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Update 11/3/2012: I tried putting the enchiladas in parchment paper slings. It works great!

Put the plate close by and lift the enchilada by its sling and put it on the plate. The only problem is that the sauce will want to run out the ends of the sling so do it quickly, and level.

Then just use a big spatula to slide it off the parchment paper. Since you're just sliding it, as opposed to slipping the spatula underneath it to lift it, the enchilada doesn't want to flip over when you plate it. Perfect!

Also, I reduced the serving size from 2 enchiladas to 1, since 2 seemed like too much.


Update 1/4/2013: I made this again with grilled chicken and a batch of salsa fresca. I put a little salsa fresca inside the enchilada.


And put a little on top after plating:


The rest I served with tortilla chips. It was delicious!

Update 5/16/2013: Instead of messing with the separate pan and/or parchment paper sling, this time I just baked it on my plate, 10 minutes at 375°F. Obviously this should only be done with an oven-safe plate! To serve it, I set the hot plate on a not hot plate; the two layers make it possible to carry and not damage the table. I do the same for nachos.

Also, I measured the shredded cheese and I used 0.5 oz., with about half inside and half on top. And I used the whole 3.0 oz. package of grilled chicken to make one big enchilada instead of two smaller ones.

The recipe calls for slab bacon lardons or raw bacon, but all I had was my frozen pre-cooked bacon, which worked fine. I probably should have added a little oil or bacon grease to compensate for the lack of fat, but it worked okay without it. I used 3 slices of cooked bacon, 1.8 oz.. I think the slab bacon lardons would have been better, however.

Finely dice 1/2 medium yellow onion. Mince 2 cloves of garlic.

I really like Ruhlman's technique for rendering the bacon and cooking the onion and garlic. Put the bacon, onion and garlic in a pot large enough to hold the chicken in one layer. Add enough water to just cover and heat on high heat until the water evaporates.


Lower the heat to medium-low (low on my stove) and cook until the onions begin to caramelize. This technique works really well and results in perfectly cooked onion and garlic without burning!

When done, add 1 1/2 tbsp. of all-purpose flour to the pan and cook for a minute or two.

While the water is boiling off, cut up 4 large white mushrooms (4.4 oz.). The recipe calls for quartering, but I cut them in half then into 4 slices because I don't like large mushroom pieces, though they do shrink so maybe quartering would be fine.

I should not have cut the carrot because it's just there for flavor and gets removed before serving. And I peeled 4 shallots. This is much less work than the pile of pearl onions in the other recipe!


To the pot with the cooked bacon, onions and garlic, add:

Roasted chicken, skin side down
Mushrooms, carrot, shallots
2 bay leaves
8 oz. red wine
1 tbsp. honey
salt

Add water so the liquid covers 3/4 of the height of the chicken. Put in the oven and roast, uncovered, for 20 minutes.

I used malbec because that's what I had open, but I think burgundy or pinot noir would be more traditional. This recipe uses significantly less wine than the other recipe, which calls for 1 3/4 liters! 


Flip the chicken over so it's skin-side up and roast for 20 more minutes, uncovered. Looks good!


Remove the bay leaves and carrot. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Because I prepared this a day ahead and was going to freeze one of the servings I rapidly chilled the pot in a sink full of cold water. I then filled each vacuum bag with one chicken leg (about 8.8 oz. cooked weight, with bone, each), two shallots and 6 oz. of the liquid, mushrooms and bacon.


The original recipe says it can be reheated from refrigerator temperature in the oven, 30 minutes at 325°F. Since it was already in a vacuum sealed bag I reheated in the sous vide, 45 minutes at 160°F.

Serve with 1.5 oz. egg noodles.

Before serving, crisp the skin of the chicken. This can be done on the grill or broiler. I cooked it for about 5 minutes under the broiler while the noodles were cooking.


I plated by putting the drained noodles in a large bowl, added the chicken and and added the juice, mushroom and bacon mix. I possibly should have poured the juice everywhere but the chicken, because I ended up un-crisping the chicken pouring juice over the top of the chicken. It was still delicious, regardless.

Served with a little minced flat leaf parsley as garnish.

I tweeted the picture at the top of the page to @Ruhlman and he retweeted a nice response!

Update 8/17/2012. Here's a version with Salame Toscano and mushrooms.


I also, for the first time ever, got the pizza off the peel and onto the pizza stone successfully! The trick was to make sure the dough was sufficiently floured, with regular flour, after rolling, then putting a lot of semolina flour on the peel. And I mean a lot. I'm not sure, but I'd guess the better part of 1/8 cup.

November 28, 2012: I think I'm getting the hang of this!

Also finely dice half a yellow onion, mince 1 clove of garlic and slice 3 large white mushrooms.

