Chicken.

Ever since I found a convenient source for free-range "organic" humanely raised chickens, I haven't cooked much chicken.

This sort of makes sense.  You see, although the chickens are very yummy and don't require an extra trip -- they are sold by the same folks who sell me milk and eggs and cheese every week -- they only come in the form of "whole frozen bird."  (OK, they're plucked and headless and feetless).  The problem is that my meal-planning algorithm classifies dinners by type of dinner, and the only chicken paradigms I have ready-made in my brain are "cook a whole chicken in a fairly complicated recipe, then eat leftover chicken for a couple of days" or "simple, quick dinner made with boneless skinless chicken breasts."  I don't want to eat chicken three days in a row very much, even if the last day is soup from luscious homemade stock, and I don't have much time anymore for complicated recipes. Also I never seem to have time to let the darn thing defrost.  I still want to eat chicken, but now that I have a source for humanely raised chicken, I don't buy boneless chicken breasts at the store.  Clearly it is time for a new plan.

The solution was obvious when I actually sat down to think of it.  America's cooking repertoire is full of simple, quick dinners made from boneless skinless chicken breasts, 'tis true.  But! America's cooking repertoire is also full of simple, quick dinners made from chopped cooked chicken meat.  And if you've got a whole frozen chicken, producing chopped cooked chicken meat is hardly any more work than cooking boneless skinless chicken breasts.  So I need to replace one mental set of recipes with another.  That's all.

A couple of days ago, I got a whole frozen chicken from the dairy.  I stuck it frozen in the slow cooker at 10 pm (here's the rub -- the chicken has to fit in your slow cooker even when frozen, else you have to defrost it so it will squish) and added salt, pepper, about a half a cup of water, and a bay leaf.  It cooked on low until about 8 AM when I pulled it out and transferred it and its liquid to a bowl in the refrigerator.  When I had time, that afternoon, I picked about six and a half cups of chicken meat off the bones, leaving the wings intact.  I divided the meat into thirds.  One third I set aside for enchiladas that evening. Into each of two zip-loc freezer bags I put one third of the meat and one of the chicken wings.  (About eleven ounces of meat per bag, plus the wing).  Those went, labeled, into the freezer.  And of course, the carcass plus most of the liquid went back into the slow-cooker for stock.

Here's my  thought.  If I process one chicken like this every three weeks, we can have one chicken meal per week plus all the stock we need.  By freezing a wing with each batch of chicken meat, I can better adapt recipes that call for braising bone-in chicken parts -- I'll throw the wing into the braising pot with vegetables, then when it's all done pull the wing out and put in the cooked chicken meat.  I'm planning to try this method with my paprikash recipe next week.  Since there's only eleven or twelve ounces of meat per meal, it meshes pretty well with Mark's cook-less-meat -for-a-better-world plan.

Hannah and Recipezaar.com helped me come up with a list of recipe ideas and classes of meals that would work with cooked chopped chicken.  Here is what we came up with:

• chicken tortilla soup
• chicken fried rice  
• lasagna with velouté sauce instead of traditional béchamel
• chicken wild rice casserole
• jambalaya
• white chili
• chicken pot pie in several variations
• gumbo
• cassoulet
• a skillet dinner I used to make with pork, rice, tomato sauce, provolone cheese, and green beans -- chicken should substitute for the pork
• calzones -- maybe with artichokes!
• wrap sandwiches of all types -- I'm thinking of one I had at a restaurant that was turkey, wild rice, sweet potato, and cranberry sauce...
• chicken mole, maybe this "lasagna" recipe
• something from the bizarre category called "hot chicken salad" -- I've never heard of this before but the recipes sounded promising
• Middle Eastern curry pilafs with dried fruit in them
• Biriyani
• Cacciatore
• For the kids -- sweet and sour chicken
• Chicken sloppy joes

I think these should keep me busy for a while, don't you?

Comments

[Linda]

You can roast chicken and turkey from frozen, as long as you aren't doing stuffing. Start it on a high (275-400 degrees) for a short time (an hour for turkey; I do about 30 minutes for a big chicken), then turn it down to your usual roasting temp. Works every time! :)

[Christy P]

#1 cooked chicken recipe in our house: wrapped in tortillas with guacamole (or sliced avocado)! Cheese, cilantro, onions, salsa are additional inclusions to taste. We like to make a Mexican 'slaw' with cabbage, red onion, and cilantro (a lot) tossed with lime juice and a little salt. It tops various sorts of things wrapped in tortillas and is also pretty good eaten straight.

Also good for cooked chicken - buffalo chicken salads or sandwiches. Yes, there is a lot of salt in buffalo sauce, but this is easily adaptable to the spice tolerance of many family members by adding more or less sauce.

Shredded chicken (hot or cold) tossed with pesto and then served with mozzarella and tomato slices, with pasts, or as toasted subs.

So versatile!

BTW - have I ever shared the black bean and sweet potato burrito with you? It's good, and you could add chicken to it or not.

[bearing]

No, Christy, I could probably derive it from first principles, but go ahead and share. Put it on your blog if you want and I'll link.

[Amy F]

We're part of a meat CSA that gives us 2 chickens a month, so I appreciate the list. I'm a big fan of America's Test Kitchen and they say it isn't safe to put a whole chicken in the crock pot because you can't be sure it reaches a high enough temp to be safe quick enough. So I've been cutting the chicken into parts and baking it, taking parts out as they finish (the longest is under an hour), then taking the meat off the bones. Roasting rarely works well here--it seems like it always takes longer than it should and is unevenly cooked. But baking has gone well.

I left a message for your dairy awhile ago and they didn't get back to me. I should try them again, particularly since the local co-ops just raised their milk prices.