Saving money? Buy a chicken!
Posted on 01. Apr, 2010 by Justin in Cooking
If you’re looking to save some money then buy a whole chicken and think smart once you get it home. I don’t bother with buying pre-prepared chicken from the supermarket or butcher. For example, chicken fillets can be really expensive and don’t forget your paying a premium for the convenience. So for a little more effort you could do a few things with your chicken:
- A medium sized chicken will quite happily feed a family of four with a few veggies! This represents good value for money as I buy a free range chicken from my local butcher for £5. I know the chicken is from a local farm and isn’t bloody which is a good sign the animal hasn’t been under too much stress before getting to the abattoir. Including your vegetables you could be looking at paying under £2 per person for free range meat. You will pay more for free range at the supermarket but look out for the “Freedom Food” chickens as these are a great compromise.
- Why not cook a chicken bigger than you planning to eat and use the cold chicken to make sandwiches? This can be used for most meats from beef to pork. A sandwich at a local deli can be between £2 – £4 so if you’re left over chicken gets you 3 sandwiches this is a saving of over £6!
- Learn how to joint or quarter a chicken and then freeze the parts you’re not going to use. I learnt how to do this from the watching a video on YouTube. This might seem difficult but once you get the hang of it you can have the chicken jointed in less than 5 minutes. This will give you two large chicken fillets for stir fries, fajitas or to cook whole and two legs which can be roasted. I tend to roast the wings with my chicken legs but not everyone likes this part of the meat. This method means your cutting out the premium the supermarket is charging for the convenience of pre-prepared chicken.
To cook a whole chicken might seem like it’s going to take a long time as traditional recipe books recommend 20mins per pound. However, I use a method from Delia Smith which is the “Quick Roast Chicken” method and it will allow you to cook a chicken in under an hour.
I hope this post gets you going when it come to chicken as there are lots of other things you can do to make a whole chicken an extremely economical meal.
