Waste not, want not...

About 2-3 times a month I'll cook a roast chicken.  We buy a two pack of little fryers at Costco and the birds are all natural, hormone free, vegetarian diet only, free range birds.  Really, for the price they can't be beat.  I will usually make the chicken for a Friday night dinner.  It's something a little fancy to celebrate the end of Rob's work week and there's always plenty of left overs to snack on over the weekend.  Even after a weekend of snacking, there's still tons of chicken left to pick from the carcass and not to mention all of the other things we keep at first but usually end up throwing away - skin, wings, insides etc.

Even though he's been gone for over 2 years now, every time I throw chicken away a little part of me thinks about my dad lecturing me about not wasting food because there are starving kids in Ethiopia.  That is why last weekend when planning out our dinners for the week, I decided to go ahead and make chicken soup our Monday night dinner.

I've made chicken soup before but never have I boiled down parts and skin to make my own broth.  I've always made my broth using better than bullion.  (Another homage to my dad since he used chicken base to start his soups when I was growing up.)

I threw the chicken carcass, left over carved meat, and all the other chicken scraps into the pot and let it boil for about 3 hours.  After I decided my broth tasted as "chickeny" as it was going to get I poured it into another pot through a strainer.  I let the strained chicken sit and cool off before I picked the carcass clean and cut up the large pieces of meat.  I returned the broth to the stove and added some more water.  The broth tasted a little lighter than I would have liked so I added a touch of chicken base.  I only used about a teaspoon compared to the many tablespoons I usually use when making soup.  I added the rest of my ingredients to the soup and let it all cook together for another hour. 

It turned out pretty well.  I think my dad would be proud :)  I served it with some home made bread and butter and we had enough left over to freeze about a gallon!