Winter time is soup time, and I'm getting ready with a giant batch of chicken stock. Making chicken stock is super easy, saves money, and is a good way to reduce packaging in the kitchen.
I used to buy boneless, skinless chicken breasts (wrapped in plastic & styrofoam) and chicken stock (in an aluminum can), and that was very convenient. These days, I buy a whole chicken and use it to make several meals. Night one: roast chicken, potatoes, green beans, rolls...yum! After dinner, I remove as much meat as I can & put the carcass (ew, horrible word!) in a big stock pot, add a couple carrots, celery, onion, garlic, salt, whole peppercorns, a couple bay leaves and some thyme, then fill up the pot with water and bring it to a boil. I then let it simmer at least a couple hours, but usually overnight. Obviously this is a fire hazard. So if you try it and bad things happen, don't sue me. When I think the stock has boiled long enough, I strain it into quart mason jars and freeze. Last night I cooked up two gallons of liquid gold.
But wait! That chicken is not through, because a couple of cups of meat are sitting in the fridge, waiting to be used. For my family, after night one of roast chicken I still have enough meat to make two meals. There's the soup category: chicken and noodles, chicken and dumplings, chicken noodle soup, chicken and rice soup...fried shrimp, shrimp stir-fry, shrimp gumbo...hehee! Tonight we had chicken and rice soup--it only took about half an hour to make, hurrah! Besides soups and stews, I like to use cooked chicken for Tex-Mex stuff like tacos, enchiladas, and burritos...chicken salad...curries...BBQ...and plain old sandwiches, better than deli meat in so many ways! If I'm not going to use it all within a few days, I freeze the meat. Frozen cooked chicken is pretty convenient to have on hand.
Using a whole chicken to make two or three meals plus a load of stock makes it much easier to afford buying quality, local, pastured chicken. Besides the financial cost, making efficient use of meat products is much, much easier on the earth since raising animals uses a great deal of resources.
And that, my friends, is an Eco-Habit: one small action which, performed again and again over a lifetime, makes a giant impact. Take good care.
