Kid Recipe Reviews: Chicken&Apple Bites

We've all seen those cookbooks that feature delicious and easy meals that are nutritionally sound for babies and toddlers. While I am a huge fan of providing kids with real awesome, home cooked food...some of these recipes are a tad unrealistic.

So I am going to cook some of them, with a 14 month old and a 28 month old under my feet. With the permission of their very brave mother, she has agreed to test this food, not only on her poor unsuspecting kitchen, but her kiddos too. I'm not the best cook in the world, but I get credit for trying. More often than not I follow the recipe exact and screw it up terribly, but if I throw together some leftovers in the fridge I make magic happen. There's no rhyme or reason. But this time I will be recreating the nightmarish condition of the time of day many parents dread.

This recipe is for "Chicken and Apple Bites" from the book 'Wholesome Meals for Babies and Toddlers: Healthy food your kids will love to eat' The book is broken down into age groups so I skipped right over the homemade baby foods (throw stuff in blender and puree, there, now we're all caught up) This meatball type meal actually looks pretty good in the picture the book provided so we gave it a whirl.

Note: I changed some things to make it more realistic for the typical mom.

Ingredients:

1 apple, peeled, cored and grated (I used green because that's what was in the fruit bowl)
2 skinless, boneless chicken breasts cut into chunks (I trimmed the fat)
1/2 red onion chopped (Maybe you keep onions laying around, but I used the dried minced onion that comes in the spice jar dealy)
"scant" 1 cup whole-wheat bread crumbs (I just used a cup of Italian bread crumbs so I could skip the parsley)
1 tbsp. fresh parsley (I actually do keep fresh parsley in the freezer but the Italian bread crumbs seemed easier)
1 tbsp. concentrated chicken stock (I used bouillon cubes because I like the taste, guilty as charged)
whole-wheat flour for coating (Used normal flour)
oil for pan frying.



I'm not a fan of cleaning cheese graters, I always wind up taking skin off my knuckles, so I peeled them into shavings. Its going in the food processor anyways.

Directions:

Spread the apple out on a clean dish towel or paper towels and press out all of the excess moisture. (I take offense that a book has to tell someone to use a clean towel, seriously)

Put the chicken, apple, onion, parsley, bread crumbs and stock into a food processor and pulse briefly until well combined. (For the record I would just use ground chicken and avoid this entire step, but I can see why they would want to do it this way)



I got quite the blob, but a very good smelling blob, almost like real stuffing on Thanksgiving. It was very "wet" the first time so I added a little bit of the flour and ran it through again. Perhaps I didn't blot the apples long enough. (The kids were getting pretty antsy and all the crayons in the world were not making a difference)

Spread the flour onto a plate. Divide the mixture into 20 or more mini portions, shape each portion into a ball and roll in flour. (I just made them the size of a little Swedish meatball and however many it made is however many it made)


*This is where I went AWOL. I'm not a huge fan of frying stuff, I've also made a lot of meatballs in my days and never once coated them in flour. I've coated chicken breasts in flour before frying...but never a meatball. Also, at the suggestion of the mother I simply boiled them. I dumped in the extra bouillon in some water and plopped half the meatballs in for about 12-15 minutes.

Since I deviated from the recipe I used a meat thermometer to check and make sure they were cooked through.



The correct temperature for poultry is 165, the meatballs were a touch overcooked at almost 200. Can't be too careful.

Once the meatballs were cooled off I served them to the kids and it was a huge success. Both kids gobbled them up.

While they were occupied with dinner I turned to the other half of the meatballs and resigned myself to pan frying. In the future I think I would just bake them.

I rolled the meatballs in flour and they looked like powdered cookies.



I unceremoniously dumped them into the pan with some oil and put the heat on medium-high. I turn around for 2 seconds to serve up some corn for the kids and this is what I come back to:



...Whoops. I warned you I'm not the best cook. I'm not sure if it was the flour or what but these suckers burned in all of a minute. I've pan fried quite a bit of chicken marsala in my life and this was definitely not normal. I don't recommend this method if you've got hungry kids and are easily distracted in the kitchen. Baking or boiling seems to be a far better solution...not to mention healthier.

Regardless of the burnt side (that was trimmed off with some skillful butter knife work on my part) I thought they were good. I tried a piece of the boiled and the pan fried. The boiled had a more spongey texture but not in an unattractive way and the fried were a tad oily for me. The kids also liked the pan fried ones, the 1 year old actually preferred it.

All in all I would give this recipe 3/10. Not easy or simple enough for the typical busy mom or nanny and while they tasted ok, I would recommend a little more flavoring. Even for a baby food this was a bit bland.