Rachael Ray keeps telling me that I can use some chicken that I’ve poached in her recipes. Well, I had no idea what she was talking about, so I googled, searched and solved this mystery.
Here’s how chicken poaching unfolded in my house:
Brian and I had a whole frozen chicken in the freezer. It sat, still packaged, thawing in the kitchen sink on a plate for a looooooong time yesterday. In the evening, I transferred it to the fridge to keep and to finish any necessary thawing.
This morning, I followed the instructions on this site and rinsed and drained my chicken.
I chopped the recommended veggies – celery, onion, carrot, garlic (that a veggie?) – and used the herbs parsley, bay leaf and rosemary (’cause you should know from this post that I have a boat load of rosemary) for the poaching.
Once the water FINALLY came to a boil, I let it simmer for an hour and 30 minutes. The web site said an hour and 20, but I opened the lid a couple times to try and get the air out of the chicken as it was floating to the top (and I wanted it as submerged as possible). I figured the extra time was safer.
Sure enough, the chicken was completely cooked through and falling off the bone. Taking it out of what was now the broth, I let it cool for about a half hour.
I separated the bones (which I’ll probably use later to enhance flavor of the leftover broth), the skin/fat/carrots (which Esther and Samson will appreciate once I liquify that into a gravy) and the chicken.
It looks like we’re all winners in the Spears household – the people, the pets and the budget. Chicken pot pie will most definitely be on the menu this week and most likely a casserole. ‘Cause, ya know, it is Casserole Week on Rachael. *wink*
looks yummy!
and while SOME people may consider garlic a veggie, being Italian, i firmly believe it’s a food group
Yeah, but she didn’t use much … surely that recipe called for more than two cloves. :p
Makes sense!
I need to make pot pie, it’s been forever since I did … and meatloaf. Casserole week, eh, Rebecca O. posted a yummy looking pizza casserole the other day. 🙂
This is great! I might try this some time. As I type this I have a whole chicken in the slow cooker, which is all I ever do with a whole chicken. Maybe next time!
Oh, now I am hungry for chicken casserole with lots of garlic!
Poaching a chicken is what I call “stewing” a chicken. I used to do this a lot, but now buying a whole roasted chicken is so inexpensive at most grocery stores, I confess I buy them already cooked for some of my chicken needs…like chicken salad for instance.
It really does save on the budget when a woman knows how to cook for her family. I can feed the whole house here on as little as 15 bucks some days. Cooking is a lost art. It’s so sad. I work with a lot of youth and they do not know their way around a kitchen. A coworker of mine said that her and her boyfriend spend 40 bucks a day on food. 40 bucks?!?!? Oy! I wrote her out a grocery list and gave her some ideas on saving money and being healthy. She’s preggo too so hopefully this does her and baby good in the long run.