If you are a part of the culinary challenged club as I am, and comments from your kids like "Mom, it was great, not as great as Nana Jo's, but still great" makes you feel like you just won the Mother of the Year award, then you may enjoy this tip. Now...if you are a great chef, you may not see the point in this, or if you cook well, this may be a Well Duh moment, but either way, I am still impressed with myself and I want to share it with you.
We are experiencing a beautiful, much anticipated cold front here in South Louisiana and that only means one thing....Gumbo Weather.
I planned on making a gumbo yesterday because of the cold weather so I put my chicken pieces on to boil. A side note....I decided a while back that I would no longer just use chicken breast in my gumbo because no matter what I did, the chicken always seemed to be dry. So, now I am using thighs, wings, and legs. Sometimes I use a whole fryer but I just can't stand to debone a chicken. Anyway....
We had friends invite us to go Trick-or-Treat at a campground last night, so instead of finishing my gumbo, I just took all of the cooked pieces of chicken and put them in a container and stuck them in the fridge. I also took all of the chicken stock and put it in another container and stuck it in the fridge also. Boy am I glad I did.
Here is the tip....
Deboning cold chicken is so much easier than dealing with a hot chicken. The meat just fell off the bones and the cartilage separated so nicely, it was easy to set it aside. Not only that, what little chicken stock that was in the container with the chicken congealed a little so I didn't have chicken liquid running down my arms. Genius! Why didn't I think of this sooner.
This morning, I just started my roux and while it was browning, I cut up my sausage and started chunking it in the pot. It cooked while the roux was browning and the grease from the sausage cooked down with the roux. That saved having to make the roux with unnecessary amounts of oil. Once all the sausage was cut up and in the pot, I started deboning the pieces of chicken. The chicken shreds easily and shreds alot, so if you are a chunky chicken kinda gumbo eater, this may not work for you. I am a little bit of everything in each bite kinda person, so this works for me. And voila!!!! I was done, everything cleaned up easily because chicken juice wasn't dripping everywhere and now the gumbo is slowly simmering away to be eaten at lunch.
Now, this may not be the prettiest gumbo I have ever made, but in my house as long as it is edible and doesn't kill you later on, we are good. That's how I roll.
Happy Halloween from the Spradling's
