Retro Struggle Meals: 1970s Chicken Spaghetti
From the Design for Living cookbook for Arkansas Southwestern Bell employees?
This little community cookbook is one of my favorites. Although there’s no date, I think it’s from the 1970s based on the hand-typed formatting, general tenor of the recipes, and the weird introduction.
“In the center of this design burns the candleflame of personality. On one side of it the book and wheel of machinery represent the physical, intellectual, and spiritual fields of endeavor. On the other side the ball and racket represent the recreational and social elements of the well-coordinated life. The circle enclosing these symbols indicates balance and harmony. If the forces within the circle are not balanced, the circle eof life would be pulled out of shape, distorted into an oval or some other form.”
It has elements of a 1950s engineered society feel, but there’s a New Age flavor, too. There are several designed life philosophies out there, but I couldn’t find this one with the candle and the tennis racket in wider use. I’m guessing it’s a ladies’ society self-help kind of thing, common at the time, as women needed to learn how to balance work at home with work at work. I hope it helped.
Chances are it was better than our 21st century self-help group, TikTok.
Cookbooks from this time can be great resources for thrifty homemade recipes that also have a nod toward convenience because of those work-life balance needs. But, they also have some ideas about food that are…let’s go with problematic…by today’s taste bud standards. They also often take more time than most people have now. Since times are a little tough with the food budgets at the moment, I’m going to choose a recipe that can be updated a bit to be more healthful and tasty according to the 21st century palate, and also see if I can speed it up a bit.
Let’s do Chicken Spaghetti!
If you’re not from the south, you may not have heard of this delicious comfort food. (If you are from the South, you’re wondering why I’m covering it since obviously everyone already has a beloved family recipe that they would never change, so y’all might want to sit this one out — unless you need to cut salt, time, or money compared to your grandma’s way.)
Chicken Spaghetti has tons of variations, but the common elements are chicken, aaaaaand actually, that’s it. I can find recipes that have literally no other ingredients in common. It’s usually spaghetti, natch, but not always.
And it’s usually a creamy sauce, but not always.
And it’s usually baked, but not always.
The one I’m making today is more “standard” if there is such a thing for regional delicacies — it’s chicken, spaghetti, veggies, cheese, and of course, the Queen of Marginally Edible Convenience, condensed cream of something soup.
I’m going to change two main things for health, convenience, and even money! First, grocery store roto chick is often actually cheaper than a whole raw chicken. How could this possibly be true? You may have noticed that they are located right at the front of the store, and that’s because they are “loss leaders” — they might be actually sold at a loss because they get you to come to their store and end up buying other things. As long as you know what’s happening, that can be a win-win, because it’s convenient/cheaper for you, and it can be a component of a complete meal that you would otherwise be paying more for at a restaurant. It might even be healthier than what you would otherwise choose, especially if you are careful about sodium in the rest of the meal.
It’s a win for the grocer because you buy there instead of elsewhere, and sometimes, it’s because the chickens they are rotisserie-ing are nearing their sell-by date. They are not expired!!! Don’t freak out! But they might end up being food waste in a few days otherwise. You can even buy it already picked off the bone in the deli section.
If you are comparing prices to figure out whether it’s a good buy in your location, remember that the raw chicken in your equation will lose about 25% of its weight during cooking, and that about 65% of the weight post-cooking is meat.* The rest is skin and bones that you might think of as waste, but you could make bone broth with it. You can expect to get 3-4 c of meat off of a roto chick, it freezes well, and they’re usually a great deal when you factor in time, energy cost and broth potential.
Next, we’re going to make homemade condensed soup. Not only is it cheaper (I did some very tedious math, and even the very cheapest gross can of soup is 3 times the price) and typically lower sodium than the cream-of-salt-lick you usually get in those cans, but I swear to you it is easy if you just follow a couple of tricks. It keeps in the fridge for a few days, so you can also make a double batch if you have another casserole planned for later in the week. There are several recipes online, and now that I have the technique down, I follow different ones for different recipes, but it’s not critical. They’re usually a combo of broth, milk, flour, and seasonings, and then you make sure to add whatever it’s supposed to be cream of into the rest of the dish — mushrooms, celery, cheese, whatever. I use broth concentrate (saves $!) at double strength with salt-free seasonings to help me get the flavor, you know, condensed. The main things to remember to avoid a lumpy, bumpy, icky mess are to mix the flour and water to a smooth smooth paste, and to stir frequently as it thickens. If you add the milk to the flour slowly and stir carefully, it will work. If you dump the flour into the liquid all at once, you’re in trouble. Then, as you mix that into the hot broth, whisk whisk whisk as it comes to an actual boil and thickens up. (If you mess up, just toss it in the blender for a few seconds. It’s fine!)
It is supposed to look gross, yes. It’s fine. Everything is fine.
