How-to Mondays: One bird, three meals

Welcome back to How-to Monday!
I thought I would devote today's blog to one of my favorite things to do... save time and money! This is a little explanation of how I take a whole chicken and turn it into three separate meals and then some!

First I defrost a whole chicken which you can get from the store for about .99 a pound on average... unless you get it on sale like this week I got two at .58 a pound woohoo! I fill one of my large pots 1/2 to 3/4 full of water. Add some salt, pepper, parsley and any other seasonings that you like and put the bird in to soak in the hot tub a few hours. While the bird is cooking I will cut up several celery sticks and pick off all the leaves to go in because they have soooo much flavor. Don't throw those puppies away! Add in some Chopped carrots and a whole onion. Let all this come together for a few hours.

Once the chicken is cooked thoroughly, I take it out and put it in a seperate bowl. I let the broth cool and skim the top of the fat. Then I dip out two quart bags full of chicken broth and throw them in the freezer to use with other recipes. I usually add some extra water back into the pot because the broth is so concentrated. Then I skim off the dark meat to put back in the soup. I put each chicken breast in freezer bags and freeze. I usually take one out a few days later and use it for chicken pot pie along with some of the frozen chicken broth. The other breast you can use for chicken burritos, chicken salad etc. Now that my soup has the meat added back in, I put three handfuls of egg noodles in and let cook for another ten to fifteen minutes. Then your homemade chicken noodle soup is ready. I usually take half of it and freeze it because it makes sooooo much! So in reality you can probably get a weeks worth of meals out of this. Pretty amazing and great on the pocketbook.

That concludes how-to Monday!