Sunday Cooking: In which I make chicken stock

It turns out I had a LOT of food in my tiny little freezer! There is still plenty of food left so it was another easy week of Sunday cooking. I ended up making building blocks instead of meals, but that's okay: I am getting a little restless to cook so being able to put something together each night has more appeal than usual.

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My husband cooked dinner for us on Saturday, and it was so good I have to share. We usually have one night on the weekend (sometimes two) where the meals are a little richer than usual; this was one of those. But it was so good! (I should know, I bought all the ingredients. LOL.)



He started with some Italian chicken sausage with mozzarella inside, slicing and frying it up in a non-stick pan until it was really crispy. He also added some Penzey's Italian seasoning to deepen the flavors.



I had found this gorgonzola ravioli at my favorite grocery store, and had to give it a try. Hubby asked me to pick up some pesto to go with it, since there isn't any decent fresh basil around right now. This was his presentation when he was done. I had to get the camera!



Oh boy, it was rich, and GOOD. I haven't had pesto in years, but it was perfect for the pasta.  

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This week's building blocks include chicken, spaghetti and butternut squash. All I did to prepare the squash was heat the oven to 350 degrees, carefully cut them in half and place them in roasting pans with bit of water on the bottom. Very fancy.




The spaghetti squash will be a couple of meals with defrosted tomato sauce and some remaining Italian seasoned chicken sausage. My favorite comfort diet meal!

I also made boiled chicken. This was a multi-purpose cooking method; I wanted shredded chicken *and* chicken stock. I cribbed off the chicken noodle soup recipe from a couple of weeks ago, and a standard chicken stock recipe, and added a few seasoning touches.

Here's how I made it:

1. Heated a little olive oil in the bottom of a stockpot.
2. Seasoned the bone-in skinless split chicken breasts with kosher salt, Worchestershire and Penzey's Northwoods seasoning. (Note: this all gave the chicken stock a darker color and a spicier flavor than usual. Since the stock is going in soup anyway,  I didn't care.) See my messy cooking space!



3. Browned the breasts in the stockpot, just enough to sear some of the flavor in.



4. Removed the breasts onto a plate.



5. Added some pieces of carrot, celery and a quartered onion into the pot to let them soak up some of the chicken seasoning flavors on the bottom of the pot. Tossed in some whole peppercorns, a bay leaf, and kosher salt for more seasoning.





6. Added 10-12 cups of water and brought it to a boil. Added the chicken back in and let it simmer for an hour.

7. Removed the chicken from the stock and shredded it up.



8. I wanted to throw the bones back into the pot and let them continue to cook on low for another couple of hours, but they were were all tiny bones and cartilage and it made me nervous. Instead I pulled out a chicken carcass I had been storing in the freezer (for stock! not because I like to store chicken carcasses in my house!) and used that instead.

9. After another hour (I got bored), I strained the stock into a fine mesh strainer. Had to do it couple of times, first to get rid of the larger pieces, then to get rid of the bits of seasoning, etc.

10. Let it cool, then skimmed most of the fat off the top (from the olive oil early on, and a bit of skin leftover on the carcass, I think.) Poured it into a couple of containers. I'll skim the rest of the fat after it's been in the fridge for a day. Whatever doesn't get used this week will go in the freezer for my next soup!



Stock and butternut squash will make a great soup by about Tuesday.

There was another recipe/experiment I tried from Pinterest, just to see: glitter grapes. I didn't read the reviewer's comment about using similar colors of grapes and gelatin in time, so mine didn't look all that great. I used green grapes and sugar-free raspberry. But it tasted great; the bowl of them is already gone. :) I might try green with key lime jello next time. The sweet-tart addition and crunchy coat was  just a different way to eat some standard fruit. Not something I will do regularly, though. I like plain grapes just fine!



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For dinner tonight, I made chicken salad sandwiches.  I am so glad I came up with a chicken salad recipe I like as much as I like this one. It's so easy. Shredded chicken, light mayo, celery, and chopped cranberries. Plus a good amount of Penzey's Wall of Flavor. Yum-O.



Chicken salad should only ever be eaten on toast; it gives you bread that is firm enough against the heavy salad, and the crunch goes well with the celery and eliminates the texture need for chips.

As a final shot, here is what I wore during my cooking spree.




Ha, I did not even know that George had snuck in there until I downloaded these to my camera. He's such a ham.

 How was your weekend?