- Americans just love chicken.

Perhaps because it lends itself so well to comfort food dishes.

Well, I have a couple of really tasty ones for you today.

Like my white chicken chili.

The chicken and beans make it hearty; cayenne and chili powder bring the heat.

But what I really love is the sour cream, salsa and avocados you pile on top.

Fried chicken is about as American as you can get.

My recipe comes from my old friend Jean Anderson who bakes hers.

It's so juicy I swear you can't tell it's not fried.

And my creamed corn and braised mustard greens bring the best of the South to your mouth.

It's chicken comfort food today on Sara's Weeknight Meals.

Funding provided by... - [Voiceover] Family owned and Indiana grown, Maple Leaf Farms is a proud sponsor of Sara's Weeknight Meals.

Providing a variety of duck products for home kitchens Maple Leaf Farms duck helps inspire culinary adventures everywhere.

Maple Leaf Farms.

- [Voiceover] Subaru builds vehicles like the versatile Subaru Forester with symmetrical all-wheel drive and plenty of cargo room, a recipe made for whatever the day brings.

Subaru, a proud sponsor of Sara's Weeknight Meals.

- [Sara] And thanks to the generous support of... Hi, I'm Sara Moulton.

Welcome to Sara's Weeknight Meals.

You know, the thing I like most about the white chicken chili at my local burrito place is the sour cream.

Because white chicken chili is such a different take on chili which I think of as red and beef and tomato, this is a whole different thing but boy, this is good.

So that's what I'm making right now.

I've got some butter in here, about four tablespoons.

And I'm going to add about a cup of chopped onion.

And we're just going to start softening this.

We don't want to get any color on it because this is white chicken chili.

I mean, it doesn't really matter if you brown them, but, I don't know, I'm gonna keep it pure.

So we're going to start with the onion.

And then I'm going to get my garlic.

I don't know, this is the largest garlic I've ever seen.

Now, what's cool about this, you know, you probably associate chili with long cooking, inductive flavor and millions of ingredients.

Well, this particular one is really rather quick.

This is about, this is more than a tablespoon.

What I really want is a tablespoon, but as you saw I had whose huge guys.

Yeah, it's a little more - I don't care.

I really like garlic, and when you cook it, like we're going to cook it here, it's not that intense.

So now we're just gonna get that softened in about a minute.

So, I'm gonna get over there and get a quarter cup of flour, because we have to thicken this, because I'm adding the sour cream.

And sour cream is not high enough in fat that you can boil it.

There's only a few dairy products that you can boil that won't curdle.

One of them is heavy cream and the other one is creme fraiche.

Anything else doesn't have a high enough butter fat content to boil; it'll just split.

So we have to stabilize our sour cream with some flour.

And I'm just going to take this right over like this.

So about, what I do is for every tablespoon of flour I cook it at least a minute when I first put it in and then at least a minute later on when I simmer it.

If we cook it enough it won't taste floury.

The general ratio is for every tablespoon of fat a tablespoon of flour.

And actually it was the reverse here: I knew I wanted to add four tablespoons of flour so I made sure I started with four tablespoons of butter.

Here go the spices.

I'm going to add a tablespoon of cumin which is classic for chili.

And then we're going to add a tablespoon of chili powder.

And finally, I'm going to add a little cayenne, about a quarter of a teaspoon.

And let the flour cook and let the spices bloom.

Well, that's happening.

I'm going to get my liquids together.

So let's start with a cup of white wine, dry wine wine.

And then you want a wine which you would drink also.

I mean, what's the point of putting something in there that doesn't taste good.

And you want to whisk it, keep out the lumps.

Two cups of chicken broth.

Bring the whole thing up to a boil and then we'll turn it down to a simmer.

And then we're going to add my brown chicken.

Okay, here we go.

So this is going to go in and I'm going to break it up in there.

Okay, turn it down and break it up.

Now, after I get it all broken up, it's going to simmer in here till it's cooked through, and that's going to be about eight minutes.

Okay.

All right, so two cans of white beans.

These are 15 and a half ounce and I'm going to drain them and rinse them very quickly.

Okay.

We want to rinse off the liquidy content.

So I'm going to add our beans, and then let me get my sour cream.

You could add yogurt if you want, I would add the Greek yogurt .

We want to add about two thirds of a cup.

As I mentioned top, this really puts it over the top.

So we're going to let this simmer away.

And let me salt.

There is salt in the chicken broth, even so it's going to need some salt as well, because we added all that chicken that has no salt in it.

It's just about done.

I mean, do you believe that?

All right, down to the, avocado, you've got to have avocado.

