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You know, when it comes to getting good food made fast,
I say, why wait till you're in the kitchen
to start saving time?
In the next half hour, I'll show you
how a quick and smart trip to the supermarket
and a single bag of groceries is all you need
to put together three mouthwatering meals.
This is "3 in the Bag".
-- Captions by VITAC --
Closed Captions provided by Scripps Networks, LLC.
Welcome to "3 in the Bag".
Today's three-pack of suppers starts out with a super easy
and super flavorful paprika flank steak -- smoked paprika.
Mmm! Delicious.
And we're gonna top the flank steak
with watercress and blue-cheese crumbles.
Got those right here.
Up next, we're gonna make chicken in a sack.
Not this sack.
We're gonna make chicken in parchment paper
with green beans and tomatoes and herbs.
And then our third meal of the day
turns everybody into a little kid --
Tex Mex tomato soup with grilled cheese for dunking,
a spicy twist on definitely a comforting classic.
Let's get started.
So, you start out with a big piece of flank steak,
about two pounds for four adult portions.
Always bring meat to room temperature
before you cook it, of course.
So, put the meat on the counter to take the chill off
a little bit before you start working.
Make a little spice rub.
Coarse black pepper and salt... some smoked sweet paprika...
...granulated garlic...
and a little of my onion powder.
Mix that around.
Open your steak up.
You can work right on the paper if you like.
Drizzle of oil.
Rub it on up, baby.
Get her on your hot grill.
Now, the next trick to making flavorful steak
is to get the surface that you're cooking on really hot.
Medium-high heat,
let it get hot enough to literally start smoking.
Put the meat on to the hot surface and don't move it.
Let it be.
Let those sugars start to caramelize,
let that crust build on the meat.
And I always take the first side about two minutes
further into the cook time than the flip side.
So, if I'm gonna cook for 12 minutes, I'm gonna do 8 and 4.
Smells delicious.
Feels great.
Pull the meat off. Let it rest.
Immediately, we'll get our onions on.
Trim off your ends.
Throw them right on there.
Little drizzle of oil.
Little S and P.
Last thing I do is take a couple of big, fat handfuls
or a couple of bunches of watercress, upland cress,
or spicy arugula.
These guys are so lovely and delicate.
Throw it into a bowl.
Let's turn our onions.
Beautiful.
Gorgeous. They look great.
I'm gonna turn them off.
Little lemon juice.
Drizzle of olive oil.
Pinch of salt.
We are pretty much good to go.
I got a tub of blue-cheese crumbles at the store.
Get that ready.
Gonna get my onions off.
They look perfect.
Now let's just make a little assembly line.
First, we'll slice some steak.
Go against the grain.
Pretty thin. Doesn't have to be paper thin.
Lovely. Smells so smoky and delicious.
Well, that's enough to show you how this is assembled.
And get this out of the way.
Grab a plate.
So, what I do is take some of my meat
and I fan it out on the dinner plate.
Just give it a little tilt.
Then I top it with some charred onion.
Then I top that with some of our spicy greens.
And then I finish...
with our gooey, delicious blue-cheese crumbles.
Turn that so you can get a good look.
Isn't that pretty? Delicious.
So, I love this paprika flank steak
because it's dinner layered up on a plate --
guy-friendly, girl-friendly, kid-friendly.
Anybody could make this meal.
Super easy, beautiful presentation.
Extra blue cheese on mine, please.
Yum!
Up next, one of my sister's favorites -- chicken in a sack.
Welcome back to "3 in the Bag".
Literally, this one's in the bag
'cause we're gonna make chicken in a sack.
Get it? In the bag.
So, chicken in a sack is really chicken in parchment.
My sister loves this dish.
It's easy, it's light, it's certainly figure-friendly.
I love it, too, 'cause it's so easy to make.
I really like the combination of cherry tomatoes halved,
thin green beans or haricots verts,
very thinly sliced shallot, drizzle of olive oil,
salt and pepper, and lots of tarragon.
Let's start with the cherry tomatoes.
This is so cool.
Years ago, I learned this from an intern,
a young chef, and we could never remember -- I don't know why.
It's terrible to admit, but it's the truth.
We couldn't remember if his name was Phil or Bryan.
I don't know why
because those two names don't sound anything alike.
