Yes.

Its ready.

Got it all prepared.

Its finish.

It's stunning.

Yes.

It's great.

Also ready.

So just let it all begin.

Hi, I'm Chris Fennimore.

And the topic today is chicken.

My girls used to love the television advertisement for Pappins family's restaurant At the end of each commercial.

The patriarch lupine would exclaim, chicken, chicken, and you're going to like it!

The restaurant chain ended in 2007, but the memory lingers on.

And this segment came from our program on picnics and barbecues.

Of course, you can have hot dogs and hamburgers at the picnic.

And then there are wonderful salads and side dishes and some nice juicy watermelon to top it all off.

But you can't beat a nice piece of barbecue chicken for an outdoor celebration.

And this is one that the kids will enjoy for reasons that I hope will become obvious.

One of the things that I always remember about going out and eating out is, at a picnic is, cold chicken.

So I thought we would start with the recipe for making chicken in a slightly different way that you could either, take with you, and have a cold at a picnic, or you can do it right in the backyard as you grill or at a grill someplace else.

I call them chicken sickles.

And kids love this idea.

Everybody is crazy about chicken wings, but, you know, chicken wings have gotten to be more expensive because they're so popular.

But you can still get a great buy on chicken legs.

And that's what these, chicken sickles are made out of.

I just get a big batch of the chicken legs, and then there's just a little bit of preparation that you have to do, and that is that you take a sharp knife and you go about an inch or an inch and a half up from the bottom of that chicken leg and just cut all the way to the bone.

Just keep rotating that chicken leg until you've gotten all the way around.

And then take your knife and slide that part off and cut it.

Now that takes a little bit of doing.

Make sure you have a nice sharp knife.

It'll make it easier.

And what that's going to do is that as this chicken leg cooks, the meat is going to sort of shrink towards the top and make this little chicken popsicle, as it were.

I'm going to do another one to show you what I, what I mean, and these you can, we're going to marinate these and, all kinds of marinades.

A marinade is really nothing more than a combination of an oil and acid and some spices.

And, for these, I'm going to do an Asian style marinade.

I want to make sure I get all the way around this.

And then cut down.

Great picnic tradition in this country is, you know, fried chicken that you bring, to a picnic.

But, you can bring this barbecue chicken or baked chicken.

If you don't have a chance to barbecue this, you can actually bake it off in the oven.

All right, so now I have my chicken.

I've prepared a bunch more because we have a big crew here who are interested in and tasting everything that we make.

I'm going to put those into here.

Okay?

And just get them set up, because now I'm going to make the marinade and the marinade.

I'm going to just clean my board a little bit.

Is going to go right into the chicken.

I'm going to start with a little bit of ginger recipe calls for about a tablespoon of fresh ginger.

Or you could use powdered ginger.

I would just use a little bit less used maybe a teaspoon of powdered ginger.

Cut this into little pieces.

Pound it down with the side of your knife.

And then give it a good chop.

Chopping it this fine just makes sure that you're going to get a nice, even distribution in the marinade.

I love the smell.

The aroma of fresh ginger is terrific.

And you know, nowadays you can get, nice fresh ginger in your regular supermarket.

You don't have to go to a special store at all.

And then I'm going to use some crushed garlic, and I'm going to use exactly the same board technique, knife technique.

And that is I'm just going to make it into a little bit of a paste so that you get the most flavor out of the garlic, and it gets distributed more evenly in the marinade.

People always ask me, can you use powdered garlic instead?

Can you use garlic salt?

Can you use yeah, you can use a lot of that stuff.

But one of the reasons, you know, that that we put the fresh stuff in the recipe is that it just tastes that much better.

And all I'm going to do is just work that on the board a little bit till it gets nice and smooth.

I got a little paper of the garlic there.

And you can make your own garlic paste.

I frankly I don't I'm not even crazy about using the pre done garlic because it just it doesn't have as fresh a flavor as this nice fresh garlic.

You make your own paste.

It's the fun of cooking.

All right.

So now I'm going to put that into my chicken.

Put that all straight away.

I know we got we, you know, had a tremendous number of, of, recipes, for, different things that people like to eat at their, at their cookouts and picnics.

And it just reminded me that, you know, people have all these family traditions.

There were a lot of the recipes that we got.

We're talking not just about the recipe, but about how they love to eat out, how they go for picnics.

The family reunions are centered around a picnic and things like that was really great, and I want to thank everybody who sent in their recipes.

They were really terrific.