We're going to cut it in quarters instead of in halves, and this is how you should open your avocados much safer, is you take your knife all the way around back to where you started.

Then do the same all the way around.

Okay, now, there we go and out comes the pit.

Ain't that cool?

Now, for a little cheese either we're going to use sharp Cheddar or Monterey Jack.

And finally, some lime wedges.

Let me set one up for me and buddy.

Boy, doesn't that look just fantastic?

Maybe I'll let them, I'll let them garnish their own, but I'm going to garnish mine.

I like everything, I like the works.

So let me see.

Some cheese, of course, salsa, and avocado, all right, there you go.

You know, what's so great about this chili is it's perfect for a weeknight, but it's equally good for a crowd.

You know, you're watching the game make a big pot of white chicken chili.

Oh!

How did I forget this?

Of course, what would chili be without the chips.

So I hope you try this.

It's just so quick and easy, and so tasty.

You're not gonna believe that my friend Jean Anderson's Oven Fried Chicken has just five ingredients.

And it's such an easy dish, you just put it together, throw it in the oven, and while it does its thing in the oven I'm going to be making two wonderful side dishes also with five ingredients or less.

So let's get started.

First we need garlic - there's a lot of garlic in this.

Four cloves, and we're going to make garlic butter.

This is really simple.

This is a dish for a special occasion.

Even though it's not actually fried which makes it slightly easier to make it just have a fare amount of fat in it and you're going to see in just a second.

So let me get my garlic and my butter just melting.

Now, we're using two sticks.

You won't need two sticks so don't have a heart attack right away, but it's just better if you have a little more butter because then you don't have to stop in the middle of breading and go make some more in case you might run out.

But you won't use all of it, so don't worry.

Here we go with our garlic.

There you go, you see it doesn't take too long to get them down to a small, small mince.

All right.

Into our butter.

Okay, so now we get our bread crumbs ready and what you do is you just take the crusts off, we've already taken the crusts off of several.

And we're looking for about three cups of fresh bread crumbs.

Now, of course you can buy bread crumbs but they are dry bread crumbs which behave slightly differently in this recipe.

And fresh bread crumbs are so easy to make; you're going to see right now.

You can do it either in a food processor or in a blender.

And it just takes no time at all.

I mean, why not?

That was it.

So that's our home-made bread crumbs.

I noticed that my butter is basically melted, so I'm going to get it in here to cool a bit before we add the chicken to it.

So I already had measured out three cups of fresh bread crumbs and to this I'm going to add one cup of Parmesan.

First of all, really you should splurge for the good stuff and when I say the good stuff the way you know is because on the label you can always see part of the word Parmigiano Reggiano.

And what that indicates is that this cheese was made in one of the regions in Italy, there are about four or five of them, where they make the real deal.

One very interesting thing is we all now know about Microplanes and love them and are using them, they are a great tool for grating cheese.

However, here's something interesting.

I have one cup of grated Parmesan cheese here.

This was grated on a Microplane.

It's one and a half ounces of Parmesan cheese.

If I grated it using the fine side of a four-sided grater this would just be a half a cup.

So when you grate with a Microplane it comes out much fluffer, you got double the volume.

So we've grated this Parmigiano Reggiano using a Microplane and then we add that to our bread crumbs, we toss it up.

And if you want, at this point you could add some chopped fresh thyme or chopped fresh oregano.

My friend Jean Anderson learned this recipe at Ladies' Home Journal and then she adapted it for her cookbook and let me use it for mine.

But at the time that I added it to my cookbook my kids did not like green things in their food so I left out the fresh herbs, the oregano or the thyme, but you can add any fresh herbs you want.

Okay, it's time for the chicken.

See this is crazy, we've got very few ingredients, as I mentioned.

Now, this gets a little bit messy but we're just going to carry on.

And when you're working with chicken make sure you don't cross-contaminate.

You want to be careful to wash your hands.

So first the chicken goes in the butter.

That's why we want to cool it just a little bit so you don't burn yourself while you're coating it.

We're using whole chicken on the bone with the skin.

It's much more economical to buy it that way.

Well, it would be even better if you bought a three and a half pounder and cut it up yourself.

It's sort of fun sometimes getting dirty.

One of my first cookbooks was Mud Pies and Other Recipes and this is actually reminding me a little bit of that.

So coat these on all sides with the crumbs.

And it's seems funny, you know, to leave the skin on, but believe me this chicken comes out so moist.

And it's delicious hot, it's delicious cold, it's delicious at room temperature; it's delicious the next day.

I've never met anybody I made it for who didn't totally love it.

