The Never Ending Chicken

I spent the weekend in Fire Island Pines. The Pines is an amazing little town on Fire Island in New York. Lots of time is spent cooking for a houseful of people and this past weekend we cooked up a storm. On Friday night I decided to roast a chicken and serve it with sauteed shitake mushrooms and risotto. Most of the food was eaten, but we had some leftover chicken and mushrooms. So of course I put my money where my mouth is and used the leftovers.

The leftover chicken was pulled from the bones and set aside. I then placed the bones into a stock pot with three carrots, three celery stalks, one yellow onion cut in half, a handful of rosemary, a handful of thyme and 1 tbsp of pepper corns. The heat was turned to medium and the pot simmered for about two hours. Once the two hours were up I strained the bones, veggies, pepper corns and herbs from the stockpot, put the stock back on the stovetop and let it simmer for another hour. Salt was added a little at a time until the flavor was just right. I ended up with about 10 cups of stock.

Friends were joining us for dinner that evening so I added about a cup and a half of orzo to the soup and took the leftover chicken and threw that in too. Then I realized I had leftover mushrooms so I tossed those into the pot. We ended up eating 'Chicken Soup with Orzo and Shitake Mushrooms' and loving every minute.

This was defintely the chicken that kept on giving.