Simple Cooking: Using Up Bread/Challah - Stuffed Chicken

There are people who don't like to throw food out, and all sorts of kitchen and frugal experts suggest freezing or drying out leftover bread and challah to be used later. Two common usages for such bread are bread crumbs and croutons, neither of which I ever need.

Actually, I don't end up with much leftover bread or challah, since I don't buy bread much and only serve small home-baked challot or rolls on Shabbat and Jewish Holidays. Whatever is leftover is used for my husband's sandwiches when he goes to Jerusalem for the day. I supplement the leftovers with uneaten restaurant rolls, when out with friends.

But, davka, this year, close to Passover, when I must rid the house of bread I ended up with almost an entire store-bought white challah in the freezer. It had even been sliced for easy sandwich making, but I really didn't need it. I had decided to use what whole wheat flour was stored to make sandwich rolls, yes, to be blogged about in a couple of days, Gd willing.

Nu? What could I do with all that leftover challah? I decided to stuff a chicken for this Shabbat. I buy whole chickens, which is the most frugal there is here in Israel. Now that I think about it, cutting the chicken into the usual six pieces takes about as long as it took to make the stuffing. Yes, making bread-stuffing for chicken is really easy.

Since I hadn't stuffed a chicken in decades, I googled to make sure I remembered how. Then I just did what seemed right to me. Remember that pretty much everyone has different methods and recipes for various dishes, whether Chocolate Cake, Vegetable Soup or Stuffed Chicken, so you don't have to follow everything exactly. Cooking isn't Mathematics.

 1- Just before preparing your chicken for cooking, put the bread or challah in a bowl and add some water. Usually when I get the chicken ready to be cooked I pull out and throw away all the fatty pieces, but this time I kept them for the stuffing.

2- Squeeze out the water, either by putting the mush in a sieve and pressing down, or just by hand and tipping the bowl.
3- Add seasonings. Egg optional- I remember adding an egg, but since the recipes I saw didn't include it, I decided not to. You can use all fresh seasonings, all powdered or a combination. I used chopped onion then dehydrated dill (because I have a lot in the pantry,) pepper, paprika and garlic.

4- Place the chicken in the baking pan and then stuff it.

 5- Since I ended up with more stuffing than could fit in the chicken, I added it around the chicken. This solved a problem. The recipes had warned that wings and drumsticks could be burnt and should be protected with foil. By covering them with stuffing, they're safe. Also, contrary to all the recipes I saw, I don't tie, pin whatever the chicken together/closed. My chickens don't flap their wings and fly away when being baked/roasted.

6- Optional to top with sliced onions, carrots, peppers or whatever. I recommend using a bit of vegetable oil on top.

7- Start the baking with the chicken covered. Hot oven, just over 200C, about 400F. My oven is turbo, meaning has a fan, and I had the heat from the top. If you don't have a fan, then, I suggest cooking it longer. Depending on the size of your chicken*, it must bake at least an hour like that. When it seemed almost ready, I took off the foil and for the final 20-30 minutes, I baked it uncovered.

*Stage 1 of being fully cooked is when liquid quickly comes out if you pierce the chicken with a fork. When it reached that point, I uncovered it. Then once liquid was coming out on its own, I turned off the oven. There are online sites that give you charts for recommended cooking times according to weight of chicken and whether stuffed or not.