Hi friends! I hope you’re having a good week. The good news is- it’s Friday!
Right before I left for Ecuador, I started a series about using a whole chicken– that costs around $5- to make 3 meals. With 4 kiddos around the house, 2 of which eat like adults, I’m always looking for ways to reduce our grocery bill. Using a whole chicken for several meals does just that!
After cooking your chicken in the crock pot (you can read more about that here) you’ll have a nice rich broth remaining. I use this to make meal 1. But first things first: you need to de-bone your chicken. This is definitely not the most fun activity on the face of the earth, but someone’s gotta do it! In the interest of not covering my nice camera in chicken grease, I just snapped a pic with my iPhone:
Separate the skin (which you can discard or, do like we do and feed it to your dog!), the bones (keep these) and the meat. You should have around 6 cups of meat.
For the first meal, I typically make a soup. One of our favorites is this Curried Indian Chicken Soup.
I just use the broth from cooking the chicken for the soup and it’s so rich and delicious, yet still low in calories. (Be sure to skim the fat off the top of the broth.) Another soup you might like if you’re trying to shed a few pounds is this Extreme Dieters Soup. Either of these recipes will use 1.5-2 cups of the chicken, so you’ll still have anywhere from 4-4.5 cups remaining for the next few days!
And don’t throw the bones away; I’ll show you what to do with those in the next post!
About Kelli Hays