It's a favorite app at our farm house where sometimes we have 24 people, and we just make massive amounts of this chicken.

Okay, there you go.

So then, if you want, you can drizzle some of this butter on top, or you cannot.

I'm going to drizzle it.

Well, I started of course by preheating the oven to 350 degrees.

Now, before I do anything else I need to go clean these down, so let me do that.

Okay.

I always keep a bowl of soapy water in the sink.

I go into the soapy water for it, so I don't have to touch any part of the sink, the handles or anything like that.

And that way there is no cross-contamination.

Okay, I'm going to pop this in the oven.

These guys are big.

Normally they take about 50 minutes, but these might take a little longer.

And we'll just check them for doneness in a bit.

Now I'm going to move on to my greens which is our first side dish.

And I'm working with mustard greens today.

You can do this recipe, these are going to be braised Southern mustard greens, you could do with chard.

So with chard or with kale, they are all delicious, but I love the peppery taste of mustard greens.

And this part of the mustard green is rather tough.

So the way to get it off the stem is, I just pull down and get, whoops, get the green off, here we go, and leave the stem behind.

Then what you need to do is just chop this up briefly and soak it in water.

You wash it like you would wash lettuce.

So you feel a big bowl with cold water, you dump your - I've already washed these - you dump your mustard greens, or whatever greens in there, and let them flow.

And then the sand goes to the bottom, the greens go to the top.

You lift them out, you change the water, you keep doing it until there's no more sand at the bottom.

And then I just chop these up a tiny bit.

There we go.

Now, in here I have, let me just get it going, a quart of chicken broth.

Oops, there we go.

A quart of chicken broth and to this we're going to add - you need to bring it up to a boil, I had it in a boil a minute ago, so it'll be fine in just a second.

I'm going to add my greens right in and we're going to wilt them, stir them for about three minutes.

This is a fun thing to make besides the fact that it's just so simple.

You can make it a day ahead, it's even better the next day; and greens, all of the ones I mentioned, are so good for you.

I'll just get them down a bit.

All right, so while those continue to wilt, let me get my other ingredients here that we're going to add to this for flavoring.

We have ham hocks, and if you can get them split all the better, because then there's more flavor going in there.

What you're looking for is smoked ham hocks.

Smokiness adds terrific flavor to our greens, and so there we go.

And we're going to add a little red wine vinegar, two tablespoons.

I love hot pepper.

We need about half a teaspoon.

That was a generous half a teaspoon.

And then here we go.

Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to put the lid on slightly askew, turn it down, and we're going to braise these greens for about 45 minutes.

Now, while that is cooking I'm just going to tidy up here and then come back and start my corn, my creamed corn, the other side dish.

Okay, wow, that has reduced like crazy.

I'm going to move my braised mustard greens over here.

Ooh, ooh, that smells so good.

Most of the liquid is gone down.

So I'm going to reduce it a little more.

Here we go.

Wow, that really reduced and that's what I want because I want to concentrate that pot liquor in there.

So I'm going to take these ham hocks out.

Maybe they'll give us a little bit of meat that we can add back.

And at this point, let me taste this, and I'm going to add a little sugar and salt and pepper.

You can't wait till the end; you have to season as you go.

Hmm!

Wow!

That does not need any salt because of the chicken broth, but I'm going to add a little bit of sugar and some pepper.

Even though we already have the red pepper in there I like black pepper, too.

Oh, it's amazing how the texture changes, it really becomes soft and yummy.

I'm going to get going with my corn.

While I'm chopping this onion let me tell you about corn.

Corn has starch in it, right, cornstarch.

So although cream corn is often made with actual cream, you don't need the cream.

You can take advantage of the natural starch in the corn.

The crazy thing about corn is its sugar turns to starch almost immediately.

I mean ideally the scenario is to put your snickers on, to go to the back yard where you happen to be growing corn, grab the corn, run back to the house husking the corn as you go, throw it into the water the second you get back in there, cook it for 30 seconds in here right away.

Now, if you can't do that, if you don't have happen to have a corn field in your back yard, bring it home and refrigerate it and cook it as soon as you possibly can.

People for some reason think that corn does not need to be refrigerated.

Yes, it does.

You know, that whole process I just told you is accelerated if it's not refigerated, of that sugar turning to starch.

Okay, I just have these extra bits.

Okay, in goes my butter.

You could use olive oil.

Let me get my onion in quickly.

And then I'm going to move on to the corn starch part of the corn.

Okay.

You know, we all used to cut the corn like this, but the corn goes all over the place.

So a friend of mine explained to me what a brilliant idea it was to do it sideways, because you can see it doesn't go anywhere.

