Getting all I can from one whole chicken

 Hello again!  

I'm a little late in posting, but saving money can be busy work (smile).  I'm still watching pennies as we pay off hospital bills and try to recover from no paycheck during hubby's recovery.  He's doing great BTW.  Back at work.

Combine our own personal financial squeeze with price increases in gas, groceries, etc and it can get to be tricky.  As a result I'm trying to squeeze every last bit of good from anything I use.  Which brings me to today's topic: wringing everything I can from one whole chicken.

I got a really good price recently on a few organic free range ( all the buzz words) whole birds.  I froze many of them for later, but that day I came home and immediately placed one in the crock pot for dinner.  

I added no water to the crock pot, but just let it cook in it's own juices.  Once dinner was over I deboned the chicken for later meals.  The bones were placed back into the crock pot along with the broth from cooking the bird.  I added 2 carrots, 2 celery, 1 small onion, 1 tsp salt, 2 TBS vinegar, and water to cover it all.  This cooked on low for the next 24-36 hours.  Meanwhile the meat provided the basis for another dinner of chicken pot pie( heavy on the veggies), and a couple days of lunches.  

Once the broth had cooked, I strained the broth out, let it cool, then put it in the fridge for the fat to rise to the top.  The bones, veggies, etc. were mashed up and, to the doggies delight, doggie dinner for that night.  No need to worry about the bones.  The vinegar removes the minerals and leaves the bones soft.  Everything is mashed up to insure that all bones are soft and then the dogs get it.  They love it when mama makes chicken broth.  

When the broth is cold and the fat solid, I remove it from the fridge and scoop off the solidified fat.  This goes into a container in the fridge.  Whenever I'm needing a fat to say sauté onions to go into a chicken dish, I pull out that container.  It replaces a store bought oil I would normally use.  The broth is divided into pints or quarts and either frozen or canned.  I'll pressure can broth if I've done a large amount of broth.  One chicken usually gives me about 2 quarts, so that I freeze.  

                                                           

Now while I tell this story about a chicken, this process can be used for any type of bone in meat.  Ham, beef, even fish (although the idea of fish broth doesn't sit well with me, but some like it).  I save the fat in both beef and ham as well.  I can hear the collective gasps when people read this and think "All that saturated fat!".  I don't have a problem with saturated fat.  I have a problem with hydrogenated, highly processed fat.  Plus I'm not smearing the fat on toast (yuck).  I just use a small amount to cook with.  My over all fat intake is lower than your average person I'd guess.  

Sweets are my weakness.  That's still a work in progress.