Chicken Challenge: Cook the Pantry (meals 6 and 7) Saucy Rice and Chicken Noodle Soup

Over the past week I’ve been creating all sorts of different meals using a 4.5 pound chicken as the starting point and just the stuff from my pantry. I’ve had roast chicken and veggies; barbeque pastry puffs; spicy peach and lime chicken tortillas; chicken and veggie pasta; and chicken basil and mozzarella pizza.

The day I roasted the chicken, I removed all the meat from the carcass as soon as it was cool enough. I separated about half of the meat to freeze and ground it up in the food processor, thus avoiding having to race to finish it before it spoiled in the fridge. These two meals used frozen meat.

First up, Saucy Rice

This was ridiculously easy and very good.  Basically, I cooked some brown Minute Rice, thawed the ground chicken and topped it all with a tangy sauce.

I’ve looked everywhere I can think to look for the source of this recipe, but I can’t seem to locate it. When/if I find it, I’ll link here.

Tangy Dipping Sauce for Fish

Mix together the following ingredients:

1 tbsp water
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp rice vinegar
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp minced basil
1/2 tsp chili powder

Then, beset by a dreadful mid-summer cold, I found myself in dire need of some chicken noodle soup.

And it was delicious. Exactly what the doctor ordered. If, you know, I had been to the doctor.

It was made by combining a can of condensed soup, a half cup of broth and a half cup of water, about a cup of cooked egg noodles, a cup of frozen veggies (cooked in the microwave according to directions) and a cup of frozen ground chicken. (When you grind the chicken before you freeze it, you can just add it, frozen, to the soup. It’ll thaw and heat in the time it takes for everything else to come together.)

I’ve made seven different meals from the chicken (but the pizza could have served 2 and the chicken noodle soup definitely will stretch to 3 or 4 servings) and I have the makings for individual chicken pot pies and spicy chicken dip in the freezer. All in all, not a bad run for one small chicken and  bare pantry!