How to Make Multiple Meals from One Roast Chicken

A roast chicken is an excellent and popular choice for a family dinner. It is unfortunate, however, that particularly where there is more meat on the chicken than can be consumed at one sitting, a roast chicken can also lead to a lot of delicious food being wasted and potential subsequent meals requiring to be otherwise defined. This page is devoted to looking at precisely how it is possible to make multiple meals from one roast chicken, making the most of every part of the bird. It will hopefully prove particularly useful to individuals or couples who believe that the amount of meat provided by a roast chicken renders it cost ineffective or wasteful for them to prepare.

A necessary consideration to what follows on this site

Food safety is of course always of paramount importance when cooking but chicken is an ingredient which requires that we be extra attentive if we are to prevent potential food poisoning. It is imperative that a frozen chicken be fully defrosted prior to being cooked and that chicken always be cooked fully and well. There should be no red or even pink juices still escaping the bird before it is served. It is also vital that any chicken not to be consumed on the day that it is cooked is cooled and refrigerated at the earliest opportunity.

If you are in any doubt as to how to safely cook and store chicken, please take a moment to visit the, "Food Reference," website linked to below before proceeding any further.

Chicken Safety, Cooking and Storage

Keep the procedure simple

The chicken which I purchased for the purpose of creating this site weighed almost exactly four pounds. I proceeded to cook it in the simplest of fashions, with no butter, no oil - and especially no basting!

To roast a chicken in this way - aside from the chicken itself - you will need one whole, fresh lemon and 1/2 tsp each of dried rosemary and thyme. You should preheat your oven to 375F/190C/Gas Mark 5. While the oven is heating, the lemon should be dropped in to a pot of boiling water and left to simmer for ten minutes. The herbs should be put on to a large spoon, which should carefully be inserted in to the cavity of the chicken and then simply shaken around to disperse the herbs as evenly as possible.

The lemon should be removed from the water with one fork before being pierced several times with a second and inserted in to the body cavity of the chicken. Heating and piercing the lemon in this way allows its juices and flavours to escape immediately in the form of steam and start working on flavouring the chicken straight away.

Place the chicken on to a roasting tray and uncovered in to the oven for twenty minutes per pound and ten to twenty minutes extra. There is no need to open the oven during cooking, or to baste. When the chicken is ready, remove it from the oven, cover the tray securely with foil and leave to rest for fifteen to twenty minutes.

When the chicken has rested, rather than simply carve it, I have chopped it in to pieces. The legs and thighs are removed by cutting through the skin and flesh which attaches them to the body then popping the bone from its socket. The wings are removed in a similar fashion. The breast fillets are removed by carefully slicing down either side of the breast bone, tracing the bone with the knife in small, cutting motions.

I served the first meal from this roast chicken by boiling some new potatoes in salted water for half an hour, while the chicken was roasting. I then submerged them in cold water to cool. The skins can then be easily removed simply by rubbing them with a dry cloth or even the ball of your thumb. They were then roasted for fifteen minutes in the juices of the chicken.

The peas were frozen and cooked in boiling water for three minutes.

The perfect way to make use of the chicken carcass

When the six principal pieces of chicken have been removed from the carcass, there will still of course be some meat on the bones. This should be picked off and refrigerated when the carcass has sufficiently cooled, to make such as soup from the subsequent stock. The carcass should then be placed in a large pot and three pints of boiling water added.

The carcass should be allowed to simmer in the water for around an hour. It should then carefully be removed with a large slotted spoon and discarded. The stock should then firstly be poured through a colander in to a bowl to remove the larger pieces of skin and bone. It should then be allowed to cool slightly before being strained through a sieve covered with kitchen paper to remove the smaller imputities and much of the fat. The result is perfectly clear and pure fresh chicken stock.

When your fresh chicken stock is prepared, you have any number of options of the dishes which it can be used to prepare. It can be used to make soup, it can be used to make casseroles or stews, it can be used to make risotto; it can even of course be frozen in the deep freeze in portions and used over a period of two or three months.

The perfect late night snack

It may well be the case that even although you have enjoyed your roast chicken dinner, you are again hungry before it is time for bed. The remaining roast chicken breast fillet makes an excellent sandwich, simply sliced and added to a bread roll before being topped with low fat mayo and some freshly torn basil leaves.

The perfect way to utilise the limited meat from the roast chicken wings

Chicken wings make delicious eating in many forms but there is not a lot of meat to be had on the wings from just one chicken. What little meat there is available, though, makes the perfect amount for a delicious lunchtime omelette, the day after you have roasted your chicken. Having been refrigerated overnight, the wings should be plucked of their meat and the light omelette made as follows.

Ingredients

2 large, free range, organic eggs

Meat from 2 chicken wings

Fresh basil or other herb

Salt and pepper

Little bit of butter

Method

Break the eggs in to a bowl and whisk until fully combined. Season with salt and pepper. Melt a bit of butter in a small omelette pan and add the eggs, over a medium heat. Carefully and methodically draw the egg mixture from the edges in towards the centre of the pan until the mixture begins to set.

When the eggs are almost fully set, scatter the meat from the chicken wings over one half of the omelette, followed by the fresh basil or other herb, if desired. Fold the omelette over and serve immediately, garnished with a couple of herb leaves.

An incredibly simple lunch or dinner

These delicious chips (large French fries) are a delicious accompaniment to a cold roast chicken leg and thigh. The further accompaniment is one large carrot, scraped and chopped, and boiled in salted water for fifteen minutes.

This is an excellent idea for lunch - or even dinner - the day following the cooking of the roasted chicken. The chicken leg and thigh should be removed from the refrigerator around an hour before you choose to eat, in order that they may reach room temperature.