Buffalo Chicken Soup

Okay, so now that I've roasted a chicken and made some awesome chicken broth, what to do with it?  How about turn the world's best Super Bowl dip into a soup!?  Brilliant.

I'm not suggesting you make this soup.  I'm not even suggesting you read this recipe.  This soup has so much hot sauce and so much chicken, you probably can't even handle it.  If you need drama, go watch Gypsy Sisters (omg WHY).

For anyone who's still with me, start here:  just like the buffalo chicken dip, add hot sauce and cream cheese to a saucepan over medium heat and whisk until the cream cheese is melted.

In a large pot, saute onion, pepper and celery.  If you saved some chicken fat from broth-making, this would be a good place to use it.  In fact, this would be a good use for all that celery after you put the leaves and heart in with the stock.

Okay, brace yourself for this one.  If you roasted a chicken, put ALL of the chicken in the stock pot.  Yup.  We're putting an entire chicken into this soup.

Now would be a good time to add the hot sauce / cream cheese mixture.  Oh, and the entire batch of broth that I just made.  You can't even handle this!

Check. This. Soup. Out.

Now, there's a lot going on here already.  I don't really think it needs the same level of cheese that the dip does.  So you can toss a handful of shredded cheese in there if you want, or you can just use it as a garnish.

Serve with a gallon of water, and a few scoops of ice cream for the truly faint-hearted.  Booyah.

Buffalo Chicken Soup
Ingredients:

• 12 oz hot sauce
• 8 oz cream cheese
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1 green pepper, chopped
• 4-5 stalks of celery, chopped
• 3.5 cups of shredded chicken (about one chicken's worth - recipe here)
• Chicken broth (recipe here)
• Cheese and green onions for garnish

Instructions:
1.  Whisk the hot sauce and cream cheese together over low heat until completely combined.
2.  In a soup pot, saute onion, pepper and celery in chicken fat or coconut oil until onions are translucent.
3.  Add chicken and hot sauce / cream cheese mixture to soup pot.  Add chicken broth to desired soup consistency.
4.  Simmer for 20 minutes.  Serve garnished with cheese and green onions.

I don't want to say you can't handle it...but I'm pretty sure you can't handle it.  At any rate, I like how this nicely ties up the last two posts on roasting chickens and making chicken broth.  It's a great way to save money, be more eco-friendly, be healthier (I said healthiER, not healthy...), and use every bit of what you have.

Homemade Chicken Broth

So last week, I covered roasting your own chicken.  Easy peasy, right?  Healthy and delicious.  But we want to maximize our return on this chicken.  This week, I'm going over what you can do with all the bones and leftovers.

Normally I like to separate the meat out while the chicken is still warm, because I like to make a soup du semaine to eat for lunch every day.  If you're pulling meat off as needed, no worries.  Just throw the bones in a freezer bag and keep adding them in as they become available.  I usually get around 3.5 cups of meat from each bird.

Here's what a cleaned carcass looks like.  You can see the wishbone sticking out in front.  I know this is a little morbid, but if you eat chicken I think you should know where it comes from.

Everything goes in a pot.  Bones, neck, organs, skin.  All the leftover juices from roasting it.  Add water until the carcass is nearly covered.

Best practice:  Add an onion, a few carrots, and the celery leaves/heart leftover from cutting up celery.

I usually put it on the stove when I get home from work and let it simmer until near bedtime.  So, around 4 hours.  There should be no discernible carcass left by then.

I use a pair of tongs to pull out the big pieces, then strain what's left.  The broth should have a decent layer of fat on it from the chicken and from the butter.

Let it cool, then refrigerate overnight.  The fat all solidifies on top (you can use that for frying, or you can discard it).  The broth underneath should be the consistency of jello.  This is due to the gelatin in the bones.  It's a little weird at first, but I promise it's a good thing.  This is the mark of a good broth.

This broth can be used in any recipe that calls for chicken broth.  You can dilute it with water or use it straight.  You can add a few big spoonfuls of broth jello to a mug of hot water and drink it.  As I've said before, bone broth is good for you.  Especially if it's coming from free-range and/or grass-fed animals.  Usually, I put all of the broth into my weekly soup for a serious flavor-boosted soup, like this split pea soup.

