poached chicken
A lot of people don’t like to buy whole chickens which makes it hard to shop from your small, local farmers. I get it! Recipes aren’t written for whole birds and breaking them down can be intimidating and time consuming. I’ve broken down a fair amount of chickens and rabbits and I still totally avoid it.
I have a solution to this problem, people! Whole chicken cookery!
Mini Tangent - I find a roasted chicken with root vegetables and chicken gravy to be THE MOST comforting and nourishing meal of all time. Exhibit A (left)
I don’t have a lot of time for cooking, so when I cook I like to make a LOT of food. If when you take the time to cook, you can either freeze portions of the finished meal or versatile ingredient components (like shredded chicken), it makes life easier at a later date when you are busy. Efficiency! We also love to feed our friends and families so big recipes work great for big groups. Of course, this efficiency gain doesn’t work without freezer space, but another great benefit of freezer space is that it makes it easier to buy your proteins in bulk from a local farmer! Win win!
Today I made a whole poached chicken using a Rip Van Winkle Farm roaster chicken which is WAY bigger than the 3.5 pound fryer chickens that are usually available. One time I poached one of these birds to make my version of a tortellini salad - which doesn’t contain tortellini - as a main course for 6 adults and 2 kids in my family. My people are food lovers and true to the midwestern stereotype of loving a big portion. There were leftovers people!!
Poaching chicken is like a super power accessible to everyone. It takes some time, but most of it is totally unattended. You can tailor the herbs and seasonings in the poaching water to fit any recipe, and at the end you have beautiful, moist chicken, delicious broth for sipping or use in a later recipe (freeze it!), and you have the carcass which can be used for making stock at a later date (again, freeze it! This is getting repetitive, you can tell I feel strongly about freezing food). After we make stock, we use all of those bones in the 'dog soup' which is all kinds of food scraps, mainly animal products, that get cooked until the bones totally break down. When a chicken shows up around here it's like the mob getting rid of a body, they are gone without a trace!
Second Tangent: There is a tradition of cooking the bones from a stock twice, the first time becomes stock (obviously) and the second time is called remouillage which is much more romantic than dog soup. I do make remouillage for eventual human consumption if I buy expensive bones like oxtails or shortribs, sorry dogs!
Back to poaching chicken: There is one caveat!! Heed my warning kind reader!! The meat MUST cool IN THE BROTH! If you are tougher than me and you can carve or shred the chicken while it is hot, you must put the meat back in the broth afterward as it cools. Otherwise it will be the driest chicken you have ever eaten and you will think that I’ve intentionally misled you. I would NEVER internally mislead anyone when it comes to food, it is too important! The way I combat this is that I poach the chicken one day, then put the whole pot in the refrigerator to shred the next day. You don’t burn your fingers and you are guaranteed perfectly poached chicken.
Another benefit of whole chicken cookery are these little beauties, the oysters! They are on the back of the chicken above the thighs. I took some placement photos, but it turns out it's really hard to make a partially shredded poached chicken look appealing. Through some cooking magic that I don't understand, these become the most delicious part of a chicken. If you are the person who has to shred the chicken, you get first dibs on the oysters. Around here they get eaten immediately! Was this a third tangent? I need to get it together!
This poached chicken has ginger, garlic, onion, and Bragg’s Aminos in the broth to make a ‘Chinese chicken salad’. I’m not convinced that they eat this salad in China, so take that with a grain of salt, but it is a really nice salad. The benefit of this recipe is that it makes the most delicious broth ever, and I have drunk a lot of broth in my time. It may not be surprising, because they eat everything, but my people are broth drinkers. Any ailment you are suffering from can be improved with broth. True story.
I am going to include a recipe here, but my recipe writing is pretty sparse and I don't really understand how to work the Wordpress recipe situation. It’s incredible how much free recipe content is available on the internet because the work they put into writing those recipes is INTENSE. Number of servings? That totally depends! How the hell would I know how much you want to eat?!?! And conversely, who am I to tell you how much is an acceptable serving? Please ignore the rating, I can't figure out how to remove it!
[recipe title="Asian Poached Chicken" preptime="15 mins" cooktime="2-3 hours" rating="★★★★★" description="A basic poached chicken for asian style salads or noodle dishes"][recipe-ingredients]- 1 - 5 to 6 pound chicken- 4 qt water - chicken should be covered- 2 tablespoons chopped garlic- 2 small onions, quartered- 4 teaspoons kosher salt- 1/2 cup Bragg's Aminos (If using soy sauce, you may want to increase to 3/4 cup)- 1/4 cup minced ginger[/recipe-ingredients][recipe-directions]1. Combine all ingredients in a stock pot over medium heat.2. Summon the patience of the saints to wait for the water to come to a simmer. Resist turning the heat up, boiled chicken will be tough.3. Once the water is simmering, reduce the heat to low and cover.4. Poach for at least 2 hours or until juices run clear when the meat is pierced. Honestly, I usually poach a whole bird for much longer, usually 4 hours, but I looked at other recipes and they were shorter and I wanted to look like I knew what I was doing even though everyone already knows I am making everything up as I go. So I guess what I'm saying here, is if you forget about your chicken it will not be ruined!5. Chill chicken in broth.6. Enjoy![/recipe-directions][/recipe]