in. pieces
  • 1  1/2 to 2 medium onions, diced
  • 2 cups chopped celery
  • 4-6 zucchini (or half zucchini and half yellow squash)
  • approximately 10-12 brussel sprouts, cut in half
  • 1 bag Costco boneless skinless chicken thighs (thawed and cut in half)
  • Seasoning salt (Some of my favorites are Creole, Slap Ya’ Mama, or Old Bay.  None of these have added sugars)

Spray the DO liner with a non-stick cooking spray.

Bring pot up to heat and add the bacon, onion and celery.  Cook until the bacon is most of the way done.

Add the chicken thighs.  I cut mine in half so the pieces would cook more evenly (they were still partially frozen) and be more manageably sized.

Cover and cook, stirring occasionally to ensure all the chicken is getting cooked through.  Often with chicken dishes I will cook the chicken until I am sure the chicken is completely cooked before I go onto the next step.  You don’t want to chance undercooked chicken.  And since the next ingredients (zucchini and brussel sprouts) are softer and cook quickly, I didn’t want them to overcook – which they did anyway, but that’s another topic.

I had started out cooking this dish using a 12″ deep style dutch oven.  After I added the chicken I noticed that there was no way it would all fit into this pot.  And since some of the chicken was still partially frozen, I enlisted another 12″ DO and split the amount of chicken to the two pots to speed up the cooking.

Once the chicken was done, I added in the brussel sprouts and let them cook for about 5 minutes, and then added the zucchini to cook for about 5 minutes.  Since these are softer vegetables, they can cook quite quickly.

This would have been ideal to cook the brussel sprouts and zucchini just enough so they were cooked, but not overdone – but my timing of all the dishes wasn’t the best, so the final dish was a bit overcooked, but still tasted great!  Plus it was keto friendly, so we could all enjoy.  And there was plenty to go around, so even the non-keto eaters could enjoy it.

Something else that would have been cool is to sear the flat side of the brussel sprouts in a hot skillet before adding them to the pot – mostly to give a bit of color, but that didn’t happen in this case.

Here’s a picture of another dish where I seared the brussel sprouts, and I really liked the look.

Shrimp & Veggies with Seared Brussel Sprouts

Dutch Oven Chicken Pot Pie

This week has been a stressful week because our daughter and her friend were in a serious accident Wednesday night when another driver ran a red light.  So for this dinner I took a few shortcuts to save some time and sanity.  Besides, a few shortcuts can be handy when you’re in a time crunch and running 4 dutch ovens at the same time.

As I’ve said before, my style of cooking is more faking it as I go, so here’s an approximation of how I made it this time. I am often combining flavors in my head as I go along, or seeing what ingredients I have on hand, and deciding how they can best go together for a meal.

For this dish I used a 12″ deep-style dutch oven.  My apologies to the “DO Purists”, but I’ve become a fan of the Dutch oven liners for making cleanup much quicker and easier.

Chicken Pot Pie 18.22.07

Dutch Oven Chicken Pot Pie Recipe:

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 cube butter
  • 1-2 spoonfuls of minced garlic (I used bottled)
  • 1 1/2 yellow onions chopped
  • 2 cups chopped celery
  • 1/2 to 3/4 bag of Costco pre-cooked rotisserie chicken (cut into bite-sized chunks). [cheater’s shortcut] 
    • If not using the shortcut, you can use 3-4 chicken breasts or thighs cut into bite sized chunks.
  • 2 large cans Cream of Chicken soup
  • 2 tubes of Buttery Crossoiant Dough
  • 1 roma tomato sliced
  • 1/2 cup fresh parsley

Spray DO liner with non-stick cooking spray.

Melt 1/2 cube butter
Add garlic, onions, and celery and sautee

  • (NOTE: if you’re not using the cheater’s “pre-cooked chicken shortcut”, you would add the raw chicken cubes and cook it here with the onions, garlic and celery until the chicken is completely cooked through.)

Add pre-cooked rotisserie chicken
Bring everything up to heat

Add 2 small bags of mixed vegetables and 2 large cans of cream of chicken soup
Stir and bring up to heat/low boil.  You want the filling to be good and warm to help cook the breading from the bottom.  If it isn’t warm enough it might be a bit doughy underneath.

This is the filling for your Chicken Pot Pie

When this is beginning to boil, stir it one last time and then reduce the amount of heat from below to avoid burning the filling.

Arrange triangles of croissant dough to cover the top of the filling.  If you’re feeling creative you can also add some embellishments like flowers, leaves, or ropes with the extra dough.  [on the picture above, you can see that I went for a couple flowers and leaves, and a rope around the edge.]  Just remember that parts with multiple layers of dough might not get cooked as consistently.

I usually also add a few tomato slices and fresh parsley as a garnish on top.

Place the lid back on the dutch oven, and place additional coals on the top to focus the cooking top-down onto the breading.

One of my favorite things is that beautiful buttery smell you get when you lift the lid and the bread is just about done.  Oh man!

Cook until the breading top of the Chicken Pot Pie is golden brown.

You may want to use either Chinet or at least double-plates or bowls because this can be pretty hot.

Serve and enjoy!

Here are a few other photos from other times I’ve made Chicken Pot Pie:


Don’t tell anyone that I cheat when I make this Dutch Oven Chicken Pot Pie! For the top I use buttery croissant dough from a tube! It’s a delicious little shortcut.

I found that the Dutch Oven Chicken Pot Pie was so easy and delicious, that I’ve made it a few different times..

For this one I didn’t have the tomatoes or parsley to dress up the top, but I went all out on the flowers etc.

Zac’s Birthday Dinner 2018

My son Zac just had his 23rd birthday.  For his birthday dinner he requested some of his favorite Dutch oven dishes, Chicken Pot Pie, and Mushrooms & Asparagus (a family favorite).  Since a couple of us are following the keto way of eating (avoiding carbs), I also made a Chicken, Bacon & Veggies dish that was keto friendly.

It had been a while since I’ve done a “DO Cook”, but I love cooking for my family and friends.  I think somewhere in my history, I must have Italian blood, because I like to show my love through food.

It was fun cooking Zac’s favorites for him and his friends. Happy birthday Zacker!

Chicken Pot Pie
Chicken Pot Pie 18.22.07

Mushrooms & Asparagus
Myshrooms & Asparagus
For this version I modified the recipe to be more keto friendly.

Chicken & Veggies
Chicken & Veggies 18.22.07