Just got done cooking a chicken in my clay pot cooker and now I have some questions-

1. After cooking I drained a little over one pint jar full of liquid from the cooker. It looks as if about a third of this is fat. Once the fat is removed what can the remaining liquid be used for? What about the fat? (In the past I have fed all of this to my foster dog, but he left today for what I hope will be his new permanent home).

2. Once I have pulled all of the meat from the carcass is there any more use for the skin and/or bones? Before getting the clay cooker I used to stew a chicken every week or so and saved the broth to use when cooking rice- best rice ever! I wonder whether the skin and bones would be useful for making broth?

3. What can I do with the heart, liver, and gizzards that came with the chicken?

-- Elizabeth (ekfla@aol.com), October 27, 2001

Answers

You can use the broth for many things. Soups, gravy, rice, mashed potatoes, etc... I usually don't use the fat, just throw it. I boil the turkey or chicken carcass but not the skin, and again use the broth for various cooking projects. As for the heart, liver and gizzards, we cook them with the bird and eat them. Or you can cook them and use them in stuffing.

-- Lori (maw1215@yahoo.com), October 27, 2001.

Elizabeth, You use both the bones and skin to make stock. Along with some vegetables and a few peppercorns, they will make a nice stock. The skin will add a fair amount of flavor to the stock but also some fat. Just remove the excess fat when the stock is done. After you remove the fat, just add the liquid from your clay cooker to your stock. Add the heart and gizzards, along with the neck if available, to your stock as well. The liver would make the stock cloudy and give it a bit of a levery taste so I'd find some other use for it.

-- Murray in ME (lkdmfarm@megalink.net), October 27, 2001.

I cook chicken in a clay pot frequently, and when I'm lazy, I simply have people spoon the juices from the bottom over the Basmati rice that I always serve with this dish. When I have more time, I pour the liquid off and degrease it, deglazing with white wine or chicken stock or a combination of both. Either way, there never seems to be enough for pouring over meat/rice and also for using in other ways. Mind you, I pull out all visible fat before cooking.

The skin is eaten because, with the crispiness combined with the spices, it is delicious. The bones I save and put into Ziplock bags in the freezer to make chicken stock later on when I have accumulated enough.

All in all, clay pot cooking is easy and delicious, and Romertopf chicken is one of the absolute favorites of my extended family (who are mostly Middle-Eastern, and therefore eat copious amounts of rice, which may account for the reason the juices don't go all that far).

-- Leslie A. (lesliea@mm2k.net), October 27, 2001.

SOUP! Or stock. You know that already.

I think you've probably got most of the goodness out of the skin already, although you may still be able to get more out of the bones. Experiment and see. Chill the fluid and the fat will set solid on top of it - take it off and do as you will with it. If neccessary, boil again with clean water to clean the fat, then use for soap.

-- Don Armstrong (darmst@yahoo.com.au), October 29, 2001.