Roast Chicken – Cook Once, Eat 3 Times
One of my favorite busy weeknight dinners is roast chicken. Most people would not think that something that takes an hour and a half in the oven is a good idea on a busy night, but there is a trick to making this an easy dinner.
Prep the chickens the night before.
When you are cleaning up the dinner dishes, take five minutes and get your chickens clean and seasoned. They can sit in your roasting pan overnight in the refrigerator. The next day, before you run your kids to their activities, take the roasting pan out of the refrigerator and place it in the oven. Turn the oven to 425 and when you get back from practice, dinner is ready to serve.
Did you notice I wrote chickens with an “s”? That is because it only takes a minute more to get two or three chickens prepped and the cooking time doesn’t change, so for very little effort, you have the best part of roast chicken – leftovers. Feed the first chicken to your family for dinner and use the extra chicken for other recipes. I like to put the meat in labeled plastic bags in my freezer and use the bones to make bone broth. The complete recipe can be found in my cookbook.
Watch the video below for a few ideas on what to do with the leftover chicken.