Saturday, January 29, 2011

One chicken~three meals

One way to stretch the money for food is to get multiple meals out of a chicken. I bought chicken on sale for $.69 lb a couple of weeks ago, I bought six of them. At the time I thought I would just roast them like I always do. But the more I thought about it the more I wanted to see how many meals I could get out of it. So I started out putting the chicken in water and cooking if for about an hour, took it out and let it cool down. Then I took the skin off and shredded it (no pics, sorry) The first meal I made was chicken enchiladas. I don't make the standard enchiladas I made it into a casserole, layering the ingredients instead of rolling the tortillas. This not only takes less time it also uses less tortillas.

#1


Chicken Enchiladas:
2 sm cans enchilada sauce(or 1 lg)
shredded chicken(use as much or as little as you want)
1/2-1 onion diced
1 sm can diced green chilies
corn tortillas 10-12
shredded cheese(I used mozzarella and Mexican style cheese
I start by heating the sauce up to a simmer and then turning of the heat
At the same time pour 1/2 in to an inch of oil in bottom of stock pot(one with high sides)
heat oil up on a med/high heat
once it gets to temp, using tongs dip tortilla in oil for about 5-10 seconds then put on paper towel to drain and cool. Do all tortillas.
Put a spoonful of sauce in bottom of 9x13 casserole dish
After the tortillas have been dipped in oil and drained, dip them in the sauce and then wipe off extra(gettin dirty here) with fingers:)
lay them in casserole dish not over lapping(should be 3-4 per layer)
add shredded chicken, 1/3 of cheese, 1/2 of onion, 1/2 of can of chilies.
start layers all over again. top off with last layer of tortillas and cheese. heat in oven at 350 dergrees for 30 min or until cheese is melted and it is heated through.
I was hoping for some leftovers but between Jacob and Rob there wasn't any to be had;)

#2

Chicken Quesadillas
cook onion and bell pepper until limp
heat up griddle
put shredded chicken, cheese and onion mixture on tortilla and then top with another.
Grill on one side (350 degrees) and then flip. cook until brown on both sides and cheese is melted
using a pizza cutter, cut into triangles

#3

Chicken soup:
When I cook a whole chicken, I throw the carcass in the freezer to use for stock later on. I had three in the freezer so I made a huge batch of stock. I had enough leftover to freeze for another meal.
After the stock was done I drained it off and added more celery, onion, carrot, garlic and seasonings. I added the rest of my shredded chicken and cooked for a couple of hours. At the end of the cooking time I added the noodles and cooked them until they were done.

Rob was heading to a night job and was going to be outside so I wanted to send warm food with him. I also made the yummy bread on the plate.

It was great satisfaction to be able to stretch one meal into 3.

5 comments:

Tonia said...

Yummo!! It all looks good! I do the same with Enchilade cassarole.

PrairieMom said...

Now that's what I'm talking about!
Who needs coupons when we can make great meals like this, right? :)
You go mama!

OurCrazyFarm said...

Yummy! Those quesadillas especially look good! I like to boil my chicken with some chicken boulion cubes~ gives the left over broth an extra kick to make soup with. I am so anxious to get started with raising our own meat chickens this year and this post only makes me hungrier for chicken, versus all the good home grown steak and roasts we have in the freezer~ a tough problem, I know:)))

Dalyn said...

mmmm...that made me hungry.

Elizabeth said...

Great looking recipes, animals blog... looking forward to following!