Whole Chicken, Three Meals

Still no camera, but this is supposed to be so simple as to obviate any need for visual aids. A whole pasture-raised chicken really is a wonderful, nutritious, delicious basis for quite a few wholesome meals. Buying individual parts like chicken breasts or chicken thighs may be convenient, but is far more expensive overall. If you want good chicken meals at a good value, a whole chicken is the way to go.

Meal #1 Roast Chicken

You will need:

A chicken (plucked and processed)

A large, sharp knife

Salt, and other optional seasonings

A large pan or skillet plus an oven, or a grill

First, “Spatchcock” the defrosted chicken.

To do so, remove any innards that have been packed inside the cavity. Then place the chicken breast side down on a firm cutting board. Take your largest, sturdiest, heaviest, sharp knife and cut through the chicken back all along one side of the spine. Press the two halves down and pull apart so that the chicken flattens out. Take the knife and score along the center of the inside of the breast — the inside of the breastbone. You can cut all the way through to cut the chicken in half, or simply score the flesh in the center to make it easier to flatten the chicken out. Preparing the chicken in this way reduces cooking time and helps to create a more even cooking temperature throughout the chicken.

Cook the chicken. We almost always use a grill to save on dish cleanup, but if you like doing dishes you can cook the chicken in a heavy pan or skillet in the oven, in a dutch oven-type pan with lid on the stovetop, or even directly on the oven rack (with a pan underneath to catch the drips). First, season the chicken with your seasoning of choice, then place in your cooking apparatus so that the spatchcocked chicken is reasonably flat. It is better to start on a relatively high heat until you see the outside beginning to brown, and then turn down the heat if necessary to cook the chicken to temperature without burning the outside.

Don’t overcook. Use a probe thermometer to check doneness. (If you don’t need a probe thermometer to check doneness, you probably also don’t need to be reading a basic description of how to cook chicken.) Test it out and make sure it works: the probes can sometimes become mis-calibrated. The technology of a thermometer is simple, so expensive is not better. In order to instantly kill all potentially harmful bacteria in the chicken, you need to cook it to 165 degrees Fahrenheit. However, if you cook until the internal temperature of, say, the breast, is 165 and then remove the chicken from the fire, the heat from the outside of the chicken will continue to transfer inward over the next few minutes and your internal temperature will reach points well over 165. So remove the chicken well before it reaches the desired temperature, perhaps at 160. However, even this will overcook the meat. Read on!

Safe temperature vs. safe temperature. Pasteurization works to kill bacteria at very high temperatures essentially instantly, or at somewhat high temperatures held over a longer time. We don’t care if the harmful bacteria die right away or if they die after 10 minutes, so long as they aren’t there when we are eating the chicken. Cooking chicken to 145 degrees internal temperature for 9 or 10 minutes appears to be enough time to kill the harmful bacteria which would also be killed if you nuke the chicken to 165. So, remove the chicken from heat once it hits 145, keep it in a relatively sheltered, warm spot (you might want to cover it if outdoors) and let it rest for at least 10 minutes, checking with the thermometer that it stays at or above 145 for that amount of time. 145-50 degrees is a much better temperature to bring out the chicken flavor without drying it out.

Don’t worry too much if you overcook it. Be safe. Warning: if you don’t cook your chicken to 165 degrees, you do need to hold it at or above temperature for a sustained period (10 minutes at 145 degrees). That’s going to require some extra attention and measurement. We’ve frequently cooked our chickens to 190 because we are busy and can’t be bothered to constantly check the temperature, and while it’s not quite as good and parts are a bit chewy, it’s still fine and you can use it as an excuse to make some gravy.

Note: If you’re concerned about overcooking the chicken — that is, you don’t trust yourself to take it off the heat in time (perhaps you are trying to do this while juggling other tasks?), OR if you’re concerned about undercooking the chicken — that is, you read everything above about not cooking to too high a temperature, but you’re cooking for someone immune-compromised, or you don’t Trust The Science of how pasteurization works, or for some other reason you really want to turn the heat up to 11 on this bird, then try brining the chicken overnight. Boil a few cups of water with about a quarter to half cup each of salt and sugar and perhaps some aromatic herbs and spices, until the salt and sugar dissolve. Then add cold water (or ice) to cool and dilute the brine. Put the chicken in a pot and pour in enough brine to completely cover the chicken. You can also do this in a (clean) cooler, and then fill the cooler with enough ice that the chicken/brine stays at a safe 35 degrees F (ideal refrigerator temperature). A properly-brined chicken is a lot more forgiving of high heat, so you can let it go to 165 without worrying about drying it out. Just make sure to drain the chicken and pat it dry or you’ll get soggy skin, and remember that you’ve already added some seasoning with your brine, so you can probably ease up on any extra seasonings applied before cooking.

Meal #2 Chicken Quesadillas (or Chicken Tacos, or Chicken Salad, or Chicken Casserole, or Pizza Topping, or Puff Pastry Chicken Pies…)

Clean up the carcass — but don’t work too hard. Once you’ve had your meal and the chicken is cooled down, tear off any major pieces of meat left on the carcass. Don’t try to get every little piece from all those bones in the back, just take off any major pieces you didn’t eat. Chop these up and they can be lunch or dinner the next day. Our go-to is usually quesadillas, because they’re easy to make in a cast-iron skillet and we can hide vegetables inside. Also, reheating the chicken along with something wet (such as melted cheese) seems to help keep it from drying out as much.

Meal #3 Chicken soup (stock)

While this requires adding all the other ingredients of the soup or stew, you are getting the nutrition of chicken bone broth, and if you save your chicken bones and make a big pot of stock you will get multiple meals out of it.

Freeze the bones. It’s not worth making chicken stock out of just one chicken, so freeze the bones and any bits of meat left on them. Just chuck it in a freezer-safe container until you have enough to fill a pot. If you aren’t going to eat the chicken skin, freeze it along with the bones and it will help flavor your soup stock.

How to make bone broth. Start with roasted, cooked bones — these already are. Use enough water to cover the bones but not too much extra. Add a shot of some kind of acid — apple cider vinegar works. The vinegar can help to release nutrients from the bones. The chemical effect is likely minor, however, so skip the vinegar if you don’t have it. Let the pot sit for 10 minutes or so to let the acid do its work, then bring the pot up to a slow boil. Once boiling, reduce the heat to a low, low simmer and cover the pot. Simmer it for as long as you can. Twenty-four hours would be great. You may need to add water periodically to make sure the bones remain covered.

Consider adding chicken feet. There’s no reason your chicken bone broth/stock needs to be gelatinous at room temperature. However, some of us like that and the collagen probably is good for you. It’s unlikely that there is enough collagen in a chicken carcass to produce that gelatinous feel, so the best way to produce that in your chicken bone broth is to add a few (properly cleaned) chicken feet to the pot. Chicken feet have a lot of collagen in them.

Season the broth if you want to. We generally do not pre-season soup stocks. When we defrost the stock later to use it, that’s when we’ll add whatever seasonings and flavors we want. For the same reason we don’t add vegetables or herbs. We do all that when we’re cooking the final dish. Of course, if you already know what you want your stock to taste like, go ahead and season it now.

There is meat on those bones. After your stock is done, or you’re bored waiting for it, pour it through a mesh strainer (or just ladle it out and don’t mind the bits) and put the stock into freezer-safe containers for storage. You’ll be left with the bones, which are likely crumbly and falling apart. Picking the meat out of those bones using your fingers is a somewhat tedious and messy task, but there is likely enough to make a nice addition to the stock and thus to whatever final dish you end up making with it.