Rosemary Lemon Roast Chicken

Lately, I've been doing a near-weekly chicken roast.  For a few hours of effort on Sunday, my weekday meals become super simple and really tasty.

Here's my reasoning:  buying chicken in parts means you're buying a chicken that has been processed more.  Roasting a whole chicken is easy and very customizable.  And the best part is that you can use the inedible parts to make a delicious stock.  So when I roast a chicken on Sunday, that means I can either do easy salads topped with chicken during the week, or I have the perfect base for a chicken soup (also very customizable!).  A roast chicken can be done so many ways, with a variety of spices.  In the summer, I recommend beer can chicken on the grill.  This week, rosemary lemon chicken sounded perfect for salads.  If I was going to make chicken tortilla soup with the meat, I'd swap out the rosemary for cilantro and the lemons for limes and follow the recipe below.

I've had a deep longing for fresh herbs lately.  Last week I stuffed a pork tenderloin with last summer's frozen homemade basil pesto.  This week I'm slathering rosemary lemon butter on a chicken, using dried rosemary from last summer's garden.

Zest a lemon or two and chop up some rosemary (you can use either fresh or dried rosemary, but remember that the fresh stuff is more potent).

Add it to some softened butter.  Best practice: leave it on the counter to come up to room temp.  In a pinch you can soften it in the microwave.  Just don't melt it!

I won't blame you if you stop right here, toast some bread, and put a smear of the herbed butter on toast.  Super fragrant!  If the butter is unsalted, add some salt and pepper to the herbed butter.  If you're using salted butter there's no need to add more salt.

Remove any organs / neck that came with the chicken. Wash the (thawed) chicken under cool water, inside and out.  Place it in a baking dish (or 9x13 pan).

You don't have to do this, but I usually do: loosen the skin from the breast and put some of the butter between them.  Or just slather the whole thing with the butter, including the extremities and crevices.  If the bird is cold, the butter will harden up - in this case it is better to do small quantities of butter at a time.

Slice the lemons in half and juice them over the chicken.  Best practice:  use a lemon juicer so you don't have to worry about seeds.  Here's the best shot I got of juicing with my right hand and taking a photo with my left hand...

Stuff the lemon halves and the remaining rosemary into the cavity.

Chop one large or two small onions into large chunks and tuck them in around the chicken, adding one or two chunks to the cavity.  I put about half a cup of water in the pan just to make sure there is plenty of moisture available.

Roast at 400*, roughly 20 min per pound of bird, until a meat thermometer reads at least 170* in the thickest part of the meat.  Check it every hour or half hour, and if (when) it starts to get too brown, cover it loosely in foil.

Rosemary Lemon Roast Chicken
Ingredients:

• 1 whole chicken, thawed
• 2 or 3 lemons*
• 1/2 cup fresh rosemary* (or 1/4 cup dried rosemary leaves.  Use less if rosemary is ground)
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 1 stick of butter (1/2 cup)
• 1 large or 2 small onions

*Can also use cilantro and limes in place of  rosemary and lemons to make a chicken more suitable for chicken tacos, chicken tortilla soup, buffalo chicken dip, etc.

Instructions:
1.  Zest a lemon or two and chop up most of the rosemary.  Add it to some softened butter.  Add the pepper to the butter.  If using unsalted butter, add a pinch of salt.
2.  Remove any organs / neck that came with the chicken. Wash the (thawed) chicken under cool water, inside and out.  Place it in a baking dish (or 9x13 pan).
3.  Slather the chicken with the butter, including the extremities and crevices.  If the bird is cold, the butter will harden up - in this case it is better to do small quantities of butter at a time.
4.  Slice the lemons in half and juice them over the chicken.  Best practice:  use a lemon juicer so you don't have to worry about seeds.  Stuff the lemon halves and the remaining rosemary into the cavity.
5.  Chop one large or two small onions into large chunks and tuck them in around the chicken, adding one or two chunks to the cavity.  I put about half a cup of water in the pan just to make sure there is plenty of moisture available.
6.  Roast at 400*, roughly 20 min per pound of bird, until a meat thermometer reads 170* in the thickest part of the meat.  Check it every hour or half hour, and if (when) it starts to get too brown, cover it loosely in foil.
7.  Remove from oven and let stand for 10 minutes.

