It's a cooking day for sure.

A week or so ago, I saw a great blog post about using 5 chicken breasts to make 5 meals.  I'm all for stretching our grocery budget, and this article talks about how to use bone-in chicken breasts to the fullest extent.  I had to hit Shaws yesterday, so I decided to take the plunge.

If you know me, you know that I'm bone-a-phobic.  I never eat meat on the bone.  It's not that I care that it's a dead animal-- it's that I'm too freaked out about chomping down on a piece of cartilage, or a splintered bone that'll poke me in the gums, or- God forbid- a vein.  Ugh GROSS.  So when I shop I buy boneless chicken breasts, boneless pork chops, and on and on.  If I go to a restaurant I ask the server if the dish I want to order is boneless, and if not, I order something else.  So this"experiment"  is a biggie for me, and not easy!

First, I skinned the chicken and put the removed skin aside.  I cut the chicken breasts off the bone and chopped them up into bite-sized pieces.  These I split into 3 freezer baggies, labeled, and froze them.

The chicken ribs went into a stock pot with enough water to cover them, and I boiled them for 30 minutes until the remaining meat on the bone was cooked through.  I then removed the ribs from the water, cooled them, and used my hands to pick the rest of the meat off the bone.  This got me about 1/5 cups of shredded chicken, which I also labeled and froze for future use.

I then heated the oven to 475.  I roughly cut up 3 carrots, 2 celery stalks, and 1 onion.  I threw all the veggies into a roasting pan along with the chicken ribs, and the skin I'd removed earlier, and 4 big cloves of garlic, and roasted all of it until the veggies were browned and the house smelled delicious.

I had kept the water in the stock pot from boiling the ribs, so I skimmed the gunk off the top of the water, then threw all the roasted goodies (except the garlic and the remaining chicken skin that hadn't cooked down) into the stock pot with the chicken water.  I smashed the garlic cloves, then added them too, along with 2 bay leaves, a tablespoon of thyme, and 8 black peppercorns.  I added more water, enough to cover everything in the pot plus another 2 or 3 inches.

I boiled all of this, then turned down the temp and got the stock to a good simmer.  And that's where we are now.  Simmer, simmer, simmer.  It's been going for almost 4 hours now, and it looks (and smells!) great, but not tasting "done" yet so I'll leave it be.

Once I feel it's done, I'll strain it all through a fine strainer and put it in a bowl in the fridge so the fat will rise to the top and solidify.  Once it's cooled, I'll remove the fat and then freeze the stock in small containers for future use.  Awesome!

I don't think I could have gotten this much use out of boneless chicken breasts, and just looking at that simmering pot of stock makes me feel like some sort of kitchen wizard.