Skip to main content

Chicken Challenge Starts Here...

So, in order to make great chicken recipes you have to start with a chicken.  When whole roasting chickens go on sale I buy at least two or three at a time.  My family's favorite way to eat them is roasted in the oven.  They become golden and delicious with crispy, salty skin.  We could eat this meal many times a week,  however, when cooked this way, the meat doesn't go very far.  Thanks to a recipe from my friend Ellie when I started this blog, I was inspired to see how far I could stretch the meat from one chicken.  I will share her recipe later, first we have to cook some chicken!  Below you will find Phase one of the chicken challenge explaining the step by step instructions to get you started. Yes, there are phases because I didn't feel like making everything in one day, but if you want to, it is completely doable and not hard at all!!
Phase One--Preparing the Chicken

1. Buy a chicken at least 5 pounds and at a great price.
2. Remove the neck (a must) and giblets (if you want them) from the body cavity and refrigerate.
3. Rinse and dry your chicken.
4. Season liberally with whatever you like best.  I used half an onion, 5 garlic cloves and 1 sprig of rosemary stuffed inside the cavity, and salt, pepper and seasoning salt on the outside. 
5. Place in a crockpot and cook on high 4-5 hours.
6. When cooked through, remove chicken and chill overnight or until cool enough to handle.
7. Once chilled, remove all the meat from the bones. Discard the skin.  Set the bones aside  (Yes this step is a little messy but you will find out just how much meat is truly on a chicken once you do it).  At this point you can freeze all the chicken or you can start preparing meals.  My chicken was 5.25 pounds and I got almost 6 cups of meat off of it! 



In Phase Two I will explain what that chicken neck is for!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Best Ever Blueberry Muffins

Last week a co-worker's husband called work and when I answered the phone he started raving about the muffins his wife had made the night before.  He told me they were the best muffins she had ever made, which is saying a lot because she is a fabulous cook.  Later in the day I asked her for the recipe and she quickly printed it for me. Let's me just say, that these are definitely the best muffins I have ever made.  They have a light, cake like texture that isn't too sweet.  The best part about them is the wonderful blueberry swirl that combines with the whole berries.  And let's not forget the lemon sugar topping or the streusel topping, I made both because I couldn't decide which would be better--both are equally wonderful on top of these muffins.  Inadvertently, bought the wrong size container of blueberries at my store, so I didn't have as many as the recipe calls for, but it didn't matter they were still FABULOUS!  I plan on making more of...

Balsamic and Onion Pot roast

Whenever we get a beef we go through the meat in a certain order, steaks are gone first, followed by the burger and stew meat, and lastly we always have roasts.  It isn't that we don't like a good roast, but rather that I don't have a lot of experience producing a roast that is moist and juicy and flavorful.  I don't want to waste a good cut of meat on experimenting, so I usually wait until there are no other choices left and then make the roasts. When this happened recently, I turned to Pinterest for inspiration.  If you have not checked this site out I am urging you to do so very soon.  It is a plethora of ideas of ALL kinds, but my favorite are the food boards.  I found this recipe that someone pinned from Kalyn's Kitchen .  It is a slow cooker roast recipe that is moist, tender, and full of flavor.  I LOVE the depth of flavors created by the balsamic vinegar and beef broth along with the sweet roasted onions.  We served it w...

Peanut Butter Struesel Brownies

I have to start with the disclaimer I didn't make these delectable little bites of chocolate peanut butter dellciousness. Br2, my seven year daughter who has inherited my love of making yummy food, made these babies all by herself.  She found the recipe, prepared the recipe, and with hardly any guidance from me she baked these brownies to take to Thanksgiving dinner so that she had her very own dish to bring like, "all the other girls."  They are rich, delicious, and a great addition to any dessert buffet!  We used a brownie mix because at the last minute I discovered I was all out of cocoa, but this brownie recipe  (minus the mint candy) or your favorite recipe would work beautifully with the peanut butter struesel topping.  Enjoy!