So obviously we're going to make, as I said, these are going to have an Asian flavor to them.

So I start with, some soy sauce and then the, the, the aroma and the flavor that really gets to me is some toasted sesame oil.

It's really it's not so much for its use as an oil.

It's that, the it's the flavor of that particular ingredient.

Then I do put in about a tablespoon of oil.

You can use peanut oil or canola oil or even olive oil.

And then the, the acid which you need for any marinade is that I use is a rice wine vinegar.

And that has a sort of distinct, flavor to it.

If you didn't have that, I would say you could probably use just white vinegar or even an apple cider vinegar.

And then there's a little bit of sugar in this recipe.

And what that does is as this chicken marinates.

And then you put it on the grill, that sugar that's in the marinade is going to cause it to, caramelize and get a beautiful brown color on the outside.

And it's a little sweetness and it just but you have to be careful that you don't cook this at too high a temperature.

You want to make sure that the chicken is going to get cooked all the way through.

So I like to marinate in these, plastic bags.

You can, just put all of your ingredients in there, close it up, and then work it a little bit and make sure that these get all coated.

You could do this the night before your picnic or your barbecue.

And just make sure that, you know, at some point, while this stays in the fridge, you'd give it another extra turn to make sure that they all get, equally coated and well coated.

And that's a lot easier than other marinade methods I've found.

Okay, so now put this into the refrigerator and let this stay.

As I said, at least a couple of hours overnight is best.

And that means there's less work to do on the day of your picnic.

And what we have, you know, when they said you're going to do a show on barbecuing, where are you going?

To put a barbecue in the studio.

And I said, I have no idea, because you're not allowed to barbecue indoors.

They frown on that.

The fire department.

So, what we did was we have this, this indoor grill.

And a lot of people, tell me that they do grilling when they can't go outside.

They use their, you know, little portable grills that they have.

And that's what we have here.

This is a little electric grill, and I've got my chicken sickles right on there.

And as you can see.

They are nice and brown.

They got a little crusty.

You could see a little grill marks on them.

So it's just like being outside except, you know, no flies.

All right.

So I'm going to put these onto a platter.

And I wish we had a, I wish we had a kid here because kids love these things because they come with a handle.

You know, any food with a handle?

Boy, that's got to be some fun, right?

Okay, so turn this down, and I guess it's up to me.

If there's no kid around, I'm going to have to have a taste of this myself.

Yeah, I know, I know that.

So let me see what this is like.

Ooh, it's a little a little bit hot.

Okay.

You know.

There's something wonderful about that marinade.

Not just that it's amazingly flavorful, but, marinating your meats or poultry, before you, grill it, means that it's sort of tenderize it.

And, so the meat stays moist and tender.

Just make sure you don't cook it too fast.

You want to make sure that this is cooked all the way to the bone.

And, this is it's just delicious.

I may never cook chicken wings again.

The leg portion is meatier and it's neater to eat.

And it's also very economical compared to the cost of wings.

This next segment comes from our program on leftovers.

When I was growing up, my mom made an effort to make lots of different cuisines for us to sample.

She made Polish stuffed cabbage, she made Irish corned beef and cabbage, and she even made lo mein and fried rice.

With a little help from the La Choy company.

But for some reason she never tried anything Mexican.

My first taste of Mexican didn't come until the World's Fair in 1968, when I had my first taco, and it was a revelation.

It's life changing.

I've been hooked ever since, and I make sure I have the spices and sauces on hand at all times, as well as a good supply of tortillas.

You know, I love frugal recipes, so when you combine the Latin flavors with leftover chicken, it's a win win situation for me.

Where's my son, buero?

Yes absolutely get out and do some buero.

The syrupy we are making an embarrassingly easy.

I was embarrassed the first time we made it.

Here we are again, making it again.

But it's such a great way to use chicken.

And it doesn't take any time.

And it's just.

Yeah, it's just yummy.

And it is a chicken enchilada dish.

And, Chris has even told me that we can skip a step that I originally did because when I first submitted the recipe and this is how we printed it in the cookbook, it says to combine beans.

That would be red kidney beans that have been drained and rinsed so as to combine them with a can of enchilada sauce in a sauce pan and cook it over medium heat until thoroughly heated.

But Chris, you just pointed out to me, why do we have to heat it?

It's going to bake in the evening to bake it.

Yeah, right.

So we're not going to go through that heating process and instead we're just going to put the, the kidney beans.

