Well, waddya know? A food post!! :-)
Every so often, my local grocery store offers whole roasting
chickens Buy One, Get One Free. I
usually take advantage of these sales.
It makes a nice, plump whole chicken cost less than $1.00 a pound. I cook one fresh and freeze the second one
for future dinners.
For Easter this year, I roasted the frozen one. It was delicious! We had mashed potatoes, green peas and
homemade yeast rolls with it.
The left over half chicken I put in Ziploc bags and refrigerated.
The second half of the chicken became Chicken
Enchiladas.
1 or 2 recipes of Enchilada sauce
(below)
1 – 2 cooked chicken breasts
8 corn tortillas
8 ozs. Queso Fresco
Shredded cheddar
Make enchilada sauce. Allow to cool slightly.
Shred chicken. Add 1 – 2 ladles sauce to chicken and stir.
Heat tortillas in a damp paper
towel in microwave for 30 seconds.
Using smaller rectangular Pyrex
pan, spray liberally with Pam. Spread
bottom of pan with 2 ladles of sauce.
Per tortilla: chicken and a strip of cheese. Roll and place pan. Make up all 8 tortillas. Fold a strip of aluminum foil to serve as a
separator between the servings, if desired.
Cover pan with foil and cook at 375
degrees for 20 minutes. Uncover and
cover with sliced queso fresco and shredded cheddar. Return to oven and bake until cheese is melty
and slightly browned.
Enchilada Sauce
2 T vegetable oil
2 T AP flour
2 T chili powder
½ tsp ground cumin
1 (8-ounce) can tomato sauce
2 C water
1 tsp salt
¼ tsp garlic powder
Heat oil in large 2-quart saucepan;
stir in flour and chili powder; cook for 1 minute.
Add remaining ingredients and bring
to a boil. Simmer for about 10
minutes.
The remaining meat and bones go into the soup pot.
Chicken and Noodles
Bones, skin
and remaining meat from 1 roasted chicken
1 large
onion, cut into pieces
3 – 4
cloves garlic, crushed
6 cups
water
Simmer chicken bones in water with
onions and garlic until it falls apart.
Allow to cool.
Strain out
solids, reserving broth.
Carefully pick through bones and
skin for meat and edible goodies. Throw
away skin, bones and gookie parts. Maybe
give some chicken skin, chopped, to the cat?
Cook 6 to 8 ounces of egg noodles
in the reserved broth. Add 1 T sherry, 1
T soy sauce, 1 tsp savory, 1 tsp oregano and 1/8 tsp ground ginger to
broth. Don’t forget the salt and
pepper.
If you made gravy for the roast
chicken, reheat it in the microwave for about 1 minute to soften. When noodles are done, add meat and gravy to
pan. Cook until everything is hot.
Serve with leftover rolls and
butter. A salad would go nice as well.
I don’t have pictures of any of this as it didn’t occur to
me to blog about this until it was all eaten!
Utilizing a chicken this way appeals to the frugal housewife
in me. I’ve spent so much of my life
never knowing if or when I would have money for food again that I cannot bring
myself to waste perfectly good food.
This way, I get three yummy dinners out of 1 chicken!
You could use baked chicken in either of the above recipes,
too. Or buy a rotisserie chicken from
the grocery store. They’re still only
$5.00. Not too bad a cost for 3 meals
for 2 to 3 people!!
