6 Meals From 1 Chicken

I did it yesterday so it would be fresh on my mind :)  Actually we ended up with 7 meals (8 if you count Buddy's meal (yum) of skin and leftover meat.. he's our golden retriever)

1) Start with a whole chicken- it can be cut up- doesn't matter.  

2) Boil about 20 cups of water.  (I like to add salt, pepper garlic and onion to this)

3) Put your chicken in (excluding liver and other yucky parts)

4) Boil for about 30 minutes (I boil it longer because chicken grosses me out, haha :)

5) Strain by pouring chicken into a colander with a large bowl underneath.

6) Pull chicken out so it can cool, wipe out cooking pan and strain liquid back into pan        (to eliminate any tiny things you don't want in your soup).

While your chicken is cooling, start making your soup!

1) Add some more garlic, chopped onion (I use dried), salt and pepper to the water

2) Add 1 carrot and 1 celery stalk, chopped

3) Add about a tablespoon of dried parsley

4) Add 1/3 of a bag of No Yolks or whatever kind of noodles you want

5) Add a small handful of chopped chicken from your stash

Let simmer for at least long enough for the noodles to cook (I usually go a little longer) and season to taste.  For my size family (4) we get 3-4 meals out of this when I make some homemade bread to go along.

While your soup finishes boiling, you can prep your chicken.  What I usually do is pull all the meat of the bones and then sort through it later (again, I get grossed out by chicken easily, so I'm pretty thorough when it comes to making sure there aren't any "extras" in my meat :)

1) Separate white and dark meat.

2) I take a handful (enough for enchiladas or tacos) of white meat out. (I leave it whole so I can do whatever I want with it according to the kind of meal I'm making)

3) The rest of the meat I mix and chop.  We don't just love the dark meat, but when its mixed in with white meat in a casserole or chicken pot pie, we don't notice at all.

4)Divide into 1.5 cup portions and freeze in marked baggies.  SO easy to grab when you are cooking dinner!

***side note, you can take some chicken broth out before you add other ingredients and freeze to use later when you need broth.  I never buy it anymore!