Chicken Entrees for 100

Orange Dijon Chicken in Wine

This recipe freezes beautifully, making it great for OAMC. It can be made ahead in batches and frozen for a large party. One recipe feeds about 16 people. Six times the recipe makes a buffet entree for 100.
Serve with rice pilaf.

6 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon freshly ground pepper
1 1/2 tablespoons sweet paprika
2 teaspoons garlic salt
18 (5 to 6 pounds) boneless, skinless chicken breast halves cut into 36 pieces*
3 tablespoons olive or salad oil

*Boneless chicken thigh meat also works, and stays juicier if held over a long time.
Coat chicken pieces with flour mixture then sauté in oil until outside is brown.
To cook immediately, place in casserole.
To pre-make and freeze, place browned chicken pieces in one or more large freezer zipper bag in a single layer.

Orange-mustard Sauce:
6 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 1/2 cups (12 ounces) frozen orange juice concentrate
6 tablespoons Grand Marnier (orange liqueur)
1 1/2 cups white wine
Bring sauce ingredients to a boil for 3 to 5 minutes.
Thicken with:
6 tablespoons flour, mixed with
6 tablespoons orange juice, regular strength

Stir this slurry briskly into the boiling sauce, reduce heat just to a bubble, and cook until slightly thickened.
To cook immediately, pour sauce over chicken and bake covered for 40 minutes at 350 F.
To freeze and reheat: Cool sauce rapidly by placing the pan in a larger pan or bowl of ice and stirring until cool. Pour into chicken bags, press out air and seal. Freeze laying flat in single layers.
When preparing to cook, move the frozen chicken to the refrigerator 48 hours ahead of the cooking date. Pam or oil the baking dishes, layer the thawed sauce and chicken, and bake covered at about 350 to 400 degrees for 40 minutes until hot and bubbly.

To reheat in electric roasters, butter/Pam the pans well, place 3 thawed recipes in each roaster, and reheat covered at 325 degrees for about 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

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A tested Process for making volume Orange Dijon Wedding Chicken in your home kitchen

This works MUCH better with two freezers, or at least an empty refrigerator freezer and a storage freezer. Small freezers are cheap; if you don't have one, consider getting one. When you make a lot of hot food at once, home refrigerators just can't handle getting things cold quickly enough to prevent bacterial growth, so the cooks must help by icing and chilling to keep the food safe.

This process can be done over two days, making and chilling/freezing the chicken one day, making the sauce and freezing the second day.

FIRST STEP/Day: Preparing the Chicken:
Four stations are set up: Prepare with proper tools and wash down with bleach water (1 tablespoon in three cups of water) before starting.

  • Butcher: Cuts the chicken breasts into serving-sized pieces. Usually, you can split breasts. For very large breasts, cut the chicken breasts in half, cut off tenderloin. One serving is 1/2 a large breast or 3 tenderloins.
  • Coater: Dredges the cut pieces in seasoned flour by shaking in a large plastic or paper bag.
  • Browners: Brown pieces in skillets, using vegetable oil
  • Cooler/Packer: Place browned pieces on large cooling racks w/brown paper bags underneath to drain and cool slightly. From there, within one hour, transfer in a single layer to cookie sheet and put into freezer for quick chill down.
    When chilled, the team divides the cooked, cooled chicken into new freezer bags. Place an equal number of servings in each freezer bag- leave room for the sauce to be added later. After transfer to freezer bags, put in another freezer. Turn the bags every two hours so all get cooled down quickly.

SECOND STEP/DAY: the Sauce:
One recipe of sauce makes about 4 cups, you can make 6 at a time if your pan is sufficiently large (8 quart size).
Prepare a FAST CHILLER: a shallow chafing size aluminum pan full of sauce will fit inside a deeper aluminum pan with lots of ice and some water in the outer pan to cool sauce quickly. You need about 10 pounds of ice per batch of chicken.

  • Make the sauce. When it is finished, spread it in the chiller.
  • Calculate the correct amount per bag (this will vary, depending on how you divided the chicken), add the chilled sauce to the frozen chicken, and freeze.