That would be one and 15.5oz, one can of red kidney beans drained and rinse with ten ounces of the enchilada sauce.

We're just gonna put them right into a blender and blend them up without heating them.

Okay?

Okay.

So that's easy enough to do.

That's a big can.

Oh, no it is.

Not all of this is just a ten ounces, because you also use enchilada sauce in the on the top.

Okay.

We'll go with that a little bit more.

All right.

Yeah.

There we go.

Okay okay.

And just blend it up.

Chop mix puree.

Let's mix, on.

And now we go over the mixture to say that even if you don't like Mexican food you might like this I did.

You know, I wasn't a big fan of Mexican food for many, many, many years.

And then one day.

I don't know your taste buds changes.

There it is.

One day Ive bit to some enchiladas and said, this is actually pretty good.

All right, so now you've got this all mixed up.

You do that until it's kind of chunky and then you now Chris is heating up the enchiladas because these tortillas the tortillas, you know, it softens them so that because you're going to have to roll stuff in it and, and so if you heat up the tortillas a little bit, you need to do it this way.

Or you can put them, wrap them in a damp towel and put them in a microwave for a minute or so.

But it really it'll make it easier.

And it doesn't actually cook them.

They're already cooked.

And you're going to bake them later, but, you know, okay.

And then all you're going to do is, is put the leftover chicken that you have from whatever dish you made last night.

Chopped up.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Because I know you're a better chopper than I am to chop it up.

You know, you want to kind of shredded thin.

You don't want it falling out in big chunks from the enchilada.

And.

Yeah, there you go.

Look at you.

You use your knuckles and everything the way you're supposed to when you're.

Well, there you go.

And I appreciate that because I need these fingers for other things.

I have to play the banjo and things like that.

And if you ever heard Chris play the banjo, it is.

It is fabulous.

And he's chopping up some and some scallions.

He's not going to chop up the cheese because that's already shredded.

All right.

Yeah.

Look.

Now make sure you definitely get into the green part because you want that color.

If nothing else.

I love scallions I do too.

And I, I never quite understood the recipes that only use the white part.

Yeah I know no you got to have the green for the color.

If anything I would only use the green part of falling and use one end of it.

Yeah.

But I like to mix it all up because the white part's a little crunchier.

There you go.

Okay, we got that so they can start assembling.

You can leave them in long strips.

You don't want to kind of.

Oh, I can cut them whatever way you like.

Like, oh yeah, I prefer it like that.

Thanks.

Okay, okay.

And so then you got to get this out.

What do we have to, I need a spoon to get in there.

Okay, so you're just making this.

I mean.

You're going to just sort of wallpaper this or, like, paste this stuff on, And then your leftover chicken.

And thats basic it, you know, if you really just didn't even have any leftovers, you could just boil up a couple or heat up a couple of chicken breasts and make this.

But it's.

Yeah, I hate to tell you where this came from.

Well, I know I hate that, I know that.

I'll tell you what I know.

You want leftover chicken to buy a rotisserie chicken.

It's all cooked.

Yeah, it's ready to go.

That's what I do, you know.

Okay.

And then cheese.

And frankly, you could put anything you wanted in here if you want to roll some, guacamole in there or avocado pieces or red peppers or clean out the refrigerator or whatever it is.

Okay.

And then you're going to you made them fat.

I did probably a little too fat because it's supposed to roll up.

Let me try.

There we go.

That'll stay.

And you're going to line these up in a pan.

Wait.

The pan should be greased.

Okay.

That should be greased.

Should have done that first.

I know from experience that these don't come out too easily.

If you don't grease the pan.

So like that and some this.

Oh, you just poured.

I'm using the spoon and you're just pouring.

I like you like your methods.

You save a few steps here.

Well, you know this.

The two step, the two step back each other.

Yeah.

I love the flavors.

I would probably make these half and half half really spicy and half just plain.

You know.

Yeah.

And then what would you do as like cayenne pepper or taco sauce or hot sauce to it actually the the, the enchilada sauce that you buy in the, in the store comes in a hot version, comes in a hot version or a mild version.

I always get the mild, but you're right.

Yeah.

So I got chop some more, chicken.

I'm gonna put this and then this is, this could be a nice dinner, but it's also a great dish to bring to a party.

I think it seemed that way to me.

Yeah, it's it's, we'll kind of tailgate party wintery kind of a thing.

Although I shouldn't say that.

I mean, if you live south of the border, you're eating enchiladas all year round, right?

