A lot of people are discarding large portions that may be "food". For example, as I mentioned in another file, we ought to investigate whether we can extract valuable nutrients from tendons, cartilage, bones, and eggshells. In such a case, we could grind them up and add them to sausages or burgers. In the photos below, I show how I use virtually everything in a chicken.

When I first open the chicken, a lot of juice comes out, but why discard that juice? I save it in a bowl. I will later grind up some portions of the chicken, including the kidney, heart, and whatever else is inside that paper package inside the chicken, and add that ground-up chicken to this juice.		I begin by cutting the chicken in half. I will cut out some the large chunks of breast meat rather than grind it. Chicken wings taste so good when baked, and they have so little meat, that I don't bother trying to grind them. Rather, I cut off the wings and save them for baking.
In this example, I am going to grind up the meat from the chicken legs.		In the photo below, I'm cutting off the cartilage and tendons, and I will grind them up.
The photo below shows all of the meat that I cut off the chicken bones. I will save the large pieces of breast meat, but I will put the rest of the meat in the meat grinder.		The photo below shows a close-up of the cartilage, cut in half. I will put all of that cartilage into the meat grinder, also. Is there something wrong with eating this?
The chicken skin is actually extremely tasty! It can be fried, baked, or put through the meat grinder. In this example, I am cutting off two large pieces of skin. Farther down on this page, here, I show one interesting way of cooking chicken skin.		Although I would normally save the big chunks of white meat, for this example I am going to chop the white meat into cubes just to show you one of the options we have when processing chicken.
And now I am grinding the meat. I am using a very coarse grind rather than a fine grind, and I will grind it only once.		The very dark red colored meat is from the liver, kidneys, heart, and whatever else was in that paper package.
Here is a close-up of the finished, ground meat, showing the liver and kidney and other portions.		And here is a close-up of the meat that has more of the breast and leg meat.

Now that the grinding has been finished, I have:

• a large bowl of ground-up chicken, which is very wet because I mixed in the juice that came out of the chicken package when I first opened it.
• two chicken wings
• two large pieces of skin
• a pile of breast meat that I cut into cubes
• two leg bones, a neck bone, and a chicken skeleton

As the photo below shows, I cracked the chicken leg bones in half with a pair of pliers, and put them into a crockpot with the rest of the skeleton, and cooked it for a while with a small amount of water on the bottom of the crockpot. The result was a small amount of a strong flavored soup with small bits of dark brown bone marrow. I poured that small amount of soup into a larger bowl of soup that I made from ground chicken (I describe the "ground chicken soup" farther down, here, in this article). The dark specks on the chicken meat, in the photo below, are the bits of bone marrow, and for some reason, the bone marrow gave the soup a slightly greenish tint.

So, now I will show you some meals that you can make from this ground chicken, and from larger pieces of chicken.

In the photos above, I cut off two large pieces of chicken skin. I could grind it up and add it to soups, but I prefer to bake it, as in the photos below. Chicken skin is probably contaminated with salmonella, so when you do this, ensure that the skin reaches at least 70°C (160°F), but don't let the temperature get so high that the skin or juice becomes burnt. In the photo below, I'm placing one of the chicken skins on a pure, Teflon sheet, and I will put it in a convection toaster oven.

When you bake a piece of chicken skin at a temperature between 70°C to 90°C (160°F to 190°F), you avoid charring the skin, and you will produce some juice and fat that has a delicious flavor. So, what do you do with that juice and fat?

In the photo below, I put the skin aside in a bowl, and I'm putting raw mushrooms onto the juice and fat.

Next I let the mushrooms cook at a low temperature, as I described in my video (here). Just before I'm ready to take the mushrooms out of the oven, I put the skin on top of the mushrooms in order to give it a final baking, which will make it a bit more crispy.

