It's chicken week

It's going to be a very chicken week in the Midwesterner household. I needed to make room in the freezer for a box of ice cream treats - we have our priorities - so I've thawed & baked the two packages of chicken I'd gotten on sale a couple of month ago. Good thing the weather has turned a bit cooler this weekend.

Half - 2 meals for the family - was done as mustard/maple/red wine vinegar glazed, topped with rosemary. Quite nice, served with rice & green beans.

The other half got oven-poached in vegetable broth w/bay leaf, then diced/shredded for use later this week in:
* easy chicken pot pie - made with crescent roll top crust, mixed veg & cream of potato soup & diced chicken filling. (2 meals)
* cold chicken-salad sandwiches
* that chicken empenada Pillsbury bake-off recipe I've been planning to try since February.
* spinach salad - chicken/spinach/mandarin oranges, sliced almonds, with ginger/honey/soy hot dressing.

All of those are subject to change, if you've got a favorite cooked-chicken recipe to recommend. Anyone?

Are you clucking nuts?

MW, I want to thank you for solving a problem for me, one that I should have been able to figure out for myself.

A while back, I found a terrific sale on whole chickens and bought two of them. A whole chicken for us means that we are eating a lot more leftovers than we can stand. I usually cut the chickens up into halves or quarters and freeze them. This time, I cut up one chicken for immediate use & froze half, but didn't get around to the other one, until I realized it was close to the cook it or freeze it date. So I flang the whole chicken into the freezer.

Day before yesterday, I took it out & thawed it. We are having a heat wave and I don't want to heat the kitchen by roasting the thing, so I was going to barbecue it, and figure out what to do with the leftovers. Thanks to your post, it hit me. Poach half of it!

I also has several bags of chicken bones and assorted vegetable trimmings in the freezer, waiting to become broth. So I decided to kill two birds with one stone. (Two birds! Get it? hee, hee, hee. Oh, all right...).

I cut the raw chicken in half. I put the backbone, neck, heart, & gizzard in a big pot with a couple of bay leaves, a cup or so of wine, the cup of chicken broth in a container in the fridge, salt, and water. While that was coming to a boil I cut half of the chicken into quarters and wrapped each loosely in cheesecloth for easy fishing out. I also wrapped up the liver--it will be cat food.

As soon as the pot came to a boil, I added the chicken and reduced heat so it is barely simmering. Based on a lot of Googling, I figure a half hour at a simmer and another 15 or so minutes with the heat off. It's simmering right now. As soon as the chicken can be handled, I'll remove the skin & bones and put them back in the pot.

The great thing about this is that I can store the cooked chicken in some of the broth in the fridge for several days, without worrying about it drying out or anything.

I have one suggestion about the chicken pot pie--instead of crescent rolls, get some Pepperidge Farm frozen patty shells. Serve the chicken & sauce in them. Or, next to the patty shells, you'll find PF puff paste. Cut out circles or squares of that, bake, and put on top of each serving. Or, use individual ramekins or a small casserole. Cut the puff paste more or less the right size ot be a lid. Bake it until not quite as brown as you want. Put hot chicken stuff in the dish, top with the lid & bake at about 425 until the lid is hot & brown.

I want ot consult a cookbook for some other thoughts & get back to you.

On a larger scale - I always buy a big turkey for Christmas.
A week later, the last bits are just coming off to make a turkey pie.
There's never been such a thing as too much turkey - 100% same goes for chicken.

The mustard/maple/red wine sounds delicious.

Some suggestions.
- tomato and mayonaise in your sandwiches. make then into a toastie for something different
- kebabs
- wrap chicken and sweet chilli sauce (or whatever takes your fancy) in a pancakes, top with cheese and put under the grill
- fritters (anything goes in fritters)

My clucking nuts aside, Mw, if you've got a favorite cooked-chicken recipe to recommend. Anyone?

Like billy, I always have lots of cooked turkey left over at Christmas. And I suppose what I do with it might equally apply to chicken, notwithstanding turkey's 'gaminess'.

I make curry sauces and casserole sauces and let them cool. I put the cooked, cold turkey into the respective cold sauces and stir. Then, I freeze them and enjoy my own cook-chilled meals for a while - better than the supermarkets'.

If not too late - a more detailed version of a recipe I gave when Manch Vegas asked about poaching. I made this with a roughly 1kg chicken.