So, it became sort of a joke and we called him Philbry.
And the kid was so nice, he let us do that.
So, Philbry showed me this trick.
It's amazing. You take deli lids.
We all have a ton of these, right?
Pack it pretty tight with your cherry tomatoes.
Invert the other deli lid.
Here it comes.
Wait for it.
Take your knife.
Hold this pretty firmly.
Cut it across...what?!
All of the tomatoes are cut!
Awesome. How cool is that?
Enough said.
So, next up, you're gonna need a large shallot
for every one or two packs.
My goodness.
That's as big as an onion.
Totally enough.
Up next, tarragon.
[ Sniffs ]
Mmm! I love tarragon!
Slightly licorice-y, but just floral, elegant, delicious.
Pile the tarragon up.
Run your knife through it.
A little bit of parsley, little pop of color and grassy flavor.
To make the chicken in a sack,
pull off as many sheets as you need,
or as many sacks as you're going to be building,
of parchment paper.
Give yourself a little bit more, you know?
Don't measure it.
You want a good, oh, I'd say 20 to 24 inches
of parchment paper per portion or per sack.
Stack up my parchment.
You will not believe how easy this is.
Salt and pepper.
Then you start building.
Little handful of your green beans.
Some shallots.
Some of your tomato.
Season your veg.
Tarragon.
Tiny little squirt of juice, little lemon juice.
Drizzle of olive oil.
Splash of wine.
Or you could use stock, whatever you have on hand in the pantry.
Chicken right on top.
One tab of butter on the chicken.
Parsley.
Done.
Pull the ends of the parchment together,
roll as tight as you can little by little
from the center down to one edge.
Then back to the center, down to the other edge,
and it will look like a little dumpling
or the sun coming up in the morning.
I've got the oven preheating to 400 degrees.
Done! Ooh, one tomato didn't make it.
What to do?
Into the oven. Set your timer.
25 minutes -- you're out of there.
Cooking in a sack is easy,
it is very delicious and elegant-looking,
it's a great thing to do for a crowd
'cause you can do it ahead and just bake it off,
and most importantly, it's a healthy way to cook anything.
Really healthful food in a very beautiful package.
Wow.
Shall we give it a shot?
And reveal the delicious dinner inside.
Look at that.
Now let me show you how to slide it off.
Just show everybody how you just sort of scoot it
off of the paper.
Now, look how pretty this is, guys.
Look at all the juice.
You've got the juice from the veg and the chicken
being steamed in there,
the butter that melted down over the top,
the flavor of the white wine.
It's just a beautiful, easy dish.
Now, I love our next dish
because it turns everybody into a little kid --
tomato soup and grilled cheese.
I'm making mine grown-up style, though --
Tex Mex with smoky chipotle.
Mmm. Right after this.
Welcome back, everybody.
This is "3 in the Bag," where I create three different
and delicious meals
using just one bag of groceries and a few kitchen staples.
We're all the way up to our third meal.
We're getting started on a Tex Mex
homemade smoky tomato soup and to dip, grilled cheese.
In this soup, I started with chopping up
a couple of medium onions, peeling up some garlic.
The pot got nice and hot, I added olive oil,
melted a couple tablespoons of butter into the olive oil.
When that foamed,
I put in a couple tablespoons of fresh thyme.
I added my onions,
grated in three or four large gloves of garlic,
seasoned up with salt and pepper.
And now our smoky chipotle and adobo.
So, these are smoked chilies in vinegar and spices.
Chipotle adobo comes in a little seven-ounce can.
You're only gonna need one, two peppers,
a couple tablespoons of the pepper
and the adobo paste combined.
If you want the dish to be spicy but not too hot,
you can split these little peppers open
and scrape out the seeds and the ribs.
That will dial back the heat level a little bit.
If you want to do that to the whole can and purée it,
then you could put the purée in the freezer.
Just don't forget to label it.
Otherwise, when you pull it out a couple of months from now,
you're gonna be like, "Huh.
What is that?"
[ Chuckles ]
But at least you won't have this leftover can
in the little dish getting all kind of funky
in the refrigerator,
a few weeks from now you have to throw it away.
So, just remember, freeze what you don't use.
Now, I know that I love spicy food.
