Oh dear, I can’t believe that I almost forgot to mention one of the most important things about making a chicken dinner…never throw away the bones!

This is probably the most hippie thing that I do in cooking. It’s the culinary equivalent of wearing Birkenstocks and hugging trees. It has gotten me teased by friends for years for having a freezer that came out of Jeffery Dahmer’s place. However, it also results in really tasty soup.

Whenever I make a whole chicken we always have people over to share it with us that night. The next day I pick the remaining meat from the bones and use it to make chicken salad. Then I take the carcass (it’s less gross than it sounds), pop it into a labeled zip lock bag and stick it in the freezer. Whenever you get three of a kind in the freezer you can dump them into a pot, cover them with water and boil them for several hours to make a fantastic homemade chicken stock.