Cheap and Tasty Chicken

I am still cooking, I promise! I just have about a million other things going on too and not all my dishes have been blog-worthy either. Also, I was sick with a sinus infection for about a month and for part of that time I completely lost my sense of smell and taste! So I would cook something and then eat it not knowing if it was any good or not. I sure was grateful when I could actually taste again (although there were some benefits to losing the sense of smell, say, when dirty diapers were invovled.)

Anyway. We had a Mia Maid activity lately where a lady from our ward (Sis. Gurel) who is an awesome cook came and taught the girls how to make some easy dishes all from one chicken. She told us how to take a whole chicken and cook it and shred the meat and use that meat in dinners for the week! I just had to try it at home to save money and because her chicken tasted so dang good!

Here are the instructions she gave us:

Need:
1 whole chicken (without giblets)
1/2 onion
2 stalks celery
1/2 t. each: salt, pepper, poultry seasoning
Any other leftover veggies

Cover chicken with cool water in large pot, add cut up veggies and seasonings. Simmer for about 1 1/2 hours till cooked through, remove chicken to cool and when cool enough to handle, take meat off the bones and place in air tight container to store. Throw the bones and any juices back into the simmering broth and continue to cook at least 30 minutes, strain broth and store in fridge. When cooled, and ready to use you can remove the fat off the top if desired.

This really was pretty easy--you can also do it in a crockpot and cook all day too. We really like this chicken though--it's moist and you can use it in so many recipes. I've also been on a chicken salad sandwich kick the last couple of months (must be a pregnant thing!) and this chicken combined with homemade bread has made some great sandwiches!

I'm still trying to get the broth thing down--I've done it and used the broth in cooking, but the broth seems to gelatinize in the fridge instead of staying liquid like canned broth. So I've tried things like adding more water when cooking the broth and that helped a bit. I'm completely new at this cooking whole chickens and making broth thing and so I guess I'll just learn along the way! Any tips anyone?