Stocking up on chicken

In order to be as economical as possible, I've taken to buying whole chickens to boil for meat and stock. I keep a large plastic container in the freezer where I store carrot, onion, and celery tops and ends as I come by them. On cooking day, rinse the chicken and remove the insides (may come in a little package, may not). Place chicken in a large pot and cover with water. Dump in scraps directly from the freezer and boil for 20 minutes. Strain stock and freeze for later. Cool and chop up chicken meat to use or freeze.

You can see all these veggie scraps from my freezer stash. It doesn't matter if the carrots and onions have the hairy bits on them - they won't get eaten, but they still will help flavor the stock.

I freeze the stock in these plastic containers. Once frozen, I run hot water over them to release from the container and store the frozen blocks in a jumbo freezer bag in the deep freeze. I like to freeze in two and one cup portions. I also have frozen stock in ice cube trays for even smaller two tbsp portions.

This chicken yielded 14 cups of stock,

and about four cups of cooked chicken.