Then I pour the mushrooms and juice into a bowl, add a bit of salt, and eat it. The two photos below show the entire piece of skin sitting in the bowl, but I did this to make it easier for you to see what the mushrooms and the skin look like after cooking. Normally you would either cut the skin into pieces so that you can eat the soup with a spoon, or you would eat the skin separately, like a piece of jerky.

The mushrooms and the juice have a delicious chicken/mushroom flavor, and the skin is also delicious and tender when baked like this.

When you cook food at a low temperature, you can often cook it in the bowl you want to serve it in. This makes it easy to heat the serving bowl, and at the same time, the bowl collects whatever juice comes out from the meat. A chicken wing can be baked in the bowl you serve it in.

The photo below shows a chicken wing that I baked in the bowl that I am going to eat it in. Notice that almost no juice came out of the chicken wing. When I hold the oven to a temperature of 70°C to 76°C (160°F to 170°F), the skin is capable of holding almost all of the juice inside the meat. The meat remains incredibly juicy.

The skin may appear to be raw and gooey, but it's actually like a tender jerky. You can make it even more crispy by increasing the temperature near the end of the baking cycle, and flipping over the chicken a few times so that both sides get baked more thoroughly.

Here is a close-up of a piece of the meat from that chicken wing. It may appear raw, but it is actually fully cooked - to 70°C (160°F). It is so juicy that you can hardly believe it.

In the photos at the top of this article, I am grinding up a lot of chicken meat, and I also cut some breast meat up into larger cubes. So, what do I do with all of that ground meat? In the photo below, I put a mixture of the ground chicken and some of the diced pieces of chicken breast into a glass bowl, and then I put the cover on to the bowl, and then I placed the bowl in a pan of water that was held to about 70°C (160°F). The chicken meat stuck together and formed a burger, and it also produced a lot of delicious juice. These burgers can be eaten directly from the bowl with a spoon, or they can be broken into pieces to create a soup. 

These burgers can also be placed onto bread, just like beef burgers. In the photo below, I put the juice onto a slice of my freshly baked, freshly ground, whole-grain Kamut bread, which is very absorbent, and then I put the chicken burger on the top. The white lumps in the burger are the cubes of breast meat, and the darker areas of the burger are the ground chicken.

When soaked with juice, this type of burger has to be eaten with a knife and fork, but the juice makes it even more incredibly delicious and juicy.

	These chicken burgers can also be broken into pieces and spread onto pizzas, or sprinkled into salads. In this photo, I broke up one of my chicken burgers, and then put spoonfuls of the chicken meat and the juice onto a piece of bread to make a pizza, and in this case I added some cheese and some tomato sauce.
	In this photo, I put some spoonfuls of the broken chicken burger and its juice onto a piece of bread, and I'm adding the strong-flavored, Greek kalamata olives in order to make a different style of pizza.
	This photo shows a piece of bread with some spoonfuls of the broken chicken burger and its juice onto a piece of bread with on some green chile sauce and cheese, thereby making a different style of pizza.

Don't deny yourself one of the joys of life!

One reason I am showing you these photos is to point out that ground chicken, when cooked at a low temperature, is delicious as either a burger by itself, a soup, a sandwich, or broken up into pieces and used as toppings for pizzas or other foods. However, the main reason I am showing these photos is to point out that when chicken is cooked at a low temperature in a sealed container, all of the juice is retained. Most people cook chicken in such a manner that most of the juice is either lost or burnt, but that juice is incredibly delicious! The juice can be used as a soup, or it can be used to make sandwiches very juicy and moist, or it can be used as a sauce on a pizza. 

I can guarantee you that if you visit me and have one of my chicken burgers, you will never want overcooked, dry chicken again!

	In the first section of this file, I cut the meat off both chicken legs and put it into the grinder. In this example I will cut the meat off a chicken leg in one piece, and make a sandwich from it. Furthermore, I will leave the skin on the meat, and cook the entire piece at a temperature of only 70°C (160°F)
	I'm trying to take all of the meat, ligaments, and tendons, and leave the skin on the meat.