A couple of other things I’m changing — I grew up with the cream of chicken with diced tomato version and not the condensed mushroom and tomato version, so since I’m making half of this recipe, I’m just using the equivalent of 1 can of condensed cream of chick soup and adding diced tomatoes for their flavor. Also, I like celery fine but 3 c is insane. I’m using a mix of high fiber veggies that I keep frozen and chopped, like shredded cabbage, onion, and peppers — and I’m using 3 c total (double what it should be for half the recipe) to bump up the veggies for health and for cheap volume. You can use any mix you like — you can hide cauliflower rice in almost anything, baby spinach is awesome — just cook/drain them until they give off some jucie so your casserole isn’t swimming in flavorless cabbage water. Lastly, I’m going with poultry seasoning+garlic powder+Cajun today. I prefer to use sodium free seasonings so I can customize, so I’ve subbed No Salt Tony’s for the chili powder, but you can use any seasoning mix you like. Whatever you do, remember you want your “condensed soup” by itself to taste saltier than you want the final dish to be when everything else is in there, or it will taste flat.
Here are all the ingredients I’m using, except that I forgot to put the one (1!!) rib of celery I’m using in the photo:
Oh yeah, the cheese is the last bits of 4 different packages we had in the fridge.
The process for me for this 1/2 recipe is:
Boil water for 8 oz. noodles in the electric kettle because it’s faster, transfer water to stove and pan with pasta, boil until al dente, draining well.
Meanwhile, pour another 3/4 c of hot water (if I’m a few minutes into the pasta cooking, I scoop out some pasta water) and associated broth concentrate and seasonings into a small saucepan. Make 1/4 c flour and 1/2 c milk slurry. Turn heat on high and immediately whisk in slurry, stirring frequently as the cold milk heats up. As it starts to simmer, turn heat to medium and whisk until thick. Set aside. (Since this recipe adds more broth later, you can use all the broth at once if you’d like.) If you’re going to be baking this in the big oven, preheat it to 400 now (yes, hotter than the recipe says — I feel the need for speed, to quote Top Gun). You’ll add another c of broth for this recipe, so I would usually start with it in there in the first place — I just wanted to show you what it would look like to make DIY condensed soup.
Microwave 3 c chosen veggies for 2-5 minutes, depending on how frozen they are, until they give off some liquid. Either discard the liquid or use in place of part of your broth, but don’t just add extra liquid to the recipe. You can also saute these if you want them toasty — that’s just not what I’m going for today. Since I used low fat milk, I added a T of butter to the vege for richness.
While the veggies and pasta are going, pull meat off your roto chick if needed. You’ll need half of it, or around 2 c. You could also use canned chicken or tuna or salmon. I won’t tell.
Mix everything but the cheese, put in greased dish, top with cheese. Microwave 5 minutes or so while the toaster oven is preheating if you’re not using the big oven. Then, bake for about 10-15 minutes until it’s bubbling and the cheese is browning the way you like it.** You can also add toasted panko crumbs (see technique here) if you want that texture.
Here’s the finished product. One of my tricks to get a lot of vegetables is to put a bunch in the casserole and then also on the side, so I did frozen broc in the air fryer for 5 minutes to roast it.
Not bad, right? Half the recipe made enough for 4 meal prep servings that you could toss into a container with frozen brocc and microwave at work. Once you get this style of casseroling down, it never takes more than 45 minutes, and this version has so much more vegetable stuff, so much less grease and salt and weird thickeners, and it adds maybe 5 minutes to your prep time compared to opening that can of what could be worms for all you know. But, sometimes getting food on the table is not going to get done unless you use a can, or maybe it’s just not grandma’s recipe unless you use a can. Those things are important, too, and you’re the expert in your own life! Do what’s best for you.
RD notes/tips:
As you learn to cook more from scratch, you might have some less than stellar results, or even failures. Make notes right in your cookbook or in a little notebook you keep in the kitchen drawer about what to change next time. If you have a total failure, keep a frozen pizza on hand. It’s okay! You can do this. It’s not going to be perfect. It’s fine.
*If you are looking to buy more in bulk and wash/chop/prep/freeze yourself these days, remember that when you buy a whole head of lettuce or whatever, some of the poundage will be trimmed. If you’re really doing the math to pinch pennies, there are lots of usable percentage tables for produce like this one for food service, and cooking yields for meat like this one from the USDA.
**I even use the partial microwaving trick for tater tot hot dish — I take the dish I’m going to bake in, cover the bottom with tots to make sure I have the right amount, microwave for 2 min, set them aside, fill the dish with hot meat/veg/sauce, top with the thawed tots, and bake according to recipe directions, but usually for only about half the time 15-20 min.
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That dish looks delicious and I love the sub of the "Marginally Edible Convenience, condensed cream of something soup" idea. The description of the slurry made me think of making gravy.
Tomato soup and mushroom soup?!