Recipe: Whole Chicken/Stock and Soup
14 April 2003, 1:49 PM

I haven't done a recipe in a while, so here goes.

Sometimes I want to make something really good and home cooked, but not put a lot of effort into it. This is actually really easy and you get a lot of mileage out of one chicken.

Whole Chicken Dinner:

First thing you need is a slow cooker. A timered one is nice and you can buy adapters for your old slow cooker to give them a timer.

Before you head of to work on a Thursday or Friday:

Take a whole chicken, get rid of the skin and any stuff left inside. I'll often trim off a lot of the fat too, then rinse the bird. Cut a yellow onion into big quarters and stuff the inside of the bird with that and a few springs of rosemary. Place inside the slow cooker, on top of a small rack if you've got one for the cooker. Sprinkle lemon pepper spice all over the chicken and set to the lowest setting for about 6 hours. This whole process takes about 15 minutes.

When you come back from work, the place'll smell great! Toss some rice in a rice cooker and add some veggies or a can of fava beans and some squash and you have a really nice meal in 15 minutes or so!

After dinner I'll strip the chicken of the meat and and save both that and the carcass (onions and everything) in the fridge. I can use some of the chicken for dinner the next night or keep it for soup.

Chicken Stock:

When the weekend arrives and I'm going to be in my apartment for a while, I'll pull out the carcass and toss it in the biggest pot I've got. Fill that with water and set it on the stove on high heat. When it just *barely* begins to boil, immediately reduce the heat so that it just simmers.

Now let it continue to simmer for the next several hours. Four, Five maybe even six hours is great. Three hours is enough to get a good stock, but if you're at home for a while, let it go longer. Just check it every once in a while and skim off the foamy and greasy stuff off the top with a large spoon. It takes a long while, but very little effort, so I'll do this while I'm doing other things (studying, reading, crafting, whatever). You shouldn't have to add any water if you started with a really big pot. You want to reduce it down.

You'll notice a huge difference in the bones after three hours and if you let it go long enough they'll start to disintegrate. When you're ready, just strain the whole thing through a cheesecloth into a container and refrigerate.

The next day you'll be able to lift off any remaining fat off the top of the stock. (It'll be a solid layer on top.)

Voila. You're ready for chicken soup:

Hearty Chicken Soup:

This one does take a little more prep, but it's still very quick.

Take three stocks of celery from a bunch and chop it up into small cubes. I de-string the stuff first, then cut it into strips and then chop.

Take three or four carrots, peel 'em with a potato peeler and chop them up into similarly sized bits.

Chop up one clove of garlic.

In a large pot over high heat, add your chicken stock and a bay leaf (or two) plus 4 to 6 chick bouillon cubes.

In a saute pan, add a small amount of olive oil and the garlic. Cook for a minute or two. Add the celery and carrots and sprinkle with salt. Cook two or three minutes max.

Scrape all the veggies into the chicken stock and bring to a boil. Add small (not wide) egg noodles and cook until almost done.

Roughly chop up the leftover chicken (don't get it to small) and add to the soup when the noodles are almost done. Add some lemon pepper spice to taste (and for a nifty touch toss in a handful of sesame seeds) and cook until noodles are done and the chicken is heated through.

Voila. This'll last you for a week. :-)