Poach the chicken whole in unseasoned water for about 40 minutes or until the meat is cooked through. Take the chicken out of the water, which you reserve. Take the meat off the chicken and throw the skin and bones back in the water to make a stock for some other use.

Shred the chicken meat.

Make a very thick bechamel with 50g butter and 50g flour and a generous 500ml of whole milk. When its thick stir in the shredded chicken and 100g of grated cheese - I used cheddar as I couldn;t get hold of the Turkish ones listed in the recipe. Add some salt if the cheese is not too salty. When cool, form into croquettes, dip in flour, egg and then breadcrumbs. The croquettes should be about 10cm long and 2 cm in diameter.

Deep-fry until the coating is golden brown.

Serve with a carrot salad. Boil the carrot until just soft. When cool grate it and mix in a few tablespoons of plain yoghurt and some crushed garlic, s&p.

Edited by: Myanmarbound to add croquette dimensions.

I was thinking chicken fajitas or burritos or tacos. You can add seasoning and some water or beer to the cooked chicken and cook it a bit more to cook in the flavoring.

Thanks for suggestions so far, all. hereandtherenz - I've given up on making homemade pancakes, but that idea sounds good for when I have some pre-made ones around. Nutrax - the empenadas are instead of my usual chicken enchiladas. Thanks for the recipe links. Myanmar, the crouquettes sound wonderful and I'll add that idea to my list (although probably would be easier if I owned a deep-fat fryer with temperature controls). Tony - curry sauce/spice will be a good variation - I've got a chickpeas & spinach curry recipe we like, and could just add chicken.

Might be worth consider making oriental style soy/oyster sauce(use dark/thick/salty sweetish soy sauce) spicy chicken casserole.
In a sauce pan add a bit of veg oil and saute the cut pieces of chicken until slightly brown.
Add a pinch of 5 spice powder,chilli flakes,some sliced ginger,shallots,diced garlic,whole shitake/straw mushrooms,spring onion shoots,soy /oyster sauce and a few drips of toasted saseme seed oil.
Add a cup or three of Hsio Shing rice wine/dry sherry and simmer on low heat until cooked.
Thicken gravy with a little bit of corn four diluted in water.
Keeps well in the freezer for later consumption by defrosting/reheating in a microwave.

Oh yeah! Silly me. You could do all kinds of stir fries. Tribolite's is a lot like ones we do except we put a bit of fish sauce in along with green peppers and use sesame oil to saute the chicken. Or you could make chicken fried rice, with simlar seasonings, starting with cold rice and add some egg.

Edited by: sashac001 for more ricey goodness.

I read 5 spice powder and said ooooooh-yeah! I use it often in winter, but somehow it gets pushed to the back of the spice cabinet in summer. The sauce sounds delicious. And a chicken/rice stir fry goes on the list, in place of the cold chicken-salad sandwiches.

I just breakfasted on the last of the leftover Popeye's style Fried Chicken Tenders that we had for a meal for company last Sunday. It was an all stops out blast. Chick Strips Guests Eyes Pop.

I probably gained 10 pounds from this meal and its aftermath.

Wow, Anonimo, truly a feast - I gained 5 pounds just reading that impressive Blog, But surely your energetic days of cooking worked-off any calories? I like the idea of make-your-own, to know/control what's in the coating. Thanks for the idea of using Old Bay seasoning (which I like) - I hope it's similar to your Z. Crab Boil - in place of commercial seasoned salt (which has at least one spice that's not to my taste).

Popeye's spicy white meat chicken is my absolute favorite! And it's really cheap. If it wasn't so fattening I would eat it every other day.

I recently went to a pizza place around here and noticed they didn't have wings. When I asked why he said cause everyone does wings. I told him that if he got Old Bay from MD to make the wings with they would be different and yummy (incidently, I'd be really happy but I didn't mention that). He looked at me like I was nuts. I was thinking that one of these days I would make some Old Bay chicken wings and bring them to him then he'd see what I mean.

But surely your energetic days of cooking worked-off any calories?

Ha ha ha ha. In my dreams!

That Chicken Empanada Cones Pillsbury bake-off recipe was great, with my substitution of a can of black beans and small can of roasted green chiles for the specialty soup (unobtanium around here). And omission of the hot sauce.