Thursday, January 29, 2009

How far can you stretch a chicken?

You're probably conjuring up images of a Rhode Island Red stretched out on a medieval torture device. I'm not talking about that kind of stretch but how many meals you can get out of one single chicken.

My family loves those slow roasted chickens from the grocery store and I'm a fan also. Not only do I not have to cook the bird, for some reason it's actually cheaper than buying a raw bird. The slow rotisserie roasting makes for a very moist and flavorful meat.

I'm sorry that I didn't get a photo of the chicken whole but my family dove in as soon as I unpacked the grocery bag. This was a very, very large chicken which made it possible to stretch it to create more than one meal. We all ate our portion served with green beans and sweet potatoes. It was delicious.

The next afternoon I made a salad with mixed greens, yellow peppers, carrots and sliced almonds topped with some cubed white meat. The salad dressing is compliments of Chocolatechic. This is a terrific dressing and after I served it at Christmas the Farmer declared that it's the only salad dressing he'll eat. Here's the link to Chocolatechic's sa;ad dressing.

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What's left is the carcass with a small amount of meat left on it.

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Tomorrow I'll strip the bird of the meat and boil the rest to make some chicken soup, adding celery, carrots, onions and parsley. The meat will be added and some homemade egg noodles. They are so easy to make.

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This batch is made with whole wheat flour which results in a very dense and filling noodle.

EGG NOODLES

2-1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 pinch salt
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup milk

In a large bowl, mix flour and salt together. Add beaten egg and milk. Knead dough till smooth, about 5 minutes. Let rest in covered bowl for 10 minutes. On a floured surface roll out dough to a 1/8 to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut into strips of desired length and width. (you can use a pizza cutter). Air dry before boiling. Boil as you would pasta.


At that point I will have reached the end of stretching this chicken.

How about you? Do you stretch chickens or beef roasts?

22 comments:

chocolatechic said...

I love those rotisserie chickens too.

I love to debone them and eat the skin off the thighs.

Awful, I know, but it is just so good!

I freeze them into 2 cup portions to make casseroles out of them.

I also boil the carcass for stock

Molly said...

Rotisserie chickens are a career girl's friend, especially when she gets off work at 7:30! And I've never gotten to round 3 of meals. My meals take the form of your first two rounds.

Anonymous said...

Absolutely we stretch our meals by using the leftovers. Soups, sandwiches, casseroles... Not much goes to waste in this house, especially in these economically wallet strapping times.

Di
The Blue Ridge Gal

Anonymous said...

I am a chicken stretcher! We grow our own chickens so they are larger than the store variety. I always stew my chicken, pick the meat off the bone, and freeze it 2 cups at a time. I can usually get 8 cups from one of our chickens and that makes 4 meals. I also freeze my stock in 1 cup portions. Just right for pulling out to put in a casserole.

Texas Gardener said...

I love those chickens, especially when they are on sale. I will buy a few and freeze the meat. Are you going to give us the recipe for the egg noodles? That would make a soup extra special.

Significant Snail said...

Love those rotisserie chickens! Yes - we make soup or use them in salad.

Your noodles look great - reminded me of when my mother used to make noodles and they'd be hung over the backs of the kitchen chairs to dry. MMM...

Vee said...

Yes, I love to stretch chicken this way and those rotisserie chickens are great. One evening I was at the store at 10 and they sold the chickens, one per customer, at $1 each! Needless to say, that was the best buy ever and, the thing is, it had only been baked a half hour before.

Now I have to go searching at Chocolatechic's for a salad dressing recipe...

~annie said...

I am also a "chicken stretcher." When I stew a chicken, the cat gets the skin. I've been known to skim some of the fat off the cooled stock and use it to fry up some onions. My latest "stretching" involved using stock I had frozen as the base for a butternut squash soup.

Suzanne said...

First of all, I apologize for not including the link to Chocolatechic's recipe, or including the recipe for my egg noodles. This is what happens when you blog tired!!! HA. I've corrected those omissions and I sincerely hope you try that salad dressing. It's amazing. I make a batch and keep it in a squirt bottle container in the fridge.

Chocolatechic - Holy cow woman!!!! What time to you get up in the morning? No wonder you get so much done.

Molly - I agree. I first started buying these chickens when I was working full time. They also offer rotisserie ribs, but they're quite a bit more expensive.

Di - My family isn't much into leftovers so I have to incorporate them in sneaky ways.

Ang - I wish we had chickens!! I freeze chicken meat also to use in casseroles, quesadillas, etc.

Texas Gardener - Sorry, I just added the recipe to the blog post. By the way - I MISS TEXAS. I need some Texas real soon. I lived in San Antonio for four years.

Significant Snail - Yes you have to get creative when drying noodles! There's a fold up table top noodle drying rack but I don't have on. In the Italian neighborhood where I grew up the women would dry their ravioli on the bed, laying them out on perfectly clean sheets! Oh, the memories.