Next post will be on what to do with the inedible parts (neck, organs, carcass).   In the meantime, enjoy rosemary lemon chicken on salads, in wraps, or served on its own with a side of rice pilaf or mixed vegetables.

This method - with lemons and rosemary - has been the most tender chicken I've ever done.  Fall-off-the-bone (in fact, one of the wings fell off the bird while roasting!) tender dark meat; one of easiest birds I've ever disassembled. 

Stuffed Pork Tenderloin

I'm not a big fan of eating pork, but this pork tenderloin has just about changed my mind.  Good cuts of pork now include bacon and tenderloin.

Take a pork tenderloin and butterfly it.  Spread it out, cover it with plastic wrap, and use a mallet to pound it out to about 1/2" thick.

Spread about 1/4 c. basil pesto over the tenderloin.

Cover in 1/3 c. plain greek yogurt.

I diced up 1/4 each red and yellow bell peppers to stuff it with.  You can also use things like onions, mushrooms, broccoli, etc.  Be creative.

Roll it up (this might mean just folding it in half, depending on how big it is and how stuffed it is), and set it seam-side down on a foil-lined baking sheet.

Cover in another 1/3 c. plain greek yogurt.  I was trying to use up the rest of the yogurt so mine are extra smothered.

They don't look particularly appetizing yet, but wait til they come out of the oven.  Tenderloins usually come in a two-pack.  The recipe amounts here are for one tenderloin, although I did make both of them at the same time.  Bake on 375*F for 30 - 40 minutes until a meat thermometer reaches 140* in the thickest part of the meat.

Slice into 1.5" thick slices and serve!

The pesto is really yummy and reminds me of spring.  It smells so fresh, even though it's been in my freezer since last fall.  For those of you that froze pesto cubes, I used two cubes for each tenderloin.

A New Month

I am extremely grateful to have an easy post this week – I have been too busy to cook anything interesting, which means I’m definitely too busy to write a blog post about a recipe.

February’s goals and results:

• Shedd Aquarium!  Done and done.  What a great trip!
• Super Bowl!  I love social get-togethers.  Not everyone could make it or stay the whole night but we had a really great time and the food was fantastic. 
• Bottle wine.  For the first time ever, I bottled it all by myself.  I’m ridiculously proud of myself for that.  I also started a new batch.
• Candied citrus peel!  Check out this recipe!  Soooo tasty.
• Taxes.  Did not happen.  The end of February snuck up on me (I thought I had one more weekend!  Since when does February end on the 28^th?  Kidding.  But I ran out of time).

So basically I did all the fun stuff and ignored the boring stuff.  But that puts taxes at the top of March’s list:

• Taxes

In fact, taxes is the ONLY thing on March’s list.  Yeah, that’s happening.  I’ve got a thousand other things to do in March (namely, I’m working on a huge fundraiser and project that is having 3, yes THREE, events in March.  Always on the weekend).  

On a whim, I approached my favorite food blogger about donating a cookbook for my fundraiser’s silent auction.  I expect she gets requests like this all the time and thought I probably wouldn’t hear back.  Within hours, the publishing company was asking for my address and said a signed copy would ship out same-day!  WHAT?!  So that is probably my favorite moment from this month.  I’m still slightly in shock that I have this fabulous cookbook sitting on my shelf, and I’m a little sad that I have to give it away.  But it’s for a great cause, so I’m just happy to have another awesome item to contribute.  

I watched a movie this month in which a child questioned why adults hate birthdays.  The answer made me realize why I had such a hard time with my birthday this year:

Getting old sucks. Most people don't accomplish what they'd hope to and they realize that they are most likely not going to. They end up living these quiet lives of denial, and brushing birthdays under the rug just becomes a part of that.

I feel like time is slipping away and I’m not realizing my dreams.  I have a grand plan and timeline for my life goals, but no changes in the immediate future, so I feel pretty stagnant right now.  As another January ticks by, I feel like living my dream becomes less realistic.  I’m still in the same place I was a year ago.  I wonder if I’m doing enough, but I also wonder if I have time to take on more.  And that was probably my saddest moment this month.

Onward and upward.