Cooked Chicken & Chicken stock

Whole chicken is so versatile and you can cook it in so many ways. In the UK we mainly roast whole chicken in the oven. My (Sara’s) mum on the other hand, would always cook whole chicken in water with carrot, onion, salt and pepper on the stove.
This way of cooking makes the chicken really juicy and tender, ideal if you then want to use the chicken meat for other dishes like salads, risotto, stews etc
You can also freeze the chicken in portion sizes and get it out as and when you need it.
Another really good thing about cooking your chicken this way is that you get a lovely natural home made stock at the end of it. This stock can in turn be used for making soups, broths, stews, risottos etc.

So today we’re cooking the chicken and making the chicken stock. Later in the week we will be making a risotto using the chicken stock – so stay tuned.

I think you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to cook a chicken this way and to get lots of lovely stock at the end of it. It should literally take no more then 5-10 minutes to prepare and then it will cook away on the stove until ready.

We’re swapping the onion for the spring onions (green bit only) and we’ve added a parsnip to add extra flavour to the stock.

Ingredients

1 whole chicken (1-1 ¼ kg)
1 ½ -2 litre water
2-3 teaspoons seasalt
2-3 tbs roughy chopped spring onion (green part only)
1 carrot cut in chunky bits
1 parsnip cut in chunky bit
8-10 white pepper corns (or mixed pepper corns)
(optional: If you have a bay leave and/or some parsley stalks you can throw these in for extra flavour but it’s not a necessity)