There's been a fair
bit of foodie talk recently about how many meals a responsible adult can get
out of a roast chicken. The highest I have heard posited (and I think it
may have been part of the recent Jamie Oliver brouhaha) is 40! Well I
don't know about that but I do know a handy trick to get every single scrap of meat off the carcass. Read on.
My normal behaviour with a whole chicken is
to roast it for our dinner. My real man
has a leg and a wing and I have a few slices of breast. As is normal for us, we
have different accompaniments - he has homemade stuffing, homemade bread sauce,
homemade sloppy peas, sausage meat, potatoes, veggies and real gravy whilst I
have butternut squash and red onion roasted with a little chilli!
On the third day I normally use the second, uncut breast to make a pie for my darling.
At the same time I have a a curry (quick and lovely recipe here) or similar for me for that night. Lots more ideas throughout this blog and in my book, Creative Ways to Use Up Leftovers - extensive preview here!
In addition we may well have a chicken sandwich, salad or similar for lunch before moving on to the next stage.
How to completely strip a chicken carcass ...
~ After the above kind of meals bung all the rest
of the chicken including skin, bones, flesh and any goo, into a saucepan with a
lid and add about 1½ inches (4 cm)of cold water.
~ Bring to a boil over medium heat, turn down
the heat, cover and simmer for about 20 minutes. During this time turn the carcass once so
that all of it gets a go in the water.
~ Turn off the heat and allow to sit for 20
minutes or so.
~ Use tongs to lift the carcass out of the pan
and set in a bowl or on a plate to cool a little.
~ Whilst still pleasantly warm manually (yes,
with your hands) remove every single scrap of edible meat. This is NOT unpleasant and DOESN'T take long.
~ Keep the broth - it will be a pretty golden
colour and lightly flavoured. It is not
a true rich chicken stock but is prettier and better than water to use in any
soups or sauces you might be making.
Here's a gruesome pic of a
carcass I stripped earlier, have yourself a zoom, I don't think you'll find much
I've missed!
This is, of course, nothing like 40 meals, it is 10-ish and at £5 or so for a reasonable 2kg chicken that's
about 50p per meal plus a few nibbles.
2 comments:
The only thing I do differently is to roast the bones and remains once stripped. These bones then go back into the stock for another slow simmer. Really, really lifts the flavour!
Yeah, that's true. I usually do that with a turkey. Thank you.
Post a Comment