Use every part of a chicken!

Posted on 05. Apr, 2010 by Justin in Cooking

I set myself a little challenge last weekend which was to use every part of the chicken including the bones. My rule was that no part of the chicken was allowed to go into the bin which would be my way of measuring my success.

I’m pleased to report that I was successful in my challenge and I’m going to share with you how I did it.

1. Roast the chicken – I roasted a chicken for the usual Sunday dinner and the two of us ate the legs and wings leaving the breast meat un-touched. We kept the bones from the legs and wings which I would use later for a stock.
2. Make a stock – I then removed the breast meat from the bird and put this to one side. I put the bones we had saved along with the rest of the carcass into a large pan. I chopped up a carrot, a leek, an onion and 2 sticks of celery which were added to the pan containing the bones. I then added water, thyme, parsley, rosemary, peppercorns and a bay leaf. This was then simmered for two hour and drained to make a fantastic chicken stock. The bones were then picked out of the pan and put to one side as I had further plans. The remaining vegetables from the stock were put on my compost bin.
3. Cook a curry – I now had the remaining breast meat and my chicken stock. I scoured my cookery books and found a curry recipe to make a Rogan Josh. I used less than half of the chicken stock making two portions and even had some curry left for my lunch the following day.
4. Make a soup – I was left with over half the chicken stock so thought a leek and potato soup would be the perfect way to use this up. I simply fried off a clove of garlic, onions and leeks in a pan. Once soft I added my potatoes and the chicken stock which was left to simmer for 45 minutes. I then passed the whole mix through the food processor to make a great soup for two people.
5. Make bone meal – This is the bit that most people will probably think this is a step too far! Bone meal is a fertiliser widely available in garden centres and is just crushed bones. My thought was, if I use the stuff on my vegetable patch why can’t I make it. So I was still left with the chicken bones from the stock so I cleaned all the fat/meat off the bones using an old toothbrush. I then put the bones on a baking tray in the bottom of the oven and left them there for a week. Obviously I do lots of cooking so at the end of the week my bones were extremely dry as the oven had been used at least three times for 45 minutes each time. I moved the dry bones to the grill and cooked (more like burnt them) until they were black. I had picked up a second hand coffee grinder which I then used to turn the bones into a course powder. I had my very own bone meal ready to use on my vegetable patch.

From this one chicken I produced 7 meals and had some fertiliser to use in the garden.