I put the piece of meat in a glass bowl, and then put a cover on it, and then put it into a pan of water that is held to a bit above 70°C (160°F).

The photo below shows the finished, cooked piece of meat. The skin is very soft and juicy, not crispy. I didn't notice until after I had looked at these photos, but there is a piece of feather on the skin.

In this example, I am making a sandwich with my freshly ground, whole-grain Kamut bread, and I am putting some refrigerated olive oil on the top half of the bread.

 
In the photo below, I am adding juice to the top half of that bread that has the olive oil. This whole-grain bread, which has a relatively coarse grain compared to commercial bread, is very absorbent. You would assume that the bread becomes soggy and mushy, but it will remain firm while I eat this sandwich. However, the juice will make the bread very moist, and give it a delicious chicken flavor.

 
The photo below shows the sandwich after I cut it with a knife. The top slice of bread is soaked with juice and olive oil, and the bottom slice is dry and firm. Notice how incredibly juicy the meat is.

Here is a close-up of the sandwich after I have eaten some of it. The bottom slice of bread has become more moist because of the juice that has soaked into it. However, both the top and bottom slices are still holding their shape.

The main reason I wanted to describe this type of sandwich is to point out that when you cook a piece of chicken meat like this, the meat comes out so incredibly tender and juicy that you can leave the skin on, and the skin can also be soft, juicy, and tender, and the bread can be soaked with juice.

By comparison, a conventional chicken sandwich is cooked to a very high temperature, and so the meat beomes dry and hard, so if you were to put a soft, juicy piece of skin on such a sandwich, you would notice the extreme contrast between the dry meat and the soft, juicy skin. Also, when the chicken meat is hard and dry, it is not practical to soak the bread with juice because the meat would be much more firm than the bread, which would likely result in the bread tearing apart as you try to cut or bite the dry, hard meat.

However, when you cook the entire piece of chicken at a lower temperature, the meat and the skin remains soft, tender, and juicy, and this makes it practical to make a sandwich in which the bread is also juicy and tender. You do not notice the soft, gooey skin because the meat is so juicy and tender. The skin adds a delicious flavor to the sandwich. The entire sandwiche is juicy, including both slices of bread.

Of course, since this sandwich is so juicy and tender, it's much easier to eat it with a knife and fork. In order to make it practical to pick up and eat with your fingers, you would have to avoid putting juice on the bread.

Since I cook chicken and eggs at the same temperature, 70°C (160°F), I can mix the two together and cook them together. In the photos below, I show a simple quiche that I made from only three ingredients; namely, some ground chicken meat, an egg, and a pie shell that I made from my freshly ground, whole-grain Kamut bread.

I made a pie shell, although in this example I made it from my freshly ground, whole-grain Kamut bread.		I put yeast in the dough, let it rise a bit, and then I baked it at a low temperature.
I put some ground chicken meat into the pie shell. I had frozen small amounts of the ground chicken meat in individual plastic bags.		I stir the meat up only a bit
I put an egg into the chicken meat.		I break the egg up only slightly to emphasize the fact that you don't have to whip your eggs into an incredibly smooth liquid.
This quiche, or pie, is now ready to be baked. I will put a cover on the bowl, and put the bowl into a container of water that is held to about 70°C (160°F).		The final result shows pieces of chicken, as well as large areas of the egg white and egg yolk.

The conventional quiches are baked in the form of a large pie, and then slices are cut off, and people eat the slices with a fork. However, this type of quiche is so soft, tender, and juicy that it is difficult to cut slices from it. It's much easier to make this type of quiche in small pie shells, and then let everybody eat their own with a spoon. Or, use miniature, bite sized pie shells that you can pick up and eat with your fingers.

However, for this example I removed the quiche from the glass container, and then I cut a wedge from it so that you could see what it looks like. Notice the lumps of chicken and egg, and along the bottom is the bread. Because none of the chicken or egg exceeded a temperature of 70°C (160°F), the eggs remained soft and juicy, and that chicken is incredibly tender and juicy. It's absolutely delicious!