But you could also make this with different meat.

You said that, right?

Yeah.

Ground beef for sure.

Yeah.

Actually, I don't think I said that on the air.

I said that off the air.

But yes, you can use any different kind of meat, like when you go to a Mexican restaurant, they ask you if you want your tortilla enchiladas, do you want it with steak or do you want it with chicken, or do you want it with ground beef?

So yes, I think I forgot to put cheese in the other one.

Oh no.

Yeah.

No you didn't I see it I see.

Oh yeah.

It's coming out.

You're good, you're good.

Yeah.

No.

Got to have that cheese.

It's that's what makes it all kind of gooey and fun.

Put that in there.

All right.

Got another one here.

Let's make them up.

I could do that.

You know, because we got a whole studio crew here.

Yeah.

And there's something about getting.

As we said before, this is not, a recipe of just heating up that leftover chicken and eating it again.

You know, that that it it is a matter of transforming it into something that's really different, a different flavor profile.

Nobody has to actually know that it's left over, right?

Oh, yeah.

And, you know, you got to love the way how easily everything can come together.

Now they make a three cheese Mexican shredded.

I mean, it actually says Mexican cheeses on it, but you can buy and there you go.

You don't even have to mix the cheeses.

This is, this one happens to be what, the what they called taco cheese, which is, you know, three different kinds of cheese.

Plus, I guess some some little taco flavoring.

Yeah, whatever that is, I guess cumin and and garlic and whatever.

And so the end result is a dish that tastes authentic, or at least the American version of authentic Mexican.

You know, it's so interesting when you actually start traveling and you discover that a lot of the things that we think are, are Chinese or Mexican or whatever, they are nothing like they actually are when you go to those countries.

Yeah, they're prepared a bit differently.

But this is I'm going to do one more.

So we fill.

Oh yeah.

We have room for one more.

And then you, you the next step is you got to coat that right.

You do with the sauce with the remaining enchilada sauce.

I like more scallions.

I like that bite.

More scallions.

Okay, okay.

Wrap that up.

That one's going to crack that.

All right.

So now that's you with the rest of your enchilada sauce Which goes on top.

You get this evenly.

And you want it to be on the bottom of the pan, drip over because it's all going to get absorbed.

And that's that.

I mean, really, how hard was that?

And then you got to put some cheese on top.

Thank you.

Don't forget the cheese I know I don't know losing my mind here.

Yeah.

Because like you with the butter it's made with the cheese.

Can't have enough of the cheese.

Oh my god.

Just love it.

That cheese or cinnamon and this isn't really a cinnamon recipe.

Baking.

What do we do?

Baking at 300.

This is a little cooler oven.

Okay.

And you cover it.

You have to cover it.

It says.

You know me.

It says cover it.

I'm going to cover it.

Yeah.

And bake for, 15 or 20 minutes because all the ingredients in there are already cooked.

It's not like anything has to really.

Right.

Go from raw to cook.

I'm going to put this back here so that we can bring out the, the, the finished one with.

And I just do want to like.

Yeah, pull this stuff over.

Thank you.

All right, all right.

Where some hot Pat's hand.

Here.

I got this over here.

Oh, she's ready to go.

So.

Oh, my.

Oh, I like it.

I like it when it gets crunchy like that on top.

I do I like it when you put it.

In addition I get the taste it sandwiches.

Yeah.

What you like.

All righty.

That is what I like.

For our sake I'm going to cut these in half so I don't make a mess when I take them out.

So what.

Yeah that's what just a half.

Just a half.

Because I'm going to drop it and make a mess on TV.

If it was my own kitchen, I would do it.

See?

Look, I'm going to have trouble just even getting a half out.

See, that's what I was anticipating.

If I had a really long one, I wouldn't be able to do it.

So there it is.

You know what's happened?

The the, tortilla has gotten soft.

It's like because of the liquid, if you heat them up, they get soft.

Mexican.

Oh I love I and I love that you use the corn tortillas because that corn flavor is really a nice part of this.

Yeah.

The corn tortillas were great.

But if you prefer the flour ones work just as well.

I would make chicken just to have the leftovers to make into this dish.

And once again, Nancy, who constantly belittles her cooking skills, comes up with a recipe that the crew and volunteers just loved.

Why did the chicken cross the road they wanted to be on?

QED cooks, and as I always say, we do it for you, but we can't do it without you.

So many thanks to all of you for your support.

Keep watching and keep cooking.

Yes it's right.