My grandmother, who grew up during The Great Depression, taught me this trick for saving money on food by stretching out your main ingredient, and now, I'm going to teach it to you. She grew up on a farm, but the threat of foreclosure was always hanging over her family's heads, so they had to sell most of what they raised just to keep level. The result was that NOTHING was ever wasted.
- Place vegetable in 3 - 5 qt slow-cooker and set the chicken on top of the vegetables. If the lid from you slow-cooker does not fit as it should, take some of the vegetables out of the pot and place them in the chicken cavity until the lid will fit over the chicken and remaining vegetables.
- Sprinkle the salt, pepper, and basil.
- Add 1/4 cup water, then cover and cook on LOW for 8 to 10 hours.
- Remove chicken (careful, it'll melt like butter after cooking all day) and set aside.**
- Pour in 5 cups boiling hot water to the soup concentrate that's left after you remove the chicken. Let cool and eat.
I like eating this with freshly baked cornbread. I'll crumble it up directly into the soup. I hope you enjoy this dish as much as I always did.
Now, as for the chicken, remove the meat from the chicken. Separate the white meat for chicken salad, and the dark meat for a tortilla pie with chicken.
I'll be posting the chicken salad recipe tomorrow, March 23rd, and the tortilla pie recipe on Tuesday, March 24th.
As always, eat and enjoy.
*My grandmother's family would render the chicken fat and use it to cook the liver and gizzards, but I don't know how to render fat, and don't really care for organ meats, so I'm telling you to discard these.
**Try wrapping the chicken in cheesecloth. It'll help keep the chicken together when it comes time to remove it from the slow-cooker.
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