Three meals, one chicken.

I'm a big fan of chicken.  It's possibly the perfect meat. Not too fatty, but still delightfully greasy in your mouth, white meat, dark meat, just the right size for working with.  Honestly, I don't get all the Thanksgiving hype over turkey.  You need a lot more equipment and time, and it's probably still going to come out dry.  So, as promised, how to make the most from one humble chicken.

First off, I like to wait until Albertsons has their amazing chicken sale.  $0.79/lb. for a whole fryer, meaning you can buy a whole chicken for around $3.50.  That even beats the $5 or $6 roasted chicken you can find starting around 4pm.

Open up the raw chicken, take out the giblets, trim the neck and tail down if they bother you, set all that aside.  Then rub the chicken down with your favorite seasoning-salt, pepper, Lowry's, garlic, truffle oil, poultry seasoning, whatever suits your fancy.  You can even get up between the skin and the meat so all the flavor isn't lost on the skin.  Now, if you like really crispy skin, leaving the chicken uncovered in the refrigerator for one or two days will really help with that.

Then I like to roast the whole bird, starting face down in a 350 degree oven.  I do it breast-down because all the juices run to the white meat and help baste it, but if your goal is crispy skin, you might want to leave her breast-up.  Roast until a meat thermometer reads 165 degrees.  Start checking around 40 minutes, depending on the size of the bird.  Let it rest for a few minutes so the juices don't all run out.

Now what I would do is carve up the bird and save either the breasts or the the thighs for meal two.  Serve it up with mashed potatoes or rice and a side of vegetables.  Save the carcass after you cut the meat off and throw it into the freezer in a plastic bag.

For meal two, you cut your breast or thigh meat into strips.  Toss it with some pasta alfredo.  Or, you can put it into tacos.

For meal three, I cover the carcass with warm water and bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer for an hour.  Then I pull it out and scrape the leftover bits of meat off; this generally yields about a cup of meat.  I put the meat back in the pot and put in about two cups of mirepoix (two parts sauteed onion and one part each sauteed carrots and celery) and two or three cloves of garlic, minced.  From here, you can either add egg noodles or homemade noodles (saving a little bit more money) or go on to make chicken and dumplings.  (You'll also want to adjust your spices accordingly.  Last time, I put in a little turmeric and cayenne pepper as well as salt, pepper, paprika, and poultry seasoning for an Indian flair.)

For the dumplings, you just take 1 or 2 cups of flour, 3/4-1 1/2 t. salt, 1-2 t. thyme, and enough water to make it sticky.  Work the dough together in a bowl so it's just barely sticky, then add more flour, so it's not sticky.  Then, tear off large or small chunks of dough and carefully drop them into your hot broth.  Then cook up in 8-10 minutes.  I like my chicken and dumplings thick, so I make a very thin paste of flour and water and whisk it in, that way all the vegetables and dumplings are suspended, rather than sinking to the bottom.

So, what ideas do you guys have to stretch a chicken into multiple meals?