Part 1: Frugal Chicken Series- Crock Pot Chicken

So a few months ago I got an idea. I am sure I am not the first person to do this, but for me it was a really big deal. With grocery costs rising, and our income currently doing nothing but staying the same if not decreasing since I went from full time at my job to part time with our daughters arrival, I started getting kind of irritated at our grocery bill. I manage our food costs. I do the grocery shopping and most of the cooking and dangit....it just feels like you are fighting a losing battle sometimes.

So anyway, I have never really tackled a whole chicken before. I mean really? A whole anything meat is just intimidating to me and I am sure many others feel the same way but man....I often see them for 97 cents a pound! Seriously? You know how much meat you can get in 1 chicken?? So I finally decided to suck it up. Let go of my pride and just do it. That particular week Jewel happened to have a sale on chicken broilers/fryers (stay away from the other types of whole chickens...sometimes its older chickens and therefore the meat is not quite as good). I bought two and proudly left the store. Now what the heck was I supposed to do with them?

My original inspiration came from this post but I have done my own tweaking and am proud to present to you my frugal chicken series!

My goal: 1 whole chicken, 3 meals, plus some chicken stock to freeze for future cooking purposes....not sure if I was gonna be able to do it, but I sure as heck was going to try!

So lets start at the beginning.

Day 1

Menu: Whole chicken in crock pot, potatoes, roasted veggies (for purposes of this series I am not going to talk about the side dish preparation...just the chicken dishes.)

I read somewhere that cooking a whole chicken in a crock pot tasted more like the rotisserie ones in the stores if you placed the chicken in the crock pot on top of aluminum foil balls. I did it and I liked the taste of the chicken so I think I will continue to do so, but you don't have to. I loosely ball up 3 aluminum foil balls and placed them in the bottom of the crock pot.

Now for the intimidating part...cleaning out the inside of the chicken. This was the part that always scared me the most. To be honest it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The first whole chicken I bought had its insides already in a sealed bag so all I had to do was throw them away...this bad boy I actually had to pull them out, gross, but really...it took 2 minutes if even! I then rinsed the chicken out quickly and placed it on top of the aluminum foil. Sorry for the lack of chicken cleaning pictures....I was doing this when Dave was gone so I couldn't really clean it and take pictures at the same time. You aren't missing much though. Trust me...its really not as bad as you think it is!

I then sprinkled the chicken lightly with paprika, garlic salt, salt, and black pepper.

Set the crock pot to cook on low for 7 hours. You don't need to add water or anything just turn it on and let it do its thing.

7 hours later you have a delicious whole chicken that you hardly had to do anything to prepare! Unfortunately this particular night I got home from work late and Abbie was getting crabby so Dave had to feed her without me being able to get a picture of the finished product but its kinda self explanatory....it looked like a whole cooked chicken :)

Now everything left in the bottom of the crock pot can be used for chicken stock. We ate what we wanted off of the chicken for dinner that night and then the rest of the chicken I took off the bones, chopped it up, and put in the fridge for my other meals....the chicken is so tender after being in the crock pot that it just falls off the bones with ease. It probably took me 10-15 minutes to pull it all off, chop it up, and put it in the fridge...maybe even closer to 5! Don't forget to save the bones though! Throw those back into the crock pot to make your stock. That particular night was kind of late so I didn't have enough time to make the stock. I just put what was left in the crock pot, plus the bones (minus the aluminum foil) into the fridge overnight and then made it the next day when I had time. You can still make it in a crockpot if you want to...its easier that way, but we just made it on the stove. I put all the contents from the crockpot, plus bones into the pan, added some chopped up carrots, a couple of bay leaves, and an onion or two into the pot (1-2tsp of peppercorns adds a nice flavor if you have any in your cupboards).

Add enough water just to cover all of your ingredients and let simmer on low (or on low in your crock pot for 4 hours). After four hours is up, wait for it to cool a bit, then you'll want to pour the contents through a strainer to sift out all your solids while still saving your liquid.

Once the liquid has cooled I bag it in quart size zip lock storage bags and freeze it. I just use the cups as molds so its easier to pour, but once the liquid is in them you could lay them flat and it would take up less room in your chest freezer.
So there you have it! Part 1 of my 3 part series on making chicken frugally! Stay tuned for part 2!!!

Bon appetit!