Jonah's Chicken Loaf

For today’s post, the credit goes to Jonah!  I hadn’t planned to cook anything else this week, unfortunately for me; my boys had gone into my chicken dishes I had made for the week and eaten all of the chicken out of them, leaving the sauce, potatoes, dumplings…  Yeah, so something had to be done.  You would think after all this time with the boys that I would have known better.

We started with white meat chicken.  I prefer white meat chicken for this dish, as it is lighter and prettier.  We put our chicken breasts in the food processor and let it rip until they were finely ground.  You could also use a meat grinder for this; make sure the meat gets very fine. 

While the meat was working, Jonah cracked three eggs.  We used one defrosted bag of frozen spinach.  We squeezed the excess water out.  It will water down your loaf, and turn the chicken green.  Not what we are going for.  If you prefer, you can sauté your own fresh spinach.  The same rule applies about removing any excess liquid from the cooked spinach.  This is not the time for raw spinach.

I helped Jonah at this step, by moving the chicken from the food processor to a big bowl for him.  I cut myself half the time with my food processor blades (they are insanely sharp!!) so I didn’t want to risk him getting hurt.  He added his eggs, spinach and a container of low-fat crumbled feta cheese.  You can use regular feta here, you can also save a little money and buy a block and crumble it yourself.  I added some salt, pepper, and a few seasonings I enjoy with chicken.

The next step was Jonah’s favorite, with a pair of clean hands, mix everything up.  His first response was “EWWWW”, then “COOL”.  He had a blast mixing everything together.  He did a great job too!  I went behind him to check, and it had been mixed perfectly!  So proud of him!  This has not always been the case.
Jonah put the chicken in our loaf dish.  We bake this on a cookie sheet because every time juices boil over.  It is so much easier to clean up the cookie sheet than our oven.  We baked it at 350F until our meat thermometer said it was done, 165F.  This is one of those meat dishes that you do want to let rest.  Give it a good five minutes before cutting into this, or your juices will run out of the meat and your loaf will be left dry.  Not good!

If you notice the little piece missing, you will enjoy this.  As I am pulling out the loaf from the oven, I tell him “Don’t touch it!”  As I say the word “it”, his hand reaches over me and grabs a piece of the prettiest corner.  When I say that there are times keeping the guys out is imperative for finishing a step, I am not kidding!  I am thanking my husband for the chunk missing out of the chicken loaf. 

Bonus Recipe!
 
So if you are like me, I love a good recipe that I can use leftovers, without it being obvious that I'm using leftovers.  There are some dishes that I love the leftovers, but this one has such a yummy second dish, I thought it was worth revisiting.

I start by making a simple béchamel sauce; a roux of butter and flour, with milk.  I combine my sauce with broth for my soup base.  While my sauce was coming together I cubed a slice of the chicken loaf.  I combined the soup base with the chicken loaf and some rice (we had some leftover from a side).  That’s it! 

If you have potatoes or pasta and onions, they are awesome in this as well.  Just cook them through in the broth before adding the remaining ingredients.  You can also play around with some fresh parsley and green onions if you would like.