Sunday, August 18, 2013

Getting the most from your Provisions


As you likely know from reading this blog, we tend to blog about projects and things we are doing or refitting on the boat.  The thing is now that we have moved aboard, we don’ just work on it every waking hour (though at times it seems like it). 

This morning before the heat of the day, I was relaxing in the cockpit and decided to do some food preparation for the upcoming week.  Deb and I had made a roasted chicken for dinner earlier in the week.  We had wrapped it up and put it in the fridge.    While living in our house, we would have left it in the fridge and either heated up a bit or tossed it in the trash when it had been in there a “little too long”. 

Rather than do that, we decided to prep all of the chicken for use in other things this week. 
First I stripped all of the skin from the bird (there was still a whole bird short of one breast and one wing).  The next steps was to remove the chicken from the bones.  Breaking off each piece (Breast, thigh, wing, leg) I just pulled the chicken from the bones being careful not to get any of the cartridge from the joints.  Each piece of chicken was pulled into a small ¼” to ½” wide strip of meat.


 All of that went into a Ziploc baggie to be used late.  We can make chicken sandwiches, chicken soup, or even to be seasoned up and rolled into a tortilla for a quick lunch/dinner.   This would be a great meal to do quickly and easily while under way.

To make sure we get the most use out of this, we also broke the carcass into two parts and put it in a pot of water along with the chicken leg and thighbones.  We added, salt, pepper and just a bit of cayenne and heated it up on the stove.

 This will then be strained and cooled, when cool, we will scrape any fat off the top of the stock and put it in a sealed container to use as chicken stock in rice or soup later in the week.

I know this is a departure from our typical blog, but hope that over time these become more about what we are doing and where we are going than just what we are rebuilding J

Until next time, we will be enjoying our upcoming meals.

Bones simmering to make Chicken Stock


May the wind fill your sails, and your keel stay down.