I went to Costco and picked up 2 rotisserie chickens. Each one is $4.99, so my total for the chickens was $9.98. These have got to be one of the best deals around. And, I’m happy to shop at Costco.
When I got them home, I immediately removed all of the meat from the bones. This only took me about 15 minutes. I actually weighed everything. You know, for science. I was able to get 4 pounds and almost 7 ounces of meat. That’s a lot.
I divided that chicken into two different portions: one for chicken enchiladas and one for chicken salad.
I pulled most of the white meat for chicken salad: just over 2 pounds.
I diced the chicken, 2 stalks of celery that I got at the farmers market, and some red grapes, then put them in a mixing bowl with about 1.5 to 2 cups of mayo, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper, and dried parsley.
I’m not gonna lie, this is delicious.
Chicken salad will be available for us for lunches or snacks. I really like this on crackers or just plain.
I wrote about making the sour cream chicken enchiladas in this post.
As I was preparing the chicken, I put all of the skin, bones, and drippings left in the pouches the chickens were packaged in, into my Instant Pot, along with all of the veggie scraps in my freezer that I wrote about here.
I filled it up to the top with enough water to cover everything, then set my Instant Pot on the slow cook function. I let everything cook for about 36 hours, before I strained out all of the broth. This broth went into the refrigerator to be used for cooking. I might end up putting some in the freezer for future use as well.
You can tell that a broth is really good when, after it cools, it has a gelatinous texture. That means it’s full of collagen. And since I used items that would otherwise have been thrown away, it means I got all of this for basically free (not counting electricity and water, which is what — pennies?).
Do you make your own broth? What else do you make with rotisserie chicken?
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Frugal Forward 
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