(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . What’s For Dinner? v20.45 A Tale of Two Boxes [1] ['View Profile', 'Egberto Willies', 'Mother Mags', 'News Corpse', 'Thom Hartmann'] Date: 2026-05-09 Boxes of chicken broth, that is. What’s for Dinner?is a Saturday evening get-together where friends share recipes, talk about good food and help others answer culinary questions.We welcome you to our virtual table every Saturday evening 4:30 PT/7:30 ET. If you would like to write a post for an upcoming date just send a message toninkasi23! Master Index 2014-2021 HERE More Recent EntriesHERE To begin the story, I bought the two boxes for the purpose of poaching chicken breasts. Like I’ve mentioned in my past few diaries, I bought the chicken breasts when they were VERY on sale. And I bought a LOT. For this batch of chicken I decided to do a kind of chicken, noodle, and cheese casserole type thing. So first I had to poach the chicken. I took 2 boxes of stock, put them in a pot and then bloomed a packet of unflavored gelatin in the stock. Then I added an onion, a couple small carrots, and two serrano peppers. I also added some garlic cloves, black peppercorns, and a little sachet of dried thyme and bay leaves. I let that simmer for a couple of hours, then I turned off the heat and added a nice glug of shiro dashi and a dash of dark soy sauce. The dark soy sauce really made it a deep brown. I strained it out into containers and put it in the fridge. NOTE: Always taste peppers before using. That stock with the two serrano peppers was a bit on the HOT side. But still very yummy. Then the next day, I poached the chicken breasts in that fortified stock, and put them in the fridge to cool. I also strained the stock back into containers and put those back into the fridge to cool and eventually freeze. I diced the chicken and set it to the side. Then I got shallots going, and added garlic paste​ Then I added flour to make a roux, and half and half to make a béchamel. I made a thick béchamel—8 Tbsp of butter and about that much flour, with 4 cups of half and half. Then in went cheese for a mornay sauce. It got REALLY thick and it tasted pretty rich, so I added some of the stock and some mustard. That brightened things up a bit. In went the diced chicken breast—about ¾ of it you can see in the picture below because my pan was getting full. The rest went directly into the casserole dish. ​ Then I par cooked some Amish “homemade” style flat wide egg noodles and it all got mixed into a casserole dish with some box stuffing—half of the stuffing mixed in with the sauce and chicken, and the rest sprinkled on top. ​ I gave it a bake, and the stuffing on top browned wonderfully: Then I threw some cheese on it, put it back in the oven, and look at that! Oh yeah. That was a good chicken mac and cheese. The bread from the stuffing absorbed a lot of the liquid so it was like taking roast chicken, stuffing, and mac and cheese and mixing them all together. So what happened to that stock I poached the chicken in? Well, I had like 9½ cups of it in the fridge. Like I mentioned, I set it to freeze, then the next week I got some veggies going in butter and garlic paste. Into my slow cooker went some grated garlic and sliced mushrooms. And then I mixed in the sweated veggies with their butter. Then the stock went in. I actually added about 3 more cups of water in addition to the stock. I made sure to stir quite well so the butter from the veggies emulsified into the stock. Then I set the cooker to high and let it go for a couple of hours to get the mushrooms cooked and giving up some of their liquid. The broth turned out so good. I put another glug of shiro dashi into it as well, cause that stuff goes with everything. And the serrano pepper heat? almost entirely dissipated, but you could sense it was there making things bright. Once it was ready, I added some tortellinis—the kind that are shelf stable from Aldi—and let them go for like a half hour. ​ For the final touch, I added grated parmigiano reggiano a bit at a time, making sure to stir well each time so that the cheese would emulsify into the broth making it richer and creamier, almost like a sauce. ​ And there you have it. The story of how two boxes of chicken broth became two weeks worth of meals. This is a practice I’ve done for a long time. For example, I could make chicken rice one week. I always make more stock than what I need for the rice. Then I use that saved stock to poach some chicken, or make a soup, anything that can benefit from using stock instead of water. A great way to stretch the dollar, and we need to find every way we can In these trying times. What better way than to use some simple box stock over and over to make wonderful comfort food? Now I didn’t plan it, but these last three diaries I did–The one about stock, then there was the Poaching diary, and now this one, are like a story or a series. The two boxes of stock were the basis for thinking about what I was going to write about today. Because I fortified that stock for cooking chicken, that led to the stock diary. Because I poached the chicken, I did a poaching diary. And because I used those boxes of stock more than once, I’m able to tell the story. I am singing a concert tonight, so I’ll be back later for comments and stuff. But for tomorrow, I’ve poached some chicken in some fortified broth (again) and am planning another version of Chicken Mac and Cheese. I’m going to be trying a new technique or two, including using evaporated milk in the cheese sauce instead of regular milk. Should turn out good. And really rich. I’ve been on a rich and fatty food kick to not only get rid of things like pork jowl and corned beef in my freezer, but because I’m having my gall bladder out in July and I want a bit of a “last hurrah” before cutting way back on cooking fatty things with butter. But in the meantime, here is a little snippet of us in rehearsal for tonight’s concert: So, please share your tips for meal planning–each time I cook I make a week’s worth of meals–for a post gall bladder diet. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/5/9/800019695/community/whats-for-dinner-v20-45-a-tale-of-two-boxes/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/