Chicken, Chicken, Chicken

I'm going to take a page from my friend Sarah's Blog and post about my Chicken from last night. I found a recipe for a whole chicken in the crock pot then using the leftover's made chicken broth. I found the recipe here.

So I seasoned the entire chicken with Garlic, Salt and Pepper. I put some butter under the skin and put it into the crock pot. No broth or anything in the crock pot with it. To me it seemed so wrong but I did it anyways. I put it on low and left it for 5 hours. My chicken was 3.5 pounds. 5 hours later, I go to take it out of the crock pot and... lol it totally fall apart. As in it came out in chunks. The kids thought I ruined it. It WAS funny getting it out of the pot! I really wish I would have taken a picture but I didn't. It was so tender I had to scoop it out onto a cookie sheet. After dinner, I separated the meat from the bones and tonight's dinner is going to be BBQ chicken in the crock pot!

To do the broth... I left all the juice in the crock pot and put all the bones, and skin back in there. Then I filled it up with plain tap water.

Then I put the crock pot on low all night while we slept. In the morning I shut it off and let it sit for a few hours to cool off. I have a mesh strainer I used to scoop out what I could and toss it. Here's my set up:

See the metal strainer? It is perfect to get all the tiny bits out of the broth. I found out that the regular muffin cups are exactly 1/3 Cup, and the mini cups are 2 Tablespoons. So that is how I am going to measurement them. Now, I used the 1 Cup as a scoop and poured it into the strainer, works perfect so my hands don't get all messy. Then I used a ladle to pour into the muffin tins. 

I'm now letting them cool on the counter for a while because they STILL are super hot! Then I'll freeze them. When they are frozen, I'll use my Food Saver to seal them up. They will keep with this method for months! If you don't have a food saver you really need one! This seals food so much better than zip lock and food keeps so much better. Not to mention things are flatter making it easier to put more stuff in the freezer! This is the one we got and you can get baggies for it at Menards!

I never actually used chicken broth as a seasoning to cook with because I would only need a small amount then the whole can would be wasted, so I am very excited to use these small cubes to cook with! The website says there is going to be a layer of fat on the top and to scrape it off, but mine is still cooling so I'll let you know later, that is IF I can edit this posting.

Let me know what you think. Have you made broth before? How did it turn out?

Edited: 

 This is what my cups looked like once they had time to cool. 3 I left the grease on and 3 I took the grease out so you can see the difference.

Then they go to the freezer. Here's what the finished product looks like:

 

So, let's see how much I have saved... I ended up with a total of 9 cups of broth.  Total of 72 Ounces. I looked on line and 32 ounces of Swanson Chicken Broth costs $2.38. SO..... Looks like I got a round about savings of 5-6 bucks! Not too shabby!