It got cold quickly today! Wow! I love having soups and stews during the winter. They are the ultimate comfort food on a cold day. We eat homemade soup at least once a week November through February. And I recently discovered the beauty of making your own chicken stock to use for soups. Homemade chicken stock is really really tasty, not to mention economical. I'll post the recipe I use at the end of this post.
So, today Pierce and I went to the grocery store to pick up an organic chicken and a few other things so that I could make chicken and also homemade stock from the carcass. I paid $13 for an organic free-range chicken (gulp!), and that was on sale. However, I have strong opinions about not eating cannibalistic birds that are raised in little cages and injected with antibiotics and growth hormones that my kids and I will eventually ingest, so the $13 is really no big deal. Keeping our budget in mind, here's how I stretch that $13 bird!
I roasted it in the crock pot today - super easy and super delicious - using this recipe.
When it was done, I picked the meat off the bones and had enough meat for three meals: we had some of it tonight on homemade pizza dough for BBQ chicken pizzas. Yum! Then I put a bunch in a container to make chicken salad for lunch tomorrow. And the rest went in another container to make homemade chicken noodle soup tomorrow night for dinner. Then, I made stock with the remains of the bird.
Homemade chicken stock (adapted from a recipe I found in Better Homes and Gardens Magazine):
Put the carcass of a fully-cooked chicken, its juices, and skin, etc. into a large pot and cover with water. I used about 14 cups of water for my 4 lb bird (you could probably stretch it to 16). Add a celery stick, a small onion, a bay leaf, fresh rosemary and thyme if you have them (these herbs grow year-round, so they are handy for your little garden), some pepper corns (about 10) and a dash of salt. Bring it to a boil, boil for a minute, then reduce to simmer partially covered for about an hour. When you are done, strain it into another large container and measure out the stock into containers to freeze. I usually put about 4 cups per container because I find that most soup recipes call for 4-6 cups of stock. If I need 6 cups for a recipe, I add 2 cups of water to my 4 cups of frozen stock and one vegan bouillon cube (low sodium) to stretch out my homemade stock. So, tonight I got 3 full meals worth of stock plus a smaller 2-cup container that would be good for flavoring rice or risotto or something.
Ok, so when you look at the $13 bird after all we got from it, it doesn't look so bad! 3 meals and 4 "boxes" of organic chicken stock (which cost about $2.50/$3.00 per box).
I just read on another blog that chicken noodle soup is actually an immunity booster (not just a comfort food when you're already sick!), so it's time to start cooking!
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