Here is one family's sample calculation. They were making 6 batches of the chicken.
"Each batch of sauce makes about 4 cups. We then figured out that 3 zip lock bags was one batch of chicken, so we measured sauce and divided by 3 and added cooled down portion (1 1/3 cup) to each bag (previously frozen). Then made batches x 6, and cooled. While one batch was cooling, cooked the next batch. When the batch was cooled, filled bags with cooled batch (getting the bags of chicken in and out of the freezer as needed) and continued the process until all the chicken was sauced."

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Veal or Chicken Marsala with Mushrooms and Tomato for 100

A good quality imported Marsala costs a few dollars more per bottle, but makes a big difference in the quality of the finished dish. The chicken and sauce can be prepared ahead, refrigerated or frozen, and combined day of for cooking. Thaw frozen items in the refrigerator,and do not re-freeze leftovers.

16 pounds sliced mushrooms
36 pounds boneless chicken breast or leg of veal, cut 1/4" thick

1 quart lemon juice
2 tablespoons salt
1 tablespoon ground pepper (white for chicken)

about 5 cups flour

1 quart onion, minced or shallot; OR 8 pounds frozen pearl onions
OPTIONAL 16 cloves garlic, crushed
1 gallon imported dry Marsala (using Marsala alone will result in a very sweet sauce. By “tempering” the wine, using about 1/4 dry white wine, you take the edge off of the sweetness but still maintain the flavor of the Marsala. That would be 4 bottles of Marsala, 1 of dry white wine. Info on dry white wine in notes below.)
1 gallon broth (beef for veal, chicken for chicken), preferably unsalted
6 quarts tomatoes, peeled, seeded and diced
4 cups oil, divided (light olive traditional)
6 cups butter, divided
1/3 cup tarragon leaves, crushed (may also use fresh basil or oregano)
OPTIONAL minced parsley for garnish

Preheat oven to 350 degrees if cooking the same day. Coat baking pans with non-stick spray; you need enough pans to lay the chicken out in a single layer, barely overlapping.

Rinse and pat dry sliced mushrooms; set aside.

Pound chicken or veal pieces between 2 pieces waxed paper until thin (about 1/2 the starting thickness). Combine lemon juice, salt and black pepper. Dip both sides of the meat. Dredge meat with flour, carefully shaking off excess.

In large skillets, heat 2 cups of the oil and 2 cups of the butter until hot but not smoking. Cook the floured cutlets in a single layer without crowding the pan, over moderate heat, until golden brown, about 3 minutes on each side. Add additional oil and butter to skillet as needed, reserving the last 2 cups of butter to use on the veggies after all the meat is browned.

Place the browned pieces in shallow ovenproof casseroles. OR, if preparing ahead, flash freeze the browned meat on cookie sheets, bag in freezer bags and day before remove to refrigerator to thaw.

Put the remaining butter in the pan. To the hot butter/oil, stir in reserved mushrooms and onions or shallots; saute' until golden. Remove mushrooms and onions to a bowl.

Stir marsala/wine and broth into the pan; bring to the boiling point. Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, stirring to loosen particles on bottom of pan. For finest flavor, reduce volume 1/4 to 1/2- this takes a while (half hour).

Add tomatoes, tarragon and reserved mushroom mixture; simmer for a few minutes. Remove from heat; season with additional salt and pepper if necessary.

To serve immediately, pour sauce over meat in the pre-greased baking pans. To freeze the sauce, freeze in baggies, about 4 cups per gallon bag.

When ready to bake, pour sauce over meat. Cover. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 20 to 30 minutes.

To serve, arrange meat down center of hot serving platter. Spoon sauce over meat. Garnish with minced parsley, if desired.

Variation:

Omit tomatoes, add grated fresh ginger and garlic

Yield: 100 portions

A note about dry white wine:
A dry white is a wine with residual sugar lower than 1 percent.
Sauvignon Blanc, Viognier, Chenin Blanc and dry champagne or prosecco would all work fine. Riesling and Sauternes would generally be too sweet, chardonnay (especially oaky) too heavy.
If you need to select a white for another dish, ask yourself what is the type of sauce? Is the sauce butter/cream and fairly heavy or rich? Use a chardonnay. If it is very heavy, use a chardonnay aged in oak. Is the sauce light and fresh? If it is light and herby, use a sauvignon blanc, if it is light and fruity, fume blanc or pinot gris.

Enjoy this website:

wine.lovetoknow.com/wiki/Best_Dry_White_Wine
If you have any extra, you can freeze it in ice cube trays, pop out and keep in a baggie in the freezer for future use.