I know that my husband, even my mother,
we all love spicy food in my family.
We're at least a two-pepper, two chipotle pepper per recipe,
family with a nice, big spoonful of adobo.
If you don't know your heat level
when it comes to chipotle and adobo,
you may want to start with one and go up from there.
If the dish does get too hot for you,
a little bit of honey can balance it out.
Got to wipe my hands off here. Grab a spoon.
Get some of my adobo sauce in there.
Yum.
Now we're just gonna let this cook a little bit
till the onions get nice and tender.
Who doesn't love a bowl of tomato soup?
I don't care how many times I teach it
and how many different subtle little changes I make,
it's always a go-to download for people
because it makes us all children again.
So, once the onions sweat out a little bit,
add a little bit of tomato paste
for depth of color and depth of flavor.
Give it a stir until the fragrance hits your nose.
I can smell it. Now we're gonna add our liquids.
Quart of Stock in a Box,
chicken or vegetable if you want to make a vegetarian version.
And a big can of Italian tomatoes.
Now, our onions are already nice and tender,
so we're gonna carefully take our handheld blender
and just give this a little whirl and get it puréed.
You could also do this by transferring the soup
in two batches
so you don't overflow the processor unit
to the food processor or to the blender.
[ Whirring ]
Now, you're gonna let this cook down, guys,
until it's as thick or as thin as you like your tomato soup.
The night of, I make it a little bit creamy
by stirring in some sour cream.
But at this point, you can go ahead
and give it a taste and season it with salt to taste.
Oh, it's so smoky and yummy.
I could have done even more chipotle for me.
Mmm.
Tiny bit of salt and I think we're there.
So, I'm just gonna finish whizzing up my soup here.
Ah, but when we come back, I'm gonna show you
how to make the Tex Mex grilled cheese --
pepperjack grilled cheese.
Now, I have a great trick
for any kind of grilled cheese you want to make
you don't want to miss -- right after this.
[ Whirring ]
Welcome back, guys.
Now, we have already gotten two meals out of one grocery bag.
I've already made the paprika flank steak
with that beautiful watercress
and blue-cheese crumbles all over the top,
and we made the really elegant, super easy chicken in a sack.
Now we're gonna finish up with one of everybody's faves --
tomato soup and grilled cheese for dunking.
We've already made our Tex Mex tomato soup.
What makes it Tex Mex?
Smoky chipotle.
That's bubbling away.
Now we're gonna make our grilled cheese.
I love grilled cheese made with pepperjack
and just a good-quality white bread.
Whenever you're making a grilled cheese,
take some softened butter.
Very lightly butter the bread before it hits the grill
and then build your sandwich buttered sides out.
It gives you perfect butter distribution on both sides.
Make sure your griddle is hot but not too hot.
Medium-low to medium heat.
And the last trick... a little tin-foil tent.
Hmm.
They're gonna be so good.
You want to do a loose tent so that the steam can escape,
but you want to reflect some of the heat
to help that cheese get nice and ooey gooey.
Nice.
Perfect.
Okay, while the second side is working,
let me show you how I finish off the soup.
Take some chives, finely chop.
Then we're gonna cool down our smoky chipotle tomato soup
with a little bit of tangy sour cream.
Take my lazy ladle off there -- spoon, I should say.
Couple of spoonfuls of sour cream.
I'd say about 1/3 to 1/2 cup.
Whisk that in.
Gives it a tangy, velvety finish.
Mmm, mmm.
Almost like a Tex Mex tomato bisque.
[ Chuckles ]
Yum.
Oh...delish.
Turn that back a bit.
Grab my ladle.
Perfect.
Onions, garlic, thyme, smoky chipotle adobo,
black pepper, tangy sour cream --
this is definitely tomato soup all grown up.
Little chive all over the top.
Little mild onion action.
And then our grilled cheese.
Look, guys.
Look at how the cheese is just gooey, coming out the sides.
Isn't that a great technique for grilled cheese?
Stack 'em up...and enjoy.
So, out of one quick trip to the store,
we made three satisfying suppers.
I'm Rachael Ray, and if you're wondering
what the secret is
to putting great food on the table
without spending hours in the supermarket
or in the kitchen, remember... it's in the bag.
[ Laughs ] Enjoy, everybody.