How to Use Every Part of a Grilled Chicken, Down to the Bone

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Like many people on this wonderful web, I’m a bit obsessed with the guys at The Basement Yard. Joey and Frankie are beautiful, perfect himbos. They are wrong not only in many ways, but in a delightful and interesting way. Take, for example, this discussion of broth and how to make it.

Frankie has a wife (and little idea of ​​what “broth” is) so I’m not that worried about him, but Joey is the kind of man that pre-grilled chicken was invented for. (Also, Joey, if you see this: I’d be more than happy to teach you how to make broth and/or broth. You name a bone and I’m there.)

Grilled chicken is the perfect protein for prostitutes, himbos or techbos who want to dive into the world of cooking for themselves. It’s already cooked, so all you have to do is rip the meat off the carcass and add that meat to other foods to make the dish. But the fun doesn’t end there; chicken can give more (in particular, its bones and skin).

To get the most out of grilled chicken, it’s helpful to think about it in stages. The first phase is the fresh phase. The chicken is hot and tempting and is best enjoyed as the star of the plate with a few light side dishes. The second phase is the refrigerator phase – the phase in which you should start chopping and collecting the chicken and then mixing it with other dishes. The last step is the one that most people skip. This is Claire’s favorite phase because it involves eating crispy chicken skins (and making delicious broth).

fresh phase

This can also be called the “honeymoon phase”. The chicken looks great, plump and juicy, and you can’t wait to eat it. All you have to do is choose your favorite part of the chicken and pair it with your side dish. (For me, it’s a leg and thigh.) A simple salad—even from a salad set —is a good choice, as is any roasted or roasted vegetable. If you’re enjoying chicken at a time of the year when food is fresh and plentiful, blanched asparagus or green beans would be my go-to. Mashed potatoes are good too; they can even be cooked in the microwave .

If you want the finishing touch, you can whip up the sauce quickly. Usually, when making a poultry-based sauce, you can use the fat that is formed when poultry is fried. Since this bird was cooked elsewhere, you don’t have those drops. This is fine. As I said earlier , you can make a great sauce with just a few basic ingredients:

To prepare the sauce, you will need 2 tablespoons of fat, 2 tablespoons of flour and 1-2 cups of fragrant broth. (I give a range for broth because everyone is different when it comes to the viscosity of the sauce; some like it thicker than others.) Cook the flour in the fat until it smells good and browns, then whisk in the liquid and cook until it thickens. thick. This ratio, as written, is enough for two people, but you can increase it as needed.

Once your sauce has thickened to your liking, taste it and adjust with salt and pepper (or whatever seasoning you like). If you want to get a little creative, try this four-ingredient onion dip .

Another fun way to eat fresh grilled chicken is to get high and make little wraps. I have already described my process, but it is simple. Buy some chicken and some flatbread, pita or flatbread, then pair it with your favorite seasonings and accessories:

In addition to the chicken, have tortillas or soft pita and a bag of chopped salad-like vegetables, as well as as many sauces as you like. Rising, gather up the little chicken kale wraps and pour the sauce over them. In fact, now is the perfect time to raid your fridge, pull out all the condiments, and come up with new, exciting, cutting-edge sauces that an unstoned brain wouldn’t even be able to comprehend. Add some grated cheese for good measure.

You don’t have to be high to eat chicken this way, but it’s fun.

Refrigerator phase

Here she sits in the refrigerator, all cold and frozen. She had lost her luster—her skin was rubbery and her breasts had lost some juice—but the old woman still had a meal or two left. At this point, you need to take the chicken out of the bag and remove as many pieces of meat as you can. Don’t forget to remove the meat from the back of the chicken and save the bones, fat, and skin (we’ll need these later).

Once you separate the meat from the carcass, it’s time to put it on things. Chicken salad is an obvious choice, as is adding shredded chicken to a green salad. (Don’t know how to make a vinaigrette? Find out here .) It goes well in soup too, especially if you forgot to completely close the grill bag and the meat dried out a bit. You can add chicken to any soup or chili, including instant ramen, or you can buy a small box of broth and a frozen spinach and artichoke sauce and make spinach and artichoke chicken soup .

