Chicken with Bones

Since my mom is gone, one thing I really miss is sharing my small victories of home economics with her. I hope this blog will allow me the chance to share with someone some of the little things I would have shared with her. Tonight's supper would have been one of those small victories.

I'm nearly 30 years old. I enjoy food, yet I have rarely eaten chicken with bones in it. I am a fairly good cook, yet I had never before tonight cooked a chicken with bones in it.

I have felt for years that a dead chicken should be properly separated from his or her bones at some point well in advance of it appearing in my grocer's freezer. People are paid to perform this task at a chicken processing facility. Who am I to deny them a job?

Maybe I'm a little spoiled, but boneless, skinless chicken breasts have always been a staple of my diet. I never recall my mom cooking a whole chicken; I probably would not have eaten it if she had.

My inexperience with chicken is probably in part due to the prevalence of beef in our diet. As a life-long consumer of home-raised beef, I could write a cookbook entitled "101 Ways to Prepare Ground Beef Without Using Hamburger Helper." Or, I could host a PBS documentary explaining the differences among juicyburgers, sloppy joes, and maid rites. In the field of chicken, however, I have no such expertise. I was, until a few hours ago, a "chicken-with-bones-virgin."

Two things motivated my decision to venture into this culinary field this evening (1) two hungry boys + their hungry dad = exponentially expanding grocery bill, and (2) Jackie Church makes really good chicken noodle soup. As in, best chicken noodle soup ever. She told me how to make it. It involved baking a chicken and then boiling it into submission.

I went grocery shopping this morning. Whole chickens were on sale for $.99/lb. Is that cheap? It seemed cheap to me. I put two in my cart. (I thought I'd be wise to have a spare.)  Today was an accounting day (i.e., the boys were out of the house), so I knew I would likely have a chance to figure out how to convert this birdie from salmonella-ridden germ bucket to tasty, juicy work of poultry art.

I set it out to thaw (it was only partially frozen). Mid-afternoon, I went upstairs to face the bony birdie.

The instructions said something to the effect of "remove the bag of giblets from the bird's cavity." Guess what? Tyson didn't get that memo...my bird had NO GIBLET BAGGIE! That meant I had to pretty much manually dig out a bunch of gross stuff. Funny thing is, I didn't really think it was as gross as I would have guessed. I thought to myself, like I do so often, "if only this were the grossest thing I had to do today..."

So, anyway, long story short, I baked the birdie. It baked faster than anticipated so I didn't get the potatoes and carrots put in quick enough to have everything done at the same time. I just had to remove the veggies and cook a little longer. Not a big deal.

Conclusion: the chicken was a bit dry; the veggies were superb. Apple salad was, of course, delicious. Matt's comment was something like "it tastes as good as one could hope chicken would taste."

I have now completed the second step of "boil bird into humble submission" to make broth and get all the meat off the bones.

Overall, I'll count it as a victory and offer a prayer of Thanksgiving that we live in a world where chickens come in breast only form, individually frozen and ice-glazed.