Today I’m participating in the Ultimate Blog Swap. You’ll find me posting over at Cajun Sugar Pie about Steps to Effecient Meal Planning, and I’m excited to welcome Esther from Coupon Cutting Mom to The Finer Things in Life. Today Esther is sharing a new-to-me freezer recipe that I may just have to add to my “before baby comes” list!
Chicken Croquettes are my very all time favorite food to keep in the freezer for a quick, tasty meal. They are delicious served with mashed potatoes and gravy.
I buy a 10 lb bag of boneless, skinless chicken breast when it is on sale and then use it to make these croquettes. Following is the recipe and some pictures of making them.
Chicken Croquettes
Cook up 10 lb of chicken. When cooled, shred or grind the chicken to the consistency you like. I use my food processor for this step and it gets the chicken shredded to a perfect texture.
We like celery and onion in the croquettes, and I chop that in the food processor as well. I use approximately 1 - 1.5 cups chopped celery and 1/2 cup chopped onions. Put chopped chicken, celery, and onions in a large pan or mixing bowl. Then make the white sauce.
White Sauce
- 18 Tablespoons butter
- 1 1/2 cups flour
- 9 cups milk
- 5 teaspoons salt
- 2 teaspoons pepper
Melt the butter in a large pan; add flour and using a wisk, mix together. Wisk in milk and seasonings and cook over medium heat until the mixture thickens. Pour the white sauce over chicken and mix well. Refrigerate until thoroughly chilled. Do not skip this step, if the mixture is not chilled you will have problems when you try to fry the croquettes up, trust me on this one. I usually refrigerate the mixture overnight.
After mixture is chilled, shape into patties. I use my largest size cookie/ice cream scoop so all my croquettes are uniform size. I scoop the chicken out and then flatten slightly into a patty shape.
After each patty is formed I roll them in Italian style bread crumbs. Coat well with bread crumbs and then fry in oil. I use my electric skillet for this step, keeping about 1/2" of oil in the skillet.
Fry until golden brown, then flip and fry other side until golden brown also. I then flash freeze the croquettes on wax paper lined cookie sheets. After they are frozen, I place the croquettes in freezer bags. What I love about this is, that you can then pull out the amount you need for your meal and heat them up.
To heat place frozen croquettes on baking sheet and bake at 350 ° until hot.
Are you familiar with Chicken Croquettes? What do you serve them with?
How many does this approx. make? (Did I overlook that?) This seems to make enough for an army!
Hi, sorry I just realized I forgot to include how many croquettes it makes. It makes 60, using the size scoop I use which is approx 1/4 cup.
Yes, it is enough to feed an army but I find that when I go to all the work of making them I want enough in the freezer to make it worth the mess. My family just loves these and they are really the easiest thing to pull out of the freezer.
OHHHHHHHHH, these sound yummy, I like the idea of quantity for future use. I will have some for dinner today and freeze the rest of them.
Thanks for sharing, Jenny
I’ve never even heard of these before, but I will definitely be trying them soon!
These sound so good. I can’t wait to try and make them myself.
Can you show us how to make this for a family of four? I’d like to try it before I make a ton of it! Thanks!
I have never seen or heard of Chicken Croquettes before. I have had the Salmon ones. I am going to see if hubby would want to try these. They do look so good and yummy. I sure want to try them.
Made these tonight they were awesome! I only used 3 chicken breast, little onion in chicken, 1 cup flour, salt pepper to taste and about 8 table spoons of butter. I also but chicken in freezer (grated) while I made sauce. Instead on melting on stove I did microwave butter then add rest of sauce items then microwave again then add it to chicken and let sit in freezer for about 15 minutes. Once ready to cook we just dropped in. We absoutly loved it! Will make again!!