Roasting Your Chicken, Making Stock... & Beyond

Let's start with a little poll:
1. How often do you cook up a whole chicken?
2. If/when you cook a whole chicken, do you cut it up for braising, BBQ'ing or frying, or do you cook/bake it whole?

Most of our customers seem pretty savvy about knowing how to cook a whole chicken, but I did have one customer ask about how to use the remains of a roasted bird for making chicken soup.

So, I thought I would give a little run down on how I typically prepare one of our homegrown chickens, from removing it from the freezer to eating it in three different meals. The photos are of a chicken I recently cooked for my toddler's 2nd birthday dinner.

DAY 1:
First step is to plan, plan, plan. Good meals are all about thinking ahead, especially when your meat is kept in the freezer. So, at least a week before I plan to roast a chicken, I take it out of the freezer and place it in the fridge. I put the frozen bird breast-side up in a stainless steel bowl, because the packaging will weep chicken juice as it thaws. You don't want that all over your fridge. It takes a good two days to thaw in the fridge, and I'll often flip it over after the first day so the top side of the bird doesn't get dried out as the juices thaw and run downward.

DAY 2:
Next step, brine. I make part of the brine on day two and place the then-thawed chicken in it on day three. My brine recipe is inspired by Martha Stewart's Thanksgiving turkey brine recipe, but the main thing is salt and you can vary the spices however you want. For the smaller chicken, I use 1/3 cup of salt, 6-8 cups water and 4 cups dry white wine, and then some combination of whatever spices I have on hand. I boil up the salt, water, bay leaf and seed-type spices (not the fresh herbs, garlic or onions) and let the concoction simmer a while and then sit until I need it the next day.

DAY 3:
Remove the chicken from the fridge, remembering to contain all that liquid and observe good sanitation with the chicken juices. Thoroughly wash the chicken inside and out, removing the neck and gizzards from the cavity. Once rinsed, I place it breast-side down in my 7qt dutch oven. I pour in all boiled (and cooled!) brine, add the wine, onions, garlic and fresh herbs. I put a plate over the top of the chicken to weight it down and keep it well in the brine. Then, on goes the lid and the whole kit-n-kaboodle goes back into the fridge. At this point, use the neck and gizzards as the first part of your stock. Place them in a small sauce pan, cover with water, throw in a bay leaf, and bring it to a boil. Once it has boiled, turn to simmer and let it bubble gently for an hour or two. Let it cool before pouring it in a glass jar and putting it in the fridge. You'll either use it in your gravy or add it to your stock later.

DAY 4 or 5:
Martha's recipe says to brine the bird for 24 hours. I brined one chicken for 5 days! I don't recommend it, just because there is definitely a limit on how long chicken will stay good in the fridge. In brine, however, the salt acts like a preservative. Our 5-day briner was one of our tastiest roasted chickens. Still, 24-48 hours does the job just fine.

Before you remove the brining chicken from the fridge, get your roasting veggies ready. This is another trick I learned from my mom: put carrots under the chicken to catch the drippings and function as your roasting rack. The carrots come out so tasty and your chicken doesn't get stuck to the bottom of your pan or overcooked, etc. Peel small carrots and leave them whole; peel enough to completely cover the area underneath the chicken. You can also use parsnips for this. I also usually throw in onions and garlic to flavor the drippings that come out of the chicken, since the flavor makes for better gravy.

When your carrots are cleaned and peeled, get your chicken out of the fridge. Remove it from the brine and discard the brine. Rinse the chicken and pat it dry. Let it sit while you chop up fresh thyme, marjoram, parsley -- whatever fresh herbs you like -- to make an herb butter spread. I love butter, so I use a generous 4 tablespoons for one chicken. You need softened butter, not melted. Mix in your herbs, add a tiny bit of salt (your chicken should be well salted from the brine, remember) and whip it up.

Place your carrots on the bottom of your dutch oven, situate the chicken nicely on top, and start spreading your herb butter as evenly as possible all over the chicken. I put it on the outside, but lots of people like to pull up the skin and put the herb spread underneath the skin. I've never done it that way, mostly because I've always had success doing it "my" way, which seems easier to me. One person I know even makes herb-cubes by freezing her herb butter in ice cube trays and then shoves the herb cubes under the chicken skin and inside the chicken for roasting. Another great tip (again, from Mom!) I've used before is to place strips of uncooked bacon over the chicken breast and legs. It adds flavor and keeps the bird from over-browning, but you don't get that awesome, bronzed, crispy skin under the bacon.