Bring 6.0 oz. of water to a boil. I use my electric tea kettle to heat the water and pour 6.0 oz. into a Pyrex measuring cup. Or you could microwave the water in the measuring chip. Add the chicken stock concentrate and dissolve. You could use actual chicken stock, but you should probably add a little extra and reduce it. The concentrate is great because you can make it any strength and the concentrate keeps forever in the refrigerator unlike an opened package of chicken stock.

Heat a sauté pan over medium-low heat. Add 1 tbsp. butter. Add the chicken on one half and the onions on the other. Lightly brown the chicken, the flip over to brown the other side. Add the mushrooms and garlic to the onions. When the chicken is browned, add the hot chicken stock to the pan.

Cover and cook until the chicken reaches an internal temperature of 160°F, less than 10 minutes for chicken breast tenders, maybe 12 minutes for a thicker chicken breast piece. Flip the chicken once or twice during cooking.

Remove the chicken from the pan, increase the heat to medium-high and reduce the sauce, stirring frequently.

Plate the chicken, mashed potatoes and pour the reduce sauce, mushrooms and onions over the chicken.

The original recipe is here, but this recipe is better.

This simple dish is delicious and quite healthy, thanks to careful portion control. 

There's 2.0 oz. of whole wheat pasta, the recommended serving size. And that is a surprisingly small amount of pasta.

To fill up the dish there's one small zucchini and a half an onion - and that's for one serving! 

The rest is 3.1 oz. of organic ground beef and 4.1 oz. of Bove's marinara sauce. It could have used a little more sauce, but I had pre-cooked the beef, added sauce, vacuum sealed and froze the individual serving packages. 

Topped with a very tiny amount microplaned Parmesano Reggiano cheese.

And one small slice of wheat Italian bread with olive oil.

Breakfast: Chorizo breakfast burrito and a glass of orange juice.

Snack: 1.0 oz. Sriracha Chex Mix and a Spicy V-8.

Lunch: Bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich on Barowski's wheat bread with Kettle Chips barbecue potato chips.

I finished cooking my pork spare ribs. I took them out of the sous vide after 18 hours at 155°F. Then chilled, removed from their vacuum bags and sauced with barbecue sauce. Sometimes I use my homemade barbecue sauce but I had some Brooks BBQ sauce in a jar so I used that this time. Into the smoker with hickory for 60 minutes.

All done. Looks and smells great!

I cut, divided, vacuum sealed and froze all of the ribs.

Snack: 0.7 oz. peanuts. And later, 3 Late July crackers (organic Ritz-type crackers) with Yancey's Fancy horseradish cheddar. And a half glass of Monkey Bay sauvignon blanc. This was a much better combination; using a bigger piece of cheese and a milder cracker did the trick.

Dinner: Meatloaf, rice, gravy, peas.

And 2 glasses of delicious Four Vines zinfandel.

Most of the time I have my pasta with Italian sausage or meatballs. But once in a while I'll make Chicken Parmesan.

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil for the pasta and prepare according to package directions. For the 2.0 oz. of Barilla spaghetti here, 9 minutes.

Start with 5.0 to 6.0 oz. of chicken breast or chicken breast tenders. If the breast is thick I find it works best to slice it into two thin slices to make it easier to cook.

Season with salt, freshly ground pepper and granulated garlic.

Set up a breading station with a plate of all-purpose flour, a bowl with an egg, beaten, and finally seasoned breadcrumbs with freshly grated Parmesan cheese in it.

Dredge the chicken in flour, then egg, then the bread crumb and cheese mixture.

Heat a sauté pan over medium-low heat. Add olive oil and cook the chicken until browned and cooked through (160°F in the center), 5 to 10 minutes. Update 3/12/2012: See note below for alternate cooking method.

Since I don't use enough tomato sauce to consume an entire 26 oz. jar of sauce before it goes bad, I vacuum seal and freeze 5 oz. packages of my homemade sauce, or sometimes sauce from a jar.

I defrost the sauce ahead of time - the vacuum sealed bags can go into a bowl of cold water for 1 to 2 hours, about the amount of time a slice of frozen bread, wrapped in plastic wrap, will defrost at room temperature.

Pour the sauce into a bowl, add some seasonings (I like red pepper flakes and oregano), cover, and microwave for 1:20.

Plate the chicken, the pasta, and add sauce. Serve!

The chicken can be frozen, but like many breaded foods, it really is best fresh.

Update 3/27/2012:

Instead of cooking in a sauté pan, it really is much easier to deep fry it. 3 minutes at 360°F for boneless chicken breast tenders works great. The chicken is perfectly browned, moist and juicy, and you don't have to worry about the cheese and breading sticking to the pan!

I often cook a boneless center-cut pork roast in the sous video to make pork stir-fry meat. But sometimes I cook it in the oven without any special equipment at all!

The advantage of this is that I can also get 5.0 oz. servings of thinly sliced roasted pork with gravy. 

The pork can be frozen, but I usually eat this one fresh because the gravy is better fresh.

I also have a bone-in roasted pork recipe, which doesn't have gravy.