Making That Chicken Go Further

If your like me, you have noticed prices have continued to go up while wages and pensions aren't. I love to read from people how they make their dollar go further when making meals for the family.

In our house we have 3 adults living at home. So I am always looking at ways to make the meat we buy go easier and on the weekends we usually don't even eat meat.

One of the shopping tips I use is buying meat on clearance or on special. So I don't plan my meals until I get to the meat department be it the supermarket or the butcher or chicken shop.

I tend to find the chicken shop chains in the shopping centres are the cheapest way to buy chicken.





Yesterday I scored a full size chicken and 4 bonus drumsticks included for $6.00 on clearance, weighing 1.854.

Next thing is to decide what I am to do with the chicken..... roast it all and have cold chicken the following day or casserole the pack and freeze the left overs for a meal for 1 person?



By cutting the chicken as follows,:

• skin and remove the breast meat into 2 cutlets
  
• cut the wings from the frame
• remove the 2 maryland cuts

This then leaves a chicken carcass, which is put into the freezer and will be made into chicken stock.

Chicken breast are frozen in a container and these 2 cuts will feed 2 people for 2 meals. I slice the breasts thinly and coat them in spices and herbs and pan fry them in olive oil. Not as greasey as KFC and a lot cheaper. Served either with vegies or salad from my vegie patch.

We'll eat these on the nights Amy isn't home for a meal.

The rest of the chicken pieces will be used for tonights meal.




Using my crock-pot as today is going to be in the low 30's and not heating up the kitchen later on, by using the oven. I am making apricot chicken with rice as a side dish.

So for $6.00 I got 3 meals and a pot of chicken stock. So meat wise these 3 meals without including the chicken stock, has come to $2.00 per meal.

I hope this has you thinking when you have a bonus chicken and wonder what you want to do with it and how far you want the feed to go.

technorati tags: chicken, casseroles