I wasn’t inclined to put this up as a recipe since it’s really a pot luck sort of thing in my house. But someone who joined us for some asked and how could I say no. So here’s my alternative to wasting a good fowl carcass.
Every other week or so I slow-roast a big chicken on a vertical roasting rack. These are great devices for de-fatting the bird and browning it all over. My roasting method is as follows.
One BIG chicken
Vertical Roasting Rack
Meat Thermometer (I just got the electronic kind that reads
outside the oven. I don’t know how I cooked without it!)
1 tsp. Salt
1 tsp. Black Pepper (medium to coarse ground
1 or 2 tsp garlic powder (Yes, it does have some use)
2 tbsp Olive or vegetable oil
Place the chicken on the rack, rub the oil and spices all
over the chicken.
Place neck and other pieces if desired in the drip pan with
a cup of water.
Place rack in larger roasting pan with another cup or two of
water to catch the drippings. These will be saved later for use in the soup.
Stab the skin of the chicken all over to allow fat to drain
while roasting.
Insert thermometer in breast meat and place in 275º oven.
Chicken and other fowl are usually considered done around
170ºF. I like mine a little lower but today everyone is so anal about
Salmonella I’ll not recommend you undercook your bird.
But, when the bird is at 160 - 165ºF turn the oven up to
375ºF to brown the skin and melt off the more resilient fat.When done, let cool some and remove legs and
wings. As bird cools more juice will run out and be collected for the soup.
With a good carving knife you can remove the breasts and slice them on a
cutting board as well. Otherwise, remove the bird from the roasting rack and
carve normally.
After dinner, deglazed the pans as best you can with the
juices left behind and store the drippings in the fridge for use later. When
the carcass can no longer yield any carvable meat its time to make the soup.
Soup
Take the carcass, or better yet two if you have them, and boil in a stock pot with four
quarts of water for 30 minutes. Let cool and remove the meat from the bones. I like to do this in front of the TV
while the dog watches me intently.
Aside:It’s always important at this to have clean food handling techniques. Warm, wet cooked
chicken is quite the breeding ground for bacteria, even more so then when raw.
Salmonella isn’t the problem here but all the other bugs we humans carry on us.
So if you haven’t got a box of latex exam gloves in your kitchen I advise you
to visit the local drug store and get some. Make sure they fit snug, loose
gloves are terrible. And they’re handy for all sorts of yucky jobs besides
cooking.
After de-boning (actually “de-meating” the bones) add the meat back to the water in
the stock pot.Remember not to save the soft fatty parts or skin, no one seems to like this in their soup. Go figure.
Remove the congealed fat from the top of the drippings you saved in the fridge and add the
remaining (now gelatinized) parts to the stock pot as well.
Now for the pot luck part. You want to add about 2 - 3 Quarts of diced vegetables to the soup. I’ll suggest a minimum here but in this regard your tastes and imagination are free to add whatever you like.
Spices too are personal preferences but below are generally what I
use. Last, some thickener is also
something I like in my soup. This could be rice, barely, potatoes or pasta. I
generally go with barley or pasta. So I’ll give those quantities here also as a
basis.
Vegetables:
3 stalks of celery cut into ¼” slices.
2 medium onions, cut into ½” to ¾” pieces.
6 diced carrots.
Whatever else you like; peas, corn, parsnips, turnip…
Thickener:
½ cup barely or ½ lb bowtie (Farfelle) pasta.
Spices:
½ tsp Thyme, ground fine
2 tbsp Parsley
½ tsp salt (or more to taste)
¼ tsp white pepper (or more to taste)
¼ tsp Coriander, ground.
2 tsp Rosemary
1 tsp Sage (ground or crumbled)
2 tsp crushed basil.
¼ tsp Nutmeg (Hey, I’m from Connecticut!)
Now, simmer this until the carrots are soft enough to be to
your liking. Some fresh homemade bread would be good with this right about now.