Your chicken is now ready to go in the oven! Especially with heritage and homegrown, pasture-raised chickens like ours, I recommend a lower-roasting temp and longer time in the oven. A 6-pound Sojourn Farms chicken takes about three-and-a-half hours in a 325-degree oven. Yep, that's a long time, so again, plan ahead! The great part is that while your chicken is roasting away, you can make all the side dishes, dessert, AND clean up the kitchen! Not bad, right?

So, how do you know when the chicken is done? Here's another tip I learned from my mom: the juices must run clear, not pink or cloudy, and when you grab a drumstick, it should twist and loosen easily. Of course, your cookbooks will tell you to get out a meat thermometer and check that it's at 160-170 degrees. I've never had much luck with that method, but lots of people swear by it.

Another tip from mom: if you think the chicken is browning too quickly but isn't baked through (and you didn't do the bacon trick), cut a triangle of foil to place over the breast and narrow foil strips for the drumsticks.

As the time approaches for the chicken to come out of the oven, get prepared to remove it and the carrots from the dutch oven. I prep my serving dishes either by pouring boiling water into them to warm them, or I'll adjust my oven racks to allow the dishes to fit in while the chicken is still cooking (oh, for the day when I have two ovens!). Make sure your dishes are oven safe if you opt for the latter method! Remove the chicken onto a platter, cover with aluminum foil and let it sit 10-15 minutes while you make the gravy out of the drippings from the bottom of the dutch oven.

I don't want to tell you how to make your gravy as there are so many ways to do it, so many options ingredients-wise, etc. The only main thing I know is to use the drippings from the roasted meat for flavor. To thicken gravy, I will either start with a roux (butter and flour) or add cornstarch later in the process. You can add wine, any kind of spices, mushrooms... the sky is the limit, really. Here is a good, simple (turkey, but it works fine for chicken, too) gravy recipe if you need one (minus the eggs, in my opinion!): Martha Stewart's Giblet Gravy. Use the giblet stock you made earlier as part of the four cups of stock called for.

Well, it's about time to eat the first chicken meal! I like to bring the whole bird to the table and carve it up there. I'm not an expert carver by any means, and you don't need to be. If you know to slice down each side of the breast and cut through the joints, that's enough to do the trick. I will give people whole drumsticks, but pull apart the thighs so that everyone else gets at least a little dark meat (our family prefers the dark meat). I always put a bone bowl on the table to collect the very valuable bones to use for the stock.

Now, you're ready to make stock! As you clean up from dinner, pull the rest of the meat off the chicken into a storage container (we use GlassLock). Put that in the fridge, and put all the chicken bones from dinner and every left over chicken part (including your already-once-used giblets) back into your dutch oven or a large stock pot, if you have one. Add celery, a carrot or two, some mushrooms, onion, garlic and herbs of your choosing. Cover the whole thing with water and bring it to a boil. Let it boil a minute or two, then turn down to a simmer. Cover, and simmer for 12-24 hours. Yes, your entire house will smell like chicken soup for a few days. That's definitely not my favorite part of the process.

DAY 5-6:
The stock is done! Turn it off and let it cool a while with the lid on. When it's no longer too hot to handle, get set up with another large pot and a strainer. Dump the contents of the dutch oven through a strainer into the pot. From there, you can pour it into jars to keep in the fridge about a week or the freezer for a couple months. I use straight-sided jars to freeze stock as it can crack narrow mouth jars as it freezes. If you do plan to freeze it, be sure to leave extra room for it to expand at the top and don't screw down the lid tight. I just barely turn the lid -- just enough to keep it on -- and then tighten them up once all the stock is frozen. Be sure to label and date your stock before you put it in the freezer, too.

Of course, this is also where you can make chicken soup! Chop celery, onion, carrots and any veggies of your choosing. Throw them all in a pre-heated pot and cook them together for a while, then add your stock and season to taste. You can add potatoes, noodles, rice... whatever suits you. I usually cook my noodles separately and place them into individual servings of soup so they stay nicely al dente. Shred or chop some of the remaining roasted chicken and place it in the soup, too.

Homemade chicken stock is great for any recipe that calls for chicken stock. I love it in risotto, or even just in making rice, you can substitute stock for water for a heartier dish.

DAY 6-7:
If you still have chicken remaining, make chicken tacos, enchiladas, even chicken salad or of course, the standby chicken sandwiches. It's the beauty of a roasted chicken -- it usually makes way more than one meal.

Happy cooking!

More reading and resources on chicken stock:
Cheeseslave's How To Make Homemade Chicken Stock
The Hungry Mouse: Homemade Chicken Stock (Great photographs!)
Weston A. Price Foundation: Broth Is Beautiful