Mmmm… Chicken and Stuff

For Christmas I got a stockpot with a pasta insert and a steamer basket.  I tried the pasta insert once and found it surprisingly less useful than you might expect.  You require more water, taking longer to boil, and the capacity inside the insert is no more than that of the pans I’d normally use, and possibly less.  Then when I had the cooked pasta in the insert, wanting to mix in the sauce, the most logical thing to do was dump it into the customary pan, thus using an extra pan.

A week or so ago, I forget which day, I roasted a chicken I got at Hannaford for 69¢ a pound; first ever chicken done in my new roasting pan, elevated on the rack.  Deb declared it the best ever, and the gravy I made was the best ever too.  I didn’t get around to souping the carcass, the all too limted leftovers were great.

I regretted not buying a second one for the freezer, and Deb expressed a desire to have another already, so I caught them before they went off sale and got one for yesterday and one for the freezer.  Along with a few pounds of beef for $1.69 on the idea of chili and/or beef stew soon, but not soon enough to keep it in the fridge.

Yesterday I baked the chicken and it was almost as good as last week’s, and ditto for the gravy.  We had that, mashed, peas, and salad, which Sadie now eats too.

Afterward I stripped off the easy meat from the half we didn’t eat, put that away and decided to start soup on the spot.

I found a good use for the pasta insert.

While we watched the Grease show, the carcass boiled in the pasta insert, not quite covered all the way, leaving the water mainly just broth (appropriately enough, stock, which itself could have been saved for future use without buying chicken brother), and the solids able to be pulled out in the insert.  Set the insert on a deep plate and sorted the meat into the pot and the bones and waste out to be tossed.

While I was doing that, I also spiced the broth.  I got a big thing of celery flakes a while back, and that’s perfect for this sort of thing.  The stuff amounts to chopped, dehydrated celery, if more leaves than stalks.  It rehydrates and is as if you used celery in something like the soup.  As soon as I spiced the broth, Deb started verbally drooling over it, saying now it smelled like soup (after two hours the boiling chicken smelled bad to her).

Anyway, after I finished with the meat and turned the heat back on, I added a cup of brown rice, a half cup of barley, several carrots, some extra chicken from the thigh in the fridge as I thought it was light on chicken, and later some frozen peas.

Around 11:00 I turned it off, and near midnight put it in the fridge in four plastic containers.  I tried a small bowl and it was good.  Soup always tastes weaker than it smells.  Besides the celery, it had black pepper, lots of rosemary, thyme, savory, a little salt, and some poultry seasoning.  I also used two chicken and one beef boullion cubes.  At the time I started this paragraph I hadn’t eaten any today, but since then I heated and ate a large bowl for lunch and it was fantastic.

Anyway, yay for the stockpot and the insert!

1. I’m not sure if you can get them there or not,But there are these great frozen noodles that are just the best thing in soup. They don’t get real mushy no matter how long you cook them. They are thick and kind of doughy. you find them in the freezer at the store. If your thinking of making soup again you might want to check them out.

   Posted by wayne  on  02/12  at  05:25 PM  from  ohio

2. Hmmm… I have a stock pot that I havne’t bought the insert for yet. Now I’m wondering it’s worth it.

   Posted by Ith  on  02/12  at  07:08 PM  from 

3. I like the insert, not for pastas, but for potatoes.  It works really well to drain the potatoes if you don’t want them to smash by pouring into a strainer.

   Posted by  on  02/14  at  08:41 AM  from 
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