How to Freeze Broccoli

This may be totally obvious and easy to everyone, but I know this was a useful skill for me to learn, and something I had never done in America. Freezing broccoli!

Reasons I love to freeze broccoli:

1. You can't buy frozen broccoli in India. Boo.

2. Broccoli is also not available year around here. Learned that the sad, hard way when broccoli was out of season and no where to be found for several months.

3. I always have broccoli on hand, so if I ever have an oops-I-forgot-to-plan-dinner day, I can easily whip up my Chicken & Broccoli Stir Fry.

4. It makes me feel better that more of the bugs have been killed and removed throughout the process.

5. It's partially cooked through, so when it comes time to use it in a dish it takes less time to cook that fresh.

Here's a step by step how to freeze some broccoli for yourself!

1. Trim your broccoli from the stem. I personally love broccoli but hate the stems, so I trim mine very very close to the leafy part. You can make fun of me if you want, I'm totally secure in my 5 year old eating preferences.

2. Clean your broccoli. This is the part where I kind of freak out in India. Growing up in America, I remember my mom always soaking fresh broccoli in salt water to encourage any little buggies to come out. Multiply that by 1,000 in India where I have very low expectations of their cleaning abilities (aka watching tiny cock roaches crawl all over the fresh produce at the grocery store. Yep.). Or maybe it's because I've seen the little bugs floating in the water after I boiled it to freeze. So I'm a little over zealous about cleaning the broccoli here (which is one reason I love going through all the steps of freezing it!)  Combine a few tablespoons of white distilled vinegar and a teaspoon or so of salt with several cups of filtered water (tap water is fine in America). Let your broccoli soak in the vinegar water for about 10 minutes, swishing it around a couple of times during the process. Drain the broccoli and rinse with more filtered water.

3. Bring a pot of water to a boil, and then we're going to blanch the broccoli. Basically that means cooking it for just a few minutes and then quickly cooling it down to stop the cooking process so it doesn't cook all the way through. Add the broccoli to the boiling water and boil for 3 minutes.

4. Prepare a bowl of filtered ice water. After the 3 minutes of boiling, drain the broccoli and immediately add it to the bowl of ice water. Let it soak in the ice water for 3 minutes, swishing it around a couple of times.

5. Drain the broccoli, and spread it out on a kitchen towel to dry. The drier you let your broccoli get at this point, the fewer ice crystals will form on it in the freezer.

See how close to the leaves those are cut? Perfect! :)

6. After the broccoli is dry, put it in a Ziploc bag - I happened to bring some Ziploc freezer bags from America, so that's what I used, but you could use the Indian brand. Or you could also use an air tight plastic container if you don't have plastic bags. In an ideal world you could even portion these out into smaller bags so you're not exposing the broccoli to the air every time you open the bag to take some out, but I don't have any smaller bags from America, and the ones in India are just too expensive to justify that. I haven't had any major problems in this area though.

Suck out as much of the air as possible (I even used a straw and literally sucked extra air out). Pop the bag in the freezer. 

Done! 

BBQ Chicken Sandwiches - Crock Pot

Ohhhhhhhh my.

So this is my newest favorite meal to make.

It was SO.EASY. 

And delicious. 

My husband is from the Kansas City area, the land of the BEST barbecue. (I will not be entertaining any arguments from any Memphis style BBQ fans. Bleh). We also had catered BBQ at our wedding. So I appreciate some good BBQ. And this BBQ chicken was great! I chose to cook it in the crock pot, which made it oh so simple, but cooking it on the stove top would also be easy. (I'll include directions for that below).

In my recipe, I've doubled the amount of sauce you make vs the original recipe in my cookbook, because I personally like my BBQ to be drowning in sauce.

So if you're in India and you have a crock pot, you've probably figured out by now that they tend to cook things on like, supercharged power, so it takes less time than in America. I would only recommend cooking this in the crock pot for about 4-5 hours on low here, but you'd probably need to up that time in America some and either do high for 4-5 hours or low for 6-7.

Hope you enjoy these as much as we did! I adapted the recipe from a cookbook I got here, so all the ingredients are available :)  (well, assuming you have some brown sugar).

BBQ Chicken Sandwiches

2 chicken breasts, thawed not frozen

3/4 cup onions, finely chopped

5-6 garlic cloves, minced

2 TBS oil (I used olive, but you could use vegetable)

1- 1 1/2 cups ketchup

1 1/2 TBS vinegar (the recipe says apple cider is best, but I only had white)

7 TBS brown sugar

2 tsp. salt

2 tsp. cumin

A few shakes of red pepper flakes

I sprayed my crock pot with cooking spray, and then added a splash of water (seriously a splash, hardly any) in the bottom just to keep the sauce from drying out or burning. Place the chicken in the crock pot.

In a bowl, combine all the other ingredients and stir together. Pour the sauce over the chicken. Cook on low for 4-5 hours (if you're in India, longer in America).

About 20-30 minutes before eating, take the chicken out and shred it, then return it to the crock pot and stir to mix. If the sauce is too runny, you can stir in a little extra ketchup and brown sugar, then let it cook the extra 30 minutes with the lid off to thicken up.
 Serve with burger buns (I just bought some from the grocery store...which I've never completely understood why they have those when they don't eat hamburgers...) They're extra tasty if you spread some butter on the buns and then toast them on a  griddle or in the oven first!

** Stovetop directions:  Sautee the onions and garlic in the oil for 5 minutes. Add all the other ingredients, except the chicken, and simmer for about 5 minutes. Stir in the 2 precooked chicken breasts, either shredded or diced. Simmer for a couple more minutes for the chicken to absorb some flavor. 

Crock Pot Chicken Noodle Soup

I love chicken noodle soup. I mean, who doesn't? Well, I know that some people don't actually like it...but I'm not one of them! Thankfully, this is a very easy dish to make in India!

This is one of those great recipes where you literally throw everything in the crock pot and let it cook all day, making your house smell heavenly. I think if you had a cold the smell alone would heal you. The only extra step involved is shredding the chicken and adding the noodles in for the last 30 minutes. 

Most recipes you find for chicken noodle soup call for egg noodles, but since those aren't available in India, I just use regular corkscrew rotini noodles. And this might seem shocking...but I maybe like them even better. The jury's out...I'll have to wait till I have some chicken noodle soup at Panera when we're back in America, and then I can truly decide which noodle I like better. :)

Also here's a side tip: At least in Kolkata you can't consistently find celery year round. So when I do see celery, I buy extra, clean, chop and freeze it for the times I want to make soups and it's not available. 

Crock Pot Chicken Noodle Soup

Original Recipe

2-3 chicken breasts, frozen or thawed

1 cup of chopped carrots

1 cup of chopped celery

1 large or 2 small onions, chopped

3-4 cloves garlic, minced

2 bay leaves

1 tsp basil

1 TBS parsley

1/2 tsp thyme

salt and pepper to taste

6-7 cups of water

5 chicken cubes (sub the water and chicken cubes with chicken broth if you have it)

1/2 pkg of rotini noodles

Throw everything in the crock pot except for the noodles. Give it a stir, and cook on low for 6-7 hours or high for 4-6 hours. (I would cook it at least 5 hours if the chicken is frozen).

In the final 30 minutes of cooking, take out the chicken and shred it. Add the chicken back in along with the pasta noodles, and stir.

After 30 minutes, check the seasoning and add salt and pepper if needed. If the noodles have soaked up too much of the liquid, add a little more water or chicken broth. 

For stovetop instructions if you don't have a crock pot, click the original recipe link.