Chicken casserole

Ok, Im not very good at receipes. I usually just throw stuff in and see what happens but I'll try really hard to explain exactly what went in to making todays concoction. I managed to get 5 portions of casserole and 4 portions of soup from one 1.5kg chicken which cost £4 in Tesco. (A portion for me is 2 ladels full give or take a bit).

Ingredients;

1.5 whole chicken
2 medium onions
6 carrots
2 sticks of celery
1 knorr packet of vegetable soup (the ones that do 4 servings)
2-3 chicken stock cubes
50g dried red lentils (the ones that dont need soaking)
50g pearl barley

Method (try my best):

First I cooked the whole chicken in the oven (follow guidelines on packaging) the night before. Save the juices.

Chop 1 onion and 1-2 carrots. Soften them. I steamed mine in my microwave steamer beacuse I dont want to add extra fat but you can fry them in butter until softened. Then add approx 100ml of water and blend until no lumps remain but still fairly thick.

Put empty vegetable soup packet into a jug and make up using 800ml of boiling water (from the kettle is fine). Add 1 stock cube and stir well. Add the soup to the blended carrot and onion. Add herbs and season however you like.

Chop remaining onion, carrots and celery and add to pot. Add lentils and barley to the pot. Remove all meat from the chicken (picking out any bones) and add it all to the pot. (Incase I forgot to mention anything, by now everything except 1-2 stock cubes should be in the pot).

Cook slowly until the onions are translucent and the carrots soft. The longer you leave it, the more the chicken will break down into little shreds, so leave it as long as you like.

From this I took 5 portions and put into pots ready for freezing. (when you reheat it, you may need to add a little extra water/stock because the chicken soaks it up)

Leaving the last portion in the pot top it up with stock using spare stock cubes until you have the desired consistency for your soup (you may want lots of meat and a little juice or to make more portions, not so much meat and more juice). Warm through for a little longer then dish up.

I have added up the nutritional values of the ingredients used and think it works out roughly like this assuming you make 5 casseroles and 4 soups:

Calories: 347
Carbs: 31
Protein: 26

Values are quatered for the soups obviously as you have split one casserole portion into 4 soups.

I hope this all makes sense. I would love for someone to try it and let me know how you got on!