The image above is from a  video that I was planning to make (I may eventually get around to doing it). I am poking the quiche with a toothpick to show you how tender and juicy everything is.

Aside from the pie shell, this quiche is only two ingredients: egg and ground chicken meat. It doesn't need any milk or flour. The only item I would add to this is a bit of salt. For variations, you could mix in, or add as a topping, some pieces of raw or cooked vegetables, cheeses, spices, or sauces.
 

If I had whipped up the egg, the visual effect would be quite different, and it brings up an issue I wonder about. Oxygen causes certain fruits to turn brown, and it seems to destroy raw potatoes, but what does it do to egg whites or egg yolks? Does oxygen change the flavor or the nutritional value of eggs?

 The above quiche recipe can be made without any pie crust, creating what we might describe as a chicken egg casserole. Those two ingredients by themselves are delicious, at least when baked to 70°C (160°F).

All you do is put some ground chicken into a bowl.		And then add an egg.
Once again I only stir the egg slightly to emphasize the fact that eggs don't have to be beated.		The final result shows large amounts of yolk and white parts of the egg.

As with the chicken quiche/pie, I would normally eat this type of casserole directly from the bowl that I cooked it in, but I dumped it out onto a piece of bread so that you could see all of the lumps of egg white, egg yolk, and chicken meat. And perhaps you can sense that the egg white is actually soft and juicy, and so is the egg yolk, and so is the chicken meat.

When ground chicken meat is cooked to no more than 70°C (160°F), it makes a delicious soup all by itself, and nothing else is needed, no spices, no sauces, no cheeses, not even any vegetables! The only item that I find to be somewhat mandatory is a little bit of salt. Every other item that people add to chicken soup becomes an option rather than a necessity.

All you do is put some ground chicken into a bowl. In this example, you can see a few pieces of dark red meat, which may be liver or kidney, and there is a large piece of white meat next to the plastic knife.		Then put a cover over the bowl, put the bowl into a pan of water at 70°C (160°F), and take it out as soon as this chicken soup reaches 70°C.

I didn't add any water to this soup, so all of the juice is pure chicken juice.  If you want to add rice, potatoes, celery, or other items to the soup, it would be better to cook those items to whatever is there appropriate temperature, and then combine them with the soup afterwards.

You can make larger amounts of this type of suit by putting the ground chicken directly into a crockpot, but most crockpot get too hot, so make sure you're watching them and stop cooking as soon as the soup reaches 70°C (160°F). Also, make sure you mix the soup with a spoon at least once to avoid the disaster of cooking the edges while leaving salmonella thriving in the colder center portion!

There are lots of ways of preparing chicken, but I'll stop with one final example to give you some ideas of the possibilities with what we might describe as a chicken soup.

In the photo below, I am putting raw corn kernels, green chili coconut sauce, and some raw, ground chicken in a glass bowl. I then put the cover on the bowl, and place it in the pan of hot water that is held to about 70°C.

The photo below shows the mixture after it has been cooked. The corn is still very juicy and crispy, and the meat is also incredibly juicy, and the green chili coconut sauce is now full of chicken juice. This soup is delicious when eaten just like this.

If the chicken soup is put into a pie shell, or onto bread, or on a pizza crust, we could describe the result is some type of pie, sandwich, or pizza. In the photo below, for example, I am putting it onto a piece of bread that I sliced in half and spread some olive oil on. You can easily see some of the large pieces of breast meat and the smaller pieces of the ground chicken. The small, dark green blotches are from the green chili coconut sauce.

If the bread is absorbent, it will soak up a lot of the liquid, and then it can also be cut into pieces and made into appetizers. Just poke them with a toothpick, pick them up, and enjoy them!

Although this example shows a mixture of chicken, green chili coconut sauce, and corn, keep in mind that I am just trying to show you some of our amazing opportunities. There are an incredible number of sauces and vegetables that taste wonderful with chicken.