Chicken Alexander Recipe

COOK meals are perfect for when you fancy a night off cooking … something even the most passionate home cook needs now and again. But how do our prices compare with making it yourself?

We followed our recipe for two for Chicken Alexander at home and found it was more expensive getting the ingredients from the supermarket.

We based this on checking Sainsbury’s online ingredient prices in October 22 and now we have updated to most recent prices in February 22, for a two portion recipe. We didn't include ingredients we had in the fridge or kitchen cupboard (including any alcohol) and used the smallest available amounts of what we needed.

Our shopping list for the recipe below included:  chicken breasts, 1 onion, chives, parsley, double cream, mushrooms, 1 red pepper and 1 yellow pepper. Everything else we had already (including the white wine and the sherry!).

If you'd prefer to make it yourself, our recipe for a 2 portion is below.  As freezer connoisseurs we'd always recommend batch cooking for the absolute best value recipe - scroll to the end for some tips.

Chicken Alexander Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1⁄2 tbsp Rapeseed or olive oil
• 1/3Onion, finely diced
• 200g Free range chicken breasts, diced, skins removed
• 25g Butter
• 100ml Chicken stock
• 15ml Dry Sherry
• 30ml White wine
• 1/2 Lemon, juiced
• 10g Chopped chives
• 10g Parsley, chopped
• 20g Plain flour, plus extra for dusting
• 60ml Double cream
• 50ml Semi skimmed milk
• Salt and pepper, to taste
• 50g Cup mushrooms, sliced
• 1/4 Red pepper, cut into strips
• 1/4 Yellow pepper, cut into strips

Method: 

STEP 1. Slice the peppers into 1/2cm strips, discarding the seeds. Slice the onions and mushrooms into 1/2cm pieces. Chop the fresh herbs. Dice the chicken into large chunks.

STEP 2. Heat a non-stick pan, add the rapeseed oil and pan fry the chicken for 2-3 minutes to seal and until lightly browned in colour. Decant onto a plate.

STEP 3. In the same pan, add 5g of butter and fry the sliced onions and peppers, and cook for 2mins. Add the mushrooms and cook for a further minute. Add both the sherry and white wine and reduce to a sizzle, switch off and decant into a bowl.

STEP 4. Heat the chicken stock.

STEP 5. In a thick bottomed pan, heat the remaining butter until melted. Turn down to a low heat, add the flour and a pinch of salt, stirring continuously for about 2mins.

STEP 6. Slowly add the hot stock and milk, stirring all the time until you have a smooth texture in the sauce.

STEP 7.Add the cream and stir until the mixture is hot (not boiling), reduce the heat to low, add the chicken and any juices and simmer for 5mins. Stir occasionally.

STEP 8. Add the cooked onions, peppers and mushrooms along with any of the liquor. Add the juice of half a lemon and stir well for a minute. If the sauce is a little thick, add some water to achieve the desired consistency. If the sauce it a little thin, reduce over a medium to high heat. Season to taste. Add the chopped herbs and serve.

Batch it up!

To save money, batch cooking is the way forward – it’s essentially why we can make recipes cheaper than you can at home.

With a bit of forethought, the right kit, space in the freezer and a few hours set aside, you can batch cook yourself by scaling up the quantities above.

A few tips:

• Clean COOK trays can be really useful. Make your portion, freeze in the tray, then, once frozen, pop out and wrap in cling film to store (or, if you have lots of trays, just store in the tray).
• To reheat from frozen, pop the frozen block into one of our ceramic dishes and cook at about 170C until piping hot.

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