Currently, my favorite wrestling food is beans in broth with rice and chicken, heavily seasoned with garlic salt and hot sauce. Cook the beans the way you would normally cook them (canned , we can’t be ashamed here), then cook some rice. If cooking rice on the stove seems intimidating, we can tell you about it here , or you can buy microwavable frozen rice from Trader Joe’s (or get a custom rice cooker ). Next, combine the beans and rice in a saucepan, add some stock to thin the mixture if needed, then add the chicken. Season to taste—garlic salt and hot sauce never fail me—and heat until the chicken is warm.

Forget the hassle and buy a rice cooker:

Casseroles are another good option. This cheesy chicken and rice casserole is perfect for any leftover food, not just chicken, and this turkey pasta casserole can be made just as easily with a bird of a different feather. I also love this chicken noodle soup casserole , which is beige food at its best.

Claire’s favorite phase

Before we start cooking the bones, I want to talk to you about chicken skin, one of my favorite skins. Cooked and chilled poultry skin is not attractive. It’s leathery and sticky at the same time, but you can give it a new, sexy life with a little warmth.

Fried pre-cooked chicken skin is actually better than fried raw chicken skin. As with french fries , the skins benefit from the second cooking step :

It has already been cooked once, so much fat has melted and the collagen has melted, so it browns easily and quickly. Plus, it’s usually seasoned already, and these seasonings will concentrate as the skins fry, turning into the perfect chicken chips. Even the gray flabby skin at the bottom of the bird turns into something golden and crispy in a matter of minutes.

If you have an air fryer , it couldn’t be easier. Remove any remaining skin from the cooked bird, being careful not to overlook the unattractive appearance of the skin on the bottom of the bird. Lay it flat on the insert in the fryer basket, then cook at 350℉ until browned and crispy, which can take 5 to 15 minutes, depending on how deep the skin was fried initially, and how much of the with which you are dealing.

If you don’t have an air fryer, that’s fine too. As I mentioned earlier , cracklings can be cooked in a pan:

Peel off the skin and place the pieces in a cold non-stick skillet. Place the skillet on the stove, raise the heat to medium, and let the pieces fry until golden and crispy, flipping once to get both sides (chopsticks work best for this).

Transfer greaves to paper towels, season with salt and/or monosodium glutamate, and eat like chips. (You can also put cracklings on a sandwich or in a salad, but I eat them like chips because chips are not illegal if they are made from meat.)

Finally, there is the question of broth, aka “bone broth”, aka “like a soup made of bones.” Frankie wasn’t entirely accurate when he told Joey to “let the bones and brains soak in water and they’ll turn into broth”, though he didn’t mention the water temperature, which is important, and supplies. and broth are not exactly the same thing.

If you don’t know the difference between broth and broth, you can read about it here , but it comes down to meat. The broth is the liquid in which the meat was boiled; the broth is made by boiling the bones. If you want to make clear, golden chicken broth, you can learn how to make it here , but that’s not what we do with our grilled chicken (because we can’t).

Making broth from boiled chicken bones is very simple. If you have an instant pot, you can toss it in there along with a teaspoon of salt, any vegetable leftovers you have in the freezer, bay leaves , and a little apple cider vinegar to help extract the collagen. Cover it with water and boil it all at high pressure for an hour, then strain the solids – once through a colander to remove large pieces of bone, and then again through a fine sieve lined with cheesecloth to remove finer particles. If you don’t have a slow cooker, you can just toss everything into a large pot, cover with water and boil for a few hours, then strain as above.

Hey man, want an Instant Pot?

Keep stock in the fridge for two to three days, or in the freezer for a few months (I have a whole year with no problems). The next time you buy a grilled chicken, you will already have a supply that you can use to make chicken gravy (in the first step) or chicken soup (in the second step). You may be trapped in an endless cycle of eating chickens and raising livestock, but there are far more vicious cycles, so I wouldn’t worry too much about it.

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