Chicken Stock and Dirty Rice

Two Sundays ago my parents had us over for a family dinner and we had a delicious whole chicken.  It was an ‘Amish’ chicken as my dad liked to point out :) (the chicken was from Lancaster, Pennsylvania). After the meal I asked for the carcass to make Chicken Stock and my mom also gave me the gizzards to make Dirty Rice.  I was very excited to be able to use every part of the chicken and to not let anything go to waste.  Both came out delicious and made the house smell amazing!  

Chicken Stock (original recipe from Food.com)

When my mom initially cooked the chicken she stuffed it an onion, a lemon and some rosemary.  I took all of this and included it in my chicken stock.

 Ingredients:

• 1 chicken carcass (with all the goodies it was cooked with and any scraps of meat that were left on it)
• 6ish cups of water
• 1 large onion, quartered
• 1 large carrot, cut into around 12 pieces
• 1 teaspoon garlic, crushed
• 1 teaspoon ginger
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 teaspoon celery seed

Directions:

1. Place chicken carcass in medium sized pot and just cover with water.
2. Bring to boil and then simmer over a low-medium heat for 1 hour.
3. Add onion, carrot, garlic, ginger, bay leaf and celery seeds.  Continue to simmer for 3 hours, stirring once or twice.
4. Allow stock to cool uncovered.
5. Strain into a storage container and place in fridge.  After a couple hours in the fridge spoon grease off top then you can use it immediately or you can store it in the fridge/freezer to use later.

Dirty Rice

Ingredients:

• 3 cups chicken stock
• 1 ½ cups dry long grain rice
• 1 lb ground pork sausage
• Up to ½ 1b chicken gizzards (finely chopped)
• ½ teaspoon oregano
• ½ teaspoon paprika
• ½ teaspoon red pepper (omit if using hot pork sausage)
• 1 green bell pepper, chopped

Directions:

1. Cook rice according to package using chicken stock instead of water.
2. In a frying pan combine and cook sausage, gizzards, oregano, paprika and red pepper until the meat has browned.  Place in a bowl and put aside.
3. Using the dirtied frying pan, cook chopped pepper for about 7 min.
4. Once rice has finished cooking, add the peppers and the bowl of cooked seasoned meat.  Stir and cook for an additional 15 min on medium-low heat.  If rice looks like it is drying out add a splash of chicken stock.