That's sort of a nice idea.

And certainly, you don't want to waste all that stuff that's under; you want to scrape that; that's where a lot of the corn starch is.

But we want about six cups total of corn for this recipe.

And I almost had that much done already, so I'm just going to combine this with the rest.

And then we're going to puree.

What we're going to do is pulverize two cups of the six cups.

Okay.

(food processor buzzing) Ain't that exciting?

That was really exciting.

I love doing this kind of things.

Okay, well, let me handle it here.

My onions are pretty soft, and I'm just going to turn them up a bit.

Let me get this corn in here and start cooking.

And I'm going to strain this liquid that I just made.

You need a medium sift.

The staff that's going to be coming through the bottom of this is going to be the starchy part.

Yeah, look at all that liquid.

So now we're going to add some water.

and our cornstarch corn.

And then I'm going to chop up some scallions and shred some basil.

And you're going to see how nicely - isn't that beautiful?

And it's thickening up already.

Whoa!

So let me turn that down for half a second and chop my scallions.

We're going to use mostly the white part and some of the green part.

Now, you could take this corn in so many different directions.

Let's say you wanted to do Mexican corn.

You could start with garlic and onions and then add chipotle and adobo, some cumin and oregano.

Or let's say you want it to go to Indian route.

You could add ginger and jalapeno, and some garam masala.

There we go.

Do you believe how creamy that is?

Isn't that wild?

Let me get my basil ready.

Now, the basil you want to add at the very end for a fresh taste and also so it doesn't turn that nasty green.

You know the routine I'm sure about how to cut up a big herb like this that has these big leaves.

What you do is you line them up like a deck of cards and then you roll them up like a cigar.

You make them a tight, tight little bundle here and then you just cross cut, shred them.

And the idea with fresh herbs is to only hit them once with a knife, because if you just hackle them with a dull knife they will turn black and wet nasty.

Okay, I'm going to save that; that's the very last thing I'm going to do.

Let me just see if I can get any meat off of my ham hock down here.

I've got a little knife for that.

If there's anything worth adding back.

Oh yeah, see there's a little bit of meat there.

You have to take off the fat.

Oh here we go, here's a little more here.

It's like a little bonanza.

Okay, I've got everything ready, I think.

I've got my Southern meal.

I've just got to get my chicken out of the oven.

Oh boy!

Wow!

This is so delicious - and indestructible.

It's very hard not to get it right.

All right, let me taste the corn and add, I want to add a little salt and pepper and finish it with its basil.

Oh wow, that looks so good!

Let's see what it needs.

Oh absolutely, of course, it needs some salt.

I know that looks like a lot.

People are always like "Ah!

", but it's kosher salt.

Kosher salt is half the volume of table salt, so it looks like it's a lot more than it is, but it's not.

Stir in the basil.

Last thing because we want it to be really fresh and wonderful.

I just love basil and corn, but you know, I think corn goes with every single herb.

Corn is sort of like tomatoes: corn and basil, corn and tarragon, corn and dill.

You can just add any herb to it just the way you can add any herb to tomatoes.

Here we go.

There's our corn.

And now let's set ourselves up with a plate and a wing.

Hey, you know if you're going to have this you might as well go for a bro.

And some of our delicious greens.

Here we go with that wonderful liquid.

Time to eat.

I'm going to go sit down.

Okay, so we're going to round this out with some wonderful Southern cream biscuits and a little bit of sweet Southern tea, and you got a meal.

You know, I have to say I'm not a fan of five ingredients, I feel like I'm in a straight jacket, but when they add up as beautifully as these three dishes did I have to say I am a fan of that equation.

And you will be, too.

I'm Sara Moulton.

Thanks for joining me.

I'll see you next time on Sara's Weeknight Meals.

- [Voiceover] Sara's Weeknight Meals continues online.

For recipes, helpful tips, messages and lots more, visit us on the web at saramoulton.com/weeknightMeals.

And go to our YouTube channel Sara's Weeknight Meals TV.

Funding provided by... - [Voiceover] Family owned and Indiana grown, Maple Leaf Farms is a proud sponsor of Sara's Weeknight Meals.

Providing a variety of duck products for home kitchens Maple Leaf Farms duck helps inspire culinary adventures everywhere.

Maple Leaf Farms.

- [Voiceover] Subaru builds vehicles like the versatile Subaru Forester with symmetrical all-wheel drive and plenty of cargo room, a recipe made for whatever the day brings.

Subaru, a proud sponsor of Sara's Weeknight Meals.

- [Sara] And thanks to the generous support of...