Since I cooked a whole chicken for Christmas dinner (chicken-in-a-pot), I have cold chicken for sandwiches and salad, and I’m getting another two meals from that same bird from what meat left on the carcass.

Rather than spend lots of time picking bits of meat off the carcass when I needed to be indexing, I popped it into a very low oven (I guess I could have used the rice-cooker/slow-cooker) overnight, since I don’t mind having the oven on in chilly weather to help warm the place up; it reduces other heating.  This morning, what meat was left simply fell off the bones.

The chicken-in-a-pot made some serious broth, some of which went with Christmas  chicken au jus. There were onions and garlic in the pot with the chicken that the recipe called for discarding after straining the broth.  They actually tasted good so I put them back in with the carcass.  I added lentils and barley to that broth, both of which cook in about 30 minutes, some aleppo pepper and a few red chilli flakes, seasoned to taste with sea salt, for a very hearty chicken soup for supper–all with very little effort on my part. (And there another serving of that which is going in the freezer for another chilly day.)

Though this was a pricey chicken, I can’t complain–the flavor was worth it, and I’ve had enough additional meals that tasted so good to make it not such an extravagance as it seemed at first.