Jig and Jog » Chicken

The Whole (Chicken) Shebang

While meal planning this week, we decided to make Paprikas for Tuesday Night Dinner. Part of the reason we did this was because it’s delicious, but also because we knew that whole chickens were on sale for 99 cents per pound at Ralph’s (Kroger). We purchased two whole chickens for about $4 a piece and ended up with about four times as much meat as if we’d spent the same money on just breast meat, which is what we would normally do.

So, yesterday, Travis cleaned and quartered both chickens, using a method he found online, which he claims was very easy. You can see for yourself, this guy is from the French Cuilinary Institute, so it’s legit

Two whole chickens is a lot of meat, so we froze two breasts and several legs and wings, and used four legs for our Paprikas. Then, everything that was left (bones etc.) went into a giant stock pot with some carrots and onion to make, well, stock. We’ll then freeze this homemade stock to use in recipes until it runs out.

So, long story short, two chickens for $8 will stretch us through about six meals. I call that a major winner winner chicken dinner. Don’t you?

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Catherine, February 2nd 2011 | Tags: Chicken, Cooking, Grocery Shopping, meal planning, money saving
Posted in food, Groceries, life, money

Taco Tuesday & Meal Prep

Leftover roasted chicken put to good use

Turns out our cheese was bad, and the avocado we bought on Sunday, also bad. So, it was chicken, tomatoes and sour cream. It was still really tasty, but I did miss the cheese. Oh well.

Tomorrow night’s dinner is a crock pot Pot Roast, but Travis wanted to brine the roast before we get it going tomorrow morning. Doing this will help keep the beef flavorful and hopefully keep it from drying out.

Start with a large pot of cold water, enough to cover the meat.

Add not quite a cup of salt to the water, and add the meat. This works with chicken or beef, by the way, it’s how we prepared the chicken before we roasted it on Saturday night.

Once the meat is in the water, you can add some other spices if you’d like. Travis just started throwing stuff into the pot, so we’ll see what happens

Tomorrow, because Travis leaves for work after me, he’ll brown the beef and throw it into the crock pot with some water, broth, onion, carrots, and potatoes. It’ll hang out in there all day and be ready to go by the time we’re both home from work.

Now we’re watching Glee, we have to watch Sunday night’s Dexter.

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Catherine, October 12th 2010 | Tags: Chicken, Cooking, Dexter, Glee
Posted in Eating, food

Adapted Recipe Saturday – Chicken Pot Pie

I remember going to Marie Callendar’s with my parents when I was younger. I would ALWAYS order the chicken pot pie. However, it always seemed like something really complicated, and difficult to make. I couldn’t have been more wrong, and I’m so glad!

Our chicken pot pie is an adapted recipe from Real Simple’s Individual Chicken Pot Pies

The only real measurement we follow follow from the original recipe is the 1/2 cup of milk, everything else is kind of just by taste. Ready? You need:

Chicken – you can use rotisserie, or leftovers, or pre-cooked, or cook it yourself, whatever. You could even use turkey, or tofu or just veggies! no rules! Woo! When we made the pot pie the other night, we used some leftover chicken from Monday night’s dinner. If you’re using your own chicken, just make sure it’s cooked before you add it to the pie. No one likes salmonella.

Cream of Chicken Soup (1 can) – we use regular old Campbell’s, but you can use an organic brand or whatever.

Milk (1/2 cup) – use 2% or fat free, or whole milk, whatever you have. I bet you could even use cream if you really wanted to go wild.

Veggies – we use a combo of frozen and fresh typically. The last time we made it, we used a mix of peas, carrots and corn. In the past we’ve used broccoli, and even added wild rice. I bet some sliced mushrooms would be really good in there too (mmmm, something to try next time!)

Pie Crust- we have always used the refrigerated kind, and we buy whichever is on sale (name brand or store brand,) but you could totally make your own if you’re into that sort of thing. Make sure you get 2 crusts, because people who don’t put a crust on the bottom of their pot pies are crazy.

That’s it, really, I mean aside from adding spices, salt and pepper to taste, that’s all you need! It’s easy!

Mix together the veggies, soup and milk, set aside. Put one pie crust on bottom of baking dish, or pie pan, fill with veggie mix. Put second pie crust on top, voila! Easy peasy.

Bake about 30-35 minutes until heated through and top crust is nice and golden brown.