Last Night’s Dinner
Last night I made Stuffed Shells w/Spinach and Rotisserie Chicken. The original recipe can be found at Make Ahead Meals for Busy Moms.
It is a very time consuming preparation process! I spent from 4:45 PM to 6:30 PM prepping and cooking just to get the final product to put in the oven (and 1 for the freezer). And that was with cutting up the rotisserie chickens the day before! I couldn’t imagine how long it would have taken me if I didn’t do that ahead of time!
At the same time though the time was worth it. The food was delicious and there will be one night in the future where I won’t have to cook at all since I put on in the freezer for later. So I suppose it all evens out in the end!
I started taking pictures, but got caught up in the cooking process so I have the very beginning and the very end in pics. I’ll go through my steps…maybe someone has an easier way or method to make the process quicker.
- I first cooked down the spinach in an inch of water, then drained it and set it aside. That part wasn’t too bad though I felt I could have used more spinach than what the recipe called for and draining it was a bit messy.
- From there I filled up the same pot with water to cook the jumbo shells pasta. The recipe said to follow the directions on the box, but to take them out before they split. I couldn’t seem to find that happy medium. If I take them out before they split, then they are not done cooking. If I wait, then they split. Almost all of mine split, which made the task of filling them harder, but not impossible. Anyone have any suggestions as to how to cook these properly without having them split?
- While I was waiting for the water to boil and the pasta to cook, I started mixing together the filling. I was able to mix everything, but it still didn’t look completely mixed. So I put it in a huge storage bag, closed it up, and smooshed it together with my hands. It definitely made for a much smoother filling. When it was time to put it in the shells, I cut off a corner of the bag and piped it in. It was a little awkward at first, but wasn’t as messy as using a spoon would have been, and I got used to it pretty quickly.
- When that was done, I sprinkled the spinach and some cut up chicken over and around the stuffed shells. Oh, I should mention that I had one in a 9X13 glass pan and the other in a standard foil container (not sure what the dimensions are). Thank goodness I cut the chicken up the day before or it would have taken even longer to make! I’m thinking I could use pre-cut frozen chicken strips and frozen spinach the next time and see how it comes out.
- The final step was mixing up the sauce made of heavy cream, shredded Italian cheese, and some spices, heating it on the stove until the cheese was melted in. I then poured it over each of the pans.
This is the final product out of the oven. It was delicious and very filling! We had some left over so I gave some to hubby to take with him for lunch today and I have some for my lunch, too.
This is the one for the freezer. I probably should have taken the picture before putting the plastic over it. Took much steam from the sauce fogged it up, but you can still get an idea of what it looks like.
The final freezer meal–wrapped, marked, and in the freezer.