Vee - I'm going to remember to go shopping at the end of the day. Sorry, I've now included the link to the salad dressing recipe.

Thanks everyone for visiting with me today. It helps to have my friends along for the cabin fever ride.

BittersweetPunkin said...

You can't go wrong with those chickens!! There usually isn't much left after my brood gets done with it....and I always have to pick up some of those battered potato wedges with it too.....

Happy Thursday!
Hugs,
Robin

Skogkjerring said...

Chicken wasn't widely available in Norway when I first got here, 13 years ago, they came about 2-3 years after I got here and they were SO expensive. Now, thankfully Chicken is "cheaper" (by Norwegian standards) and you can get different cuts and the rotisserie chickens which you're right are cheaper then the raw...go figure? We use everything, salads, soups, right off the bone..in chinese food..mexican food...I love chicken and dumplings..(my kids hate the dumplings but that is the best in my opinion!) Thanks for posting the noodle recipe, I'm going to get brave and attempt homemade pasta someday...I'm a pasta addict, it's like the last thing on my list to be a totally over the top pasta addict...hahahaha..

Unknown said...

Mmmm, I'll tell you my favorite.....
Pull apart and mix up your chicken with some Franks hot sauce and put it on a Boboli spread with chunky blue cheese and top it all off with mozzarella!!
SO good : )

JoAnn ( Scene Through My Eyes) said...

If it is a rubber chicken - I can stretch it a long ways - -ohhh right - cooked chickens. We have the same schedule as you do - baked chicken, then chicke salad, then we add in chicken sandwiches, next is chicken pot pie and finally boil the chicken and make stock and soup. Ummm good

Dandelionmom said...

delurking to say...the farmers wife is a psycic!!! I was actually saying (to someone else who wasn't there but that still doesn't count as talking to myself!)that when I finish reading "my" blogs I will look for a whole wheat pasta recipe!! One-stop shopping here! thanks!!

With 8 kids I am all about stretching! We looove chicken enchiladas (chicken and cream cheese with a bit of taco seasoning rolled up and topped w/ a can of rotell and a pile of cheese. authentic? for us it is!

Sabina said...

I've never made any homemade pasta or noodles - it always seems so intimidating. Your's looks wonderful!! Maybe I'll give it a shot.

Those darn grocery store chickens - why are they soooo good!!

:)

life in red shoes said...

All the time. We also love those roasters. If I had room in my freezer I would save the carcass's and boil them for stock. When I cook a roast we always have use the leftovers for hot roast beef sandwiches, I just assumed everyone did!

StitchinByTheLake said...

I'm pretty good at stretching chicken but don't have any unusual recipes. I'm also good at stretching both beef and pork roasts. Thank goodness my husband is ok with leftovers for a couple of meals but he also loves hot roast beef or hot pork sandwiches and barbeque. I use the juice from the roast, after I've skimmed it, and add a gravy mix along with some broth to make the gravy. blessings, marlene

LIBERTY POST EDITOR said...

How far can you stretch the 'truth'?...I'm watch CNN live and is he a sociapath or what? What's the scoop with that Blag guy?

Anonymous said...

I am not as good as stretching chicken as I should be.

My best use of a rotisserie chicken was last Fall when my elderly dog was hospitalized and refusing to eat. I took her everything I could think of, including liver treats and boiled chicken, but she wasn't interested in anything until my husband brought her a rotisserie chicken from a deli down the street from the vet hospital. (She's fine now.)

Kathi D said...

P.S. I am jealous of people who grow chickens for meat. I have a laying flock, but I have too much "city" in me (so far) to be able to grow chickens to butcher. I would like to be able to eat chickens that I know were fed clean and butchered clean.

Jenni said...

I had no idea the rotisserie chickens would be less expensive. I never looked at them, figuring they would cost more. I almost never buy a whole chicken. Don't tell anyone but whole chickens and turkeys kinda freak me out. What's really funny is that I helped butcher chickens several times when I was a teen and I really got into that gory job. Having kids has made me more squeamish and I have to control my mind when handling a whole carcass of any animal whether or not it's been plucked or skinned and the head removed. And why do they have to stick the neck and that bag of nasty in the turkey. Really freaks me out. Rotisserie chicken would make it so much easier for me. I think I will try the noodles, too. They look like they'd be similar to the Reame's frozen noodles I always buy.

You commented on the KATP Field School on my blog. The info for this year is not up yet; I expect it will be any time now. It's really a lot of fun and so inexpensive to do if you camp outside or in the gym of whichever school they use as HQ. There are usually classes you can take for college credit (pay) or just for enrichment (free). Here are a few posts about the 2007 Field School in Nicodemus, Kansas, in case your interested.
http://prairieair.blogspot.com/2007/06/archaeology-field-school-dig-site.html
http://prairieair.blogspot.com/2007/06/field-work.html
http://prairieair.blogspot.com/2007/06/lab-work.html

amycaseycooks said...

Love those noodles. My grandma used to make them all the time when I was growing up. it was so much fun watching her work her magic.