PULLED CHICKEN SANDWICHES AND FRIES

I cooked chicken and yellow rice for a crowd Sunday. My family has this thing about feeding people - you MUST have food left over when company leaves. If there's nothing left over then someone didn't get to eat his fill. That would make me a tragic hostess. Incidentally, I also married into a family with the same philosophy. So, as you can imagine, I had a lot of chicken left over. It got morphed into pulled chicken sandwiches for dinner last night.

This is so stinkin' easy - you don't even need a recipe for it. I based it off of my now-favorite roast recipe from A Year of Slow Cooking since my family isn't a huge fan of BBQ - unless it's Sonny's and we don't have those in these parts. Even if we could just buy the sauce here...sigh...

Here's what I did.

Pulled Chicken Sandwiches

I took my already cooked chicken (you could also use left-over turkey) and broke it apart into my crock pot. Just put in the amount that you think your family will eat. Next, I opened a can of cranberry sauce with whole cranberries in it and added that to the pot. I also added 2 TBSP of soy sauce and about a tablespoon of dried onions. You could use some chopped onion, but I didn't have any in the freezer and was just way to lazy busy to chop any at that moment.

*When you get the ingredients into the pot you'll need to use your judgement on whether it looks wet enough for you or not. This isn't rocket science. If you've so much chicken in your pot that it looks very dry - then add more sauce mix. They key here is for every 1 can of cranberry sauce - add 2 TBSP of soy sauce and 1 TBSP of dried onion flakes. Very simple.

Since the meat is already cooked, you really just need to warm the sauce through. I put mine in the crock pot on low heat about 2:30 PM and we had dinner around 6:30 PM. I doubt it would need that much time if you didn't have it.

To serve, I brushed the insides of some whole wheat hamburger buns with a little bit of butter (you could use a mix of butter/olive oil) and toasted them in my iron skillet. Add a bit of Romaine lettuce and top with your pulled chicken and voila! A yummy and healthified sandwich.

I served with homemade fries (which are super easy to make).

Homemade Fries

This is a judgement thing again. Figure out how many potatoes you'll need by the size of your family. My Russet potatoes were pretty small, so I used 5 for our family of 3 and we had left-overs.

Pre-heat your oven to 450 degrees while you begin cutting your potatoes.

Cut your potatoes in 1/2. Then cut each 1/2 in 1/2 again - making sure your cuts are parallel. (Sorry, no pictures.) You will have 4 layers of potatoes now. Flip them over and cut into strips as wide or narrow as you like. *I wash my potatoes but don't peel them. There is a lot of nutrients in the skin. But, you do what you like. You'll save a lot of time by not peeling them, though.

Toss your potato strips with a little bit of olive oil, enough to coat but not drown them. Lay them on your baking sheet(s) and roast at 450 degrees until done - flipping about 1/2 way through the cooking time. It took mine about 30 minutes.

Season with salt at the end. *When roasting any vegetable that you want to stay crispy don't add salt until towards the end. Salt draws the moisture out of the vegetable and will cause it to be soggy. You definitely don't want that with French fries.

My guys loved this meal and requested that we have it again. I like knowing that it isn't full of yucky preservatives and trans fats. We're baby stepping and this is an easy meal that is oh, so yummy that we didn't even miss the bad stuff. You won't either.

I'm linking this post up to Tasty Tuesday and Tempt My Tummy Tuesday.

Happy Homemaking!