Food You Can Eat: Out of Ideas Chicken and Chard

First things first: the upside of a prolific garden is all the fresh veggies right outside your door. The downside of a prolific garden is all the goddamned vegetables that you’re sick of eating the same way over and over again. This recipe is the result of that boredom and desperation. I wasn’t sure how it would turn out because I was making it up as I went along, hence the lack of pictures of the process, but it was pretty good, so a new FYCE post was born.

A caveat before we get started: Swiss Chard cooks down a lot. I’m guessing you don’t have a pound or two of this stuff right outside your door, and it may not be readily available at the grocery store. So, feel free to substitute with baby spinach. But, please, for the love of God, do not use kale. I wouldn’t feed that shit to pigs. I’d probably feed it to vegans, but not to pigs.

Here’s what you’ll need:

Boneless/Skinless Chicken Breasts and/or Thighs

1-2 Pounds Swiss Chard

2 Sweet Potatoes, peeled and diced.

1 Cup Sweet Corn

3-4 Cloves Garlic, minced

1/2 Cup Fresh Parsley, chopped

1 Cup Chicken Broth or Water

Olive Oil

Salt and Pepper

Crumbled Goat Cheese

I just had bone-in thighs in my freezer so I put them in just enough water to cover them and simmered on medium-low heat for a couple of hours before stripping the meat off and chopping. Then I used the broth I just made and gave the skins to Butcher Dog because she is a very good dog. But, if you have boneless/skinless chicken breasts and/or thighs, then do this instead:

In a large pot, dice the chicken and saute with garlic in olive oil under medium heat until cooked through. Stir frequently because you don’t want the chicken to stick or the garlic to turn brown. Remove from pot and set aside.

While the chicken is cooking, separate the stems from the Swiss chard, chop the stems and set aside. Then coarsely chop the leaves. If you’re using baby spinach, don’t bother chopping anything.

In the same pot that you used to cook the chicken, saute the chard stems with the parsley until tender. Then remove from the pot and set aside with your already cooked chicken.

Pour your broth into the pot (you can use the broth you made when preparing those glorious New Mexican Green Chile Chicken Enchiladas), add the diced sweet potatoes and cook over medium heat until a fork stabbed into a cube goes about halfway in. This is important because you don’t want the sweet potatoes to become mashed sweet potatoes by the time everything is done so don’t overcook them. Add your chicken and chard stems, chard leaves, corn, salt and pepper (if using baby spinach, throw in the parsley at this point). Feel free to use other seasonings as well. I used a French blend. Stir frequently until the leaves are wilted.

Serve with crumbled goat cheese on top.

You’re welcome.

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About butcherbakertoiletrymaker 595 Articles
When you can walk its length, and leave no trace, you will have learned.

8 Comments

  1. Like you, I am baffled by how the unknown and unwanted kale suddenly appeared everywhere just a few short years ago and I wouldn’t eat it. I’ve tried but–no. So many greens out there. Why kale? Can’t it be turned into biofuel or something and free up some of the trillions of pounds of corn?
     
    You remind me though that it is Swiss chard season and though I have no garden I have that extensive sidewalk fruit and vegetable stand on the next block and chard showed up a week or two ago. I have detailed at length/ad nauseam my pandemic paranoia avoidance of all my beloved supermarkets but the dog and I haunt that stand. I forget what I was buying (lemons to restock the bar, why am I lying, we’re all friends) but I buy carrots there for The Loyal Hound so that he too can enjoy nature’s bounty. I think I’ll attempt this this weekend. 

  2. Kale is a forbidden food in the Blacksmith household, as per Mr. Blacksmith. A local restaurant (in the before times, when going out to lunch on the weekends was not a life-threatening decision) made a delicious kale Caesar salad. Or perhaps they just made a delicious dressing to hide the kale. Butcher, that meal looks yummy and very heart healthy; I will add it my burgeoning healthy recipe file.

    • Ha! My first introduction to kale was in my very own home years ago. The Forager-in-Chief is a big fan and used to get kale salads near his office. He extolled its health benefits. 
       
      One night I said, “I’m really tired, we have that leftover chicken, I’ll make chicken Caesar salads–oh, no, we’re out of lettuce.”
       
      “We have kale. I picked some up. Use that. It’s good for you.”
       
      “Ooookaaaay…”
       
      It was awful. He loved it. I was chewing, chewing, chewing. “Are you supposed to steam this first? Or sauté it? Is this a relative of collared greens?”
       
      “I don’t think so, it’s just lettuce, isn’t it?”
       
      “It’s almost like something from the Soviet Union. When the lettuce harvest failed they’d subsist on kale. You know during the Siege of Leningrad people were dropping like flies and in desperation they–”
       
      “Yeah, so what did you do today?”

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