As noted in a previous post, last week my local supermarket
was selling size 16 whole fresh chickens for $9 (the standard price for a
chicken that size is around $15). The
weight of a size 16 bird is approximately 1.6kg, so you’re paying about $5.60
per kilogram at the sale price, which is a very good deal indeed. Buying a
whole chicken is one of my favourite budgeting hacks, since you can get a lot
of use out of the meat and bones. I can usually make a standard bird last for
six chicken dishes and three or four servings of soup. And I want to share with
you how I do it!
The first thing you need to do of course is cook the
chicken. There are a couple of ways to
do this (slow cooking, barbecuing, beer can method, the list goes on…) but I
think the safest and easiest is to roast the chicken in the oven. Most whole chickens actually come with roasting
instructions on the back of the bag. Let’s
be honest, it’s a pretty simple task, and I don’t think giving you a recipe for
roasted chicken is a good use of our time! However I can give you a couple of
tips to make sure this simple task doesn’t become a hilarious story about that
time you failed at roasting a chicken!
My first tip is, and I have mentioned this before, cook a
couple of things in the oven at once.
This could be a baked fruit dessert, a loaf of bread, or some veggies to
go with the chicken. Heating an entire
oven takes a fair amount of electricity and therefore costs money at the end of
the month, so cook as much as is sensible while the oven is hot. I was asked recently if cooking more than one
thing in the oven greatly affected the cooking time. The short answer is not
really but it depends. The temperature and humidity differences are negligible
and the general rule of thumb for cooking time is “it’s done when it’s done” not
“remove from oven after 33 minutes and 15 seconds”! If you’re making temperature-sensitive dishes
like pastries and soufflés, then it can be an issue but generally speaking, and
for most household cooking, it’s not something you need to worry about.
My second tip is to use a large, deep roasting dish and to
add about a cup of water to the dish before putting the bird in the oven. The
water serves a couple of functions. The
first is to provide a bit of steam and humidity to the oven which will help
prevent the chook from drying out. The
water also helps trap all the goodies and drippings that drain from the chicken
while it cooks (you will be saving the dripping for later).
My final tip is a simple one to prevent drying and
overcooking. If you notice the top of
the chick is browning well before the meat is cooked, take the dish out of the
oven and place a large piece of tin foil over the top of the bird and pop it
back in straight away. This will
encourage the meat to keep cooking but protect the outer meat and skin from the
hot dry heat of the oven.
Once the chicken is cooked you get to the tricky bit! You need to separate it into individual servings for storage. Separating the meat out straight away encourages you to store it correctly, prevents waste, and also discourages you from over-eating! You’ll need seven takeaway-sized containers, plus a freezer bag for the bones.
You want to cut the breast meat from the bone, then remove the legs and wings, after which you can strip all the remaining meat from the bird. I usually do this with the bird still in the roasting pan so that I don’t lose any of the dripping. You should have two containers of breast meat, two of leg, one for wings and one for the shredded meat. Pop the carcass into a freezer bag and then drain the liquid and juices from the roasting pan into the final container. Food safety rules apply here so you need to ensure everything cools as quickly as possible. You can keep two-three servings in the fridge but pop the rest in the freezer to keep.
The breast and spare meat is really easy to use in any recipe that calls for shredded chicken or in sandwiches and salads: I’ll be posting a recipe up tomorrow using shredded chicken. The legs and wings are handy and portable and I would usually serve them with gravy and hot vegetables or take them to work or uni for lunch with a salad.
The roasting liquid is full of fats, minerals and delicious flavour and it freezes really well. Once it has cooled, the liquid separates into a hard layer of fat with a gelatinous layer of stock hiding underneath. You can actually scrape the fat straight off the top and use for cooking, or you can use it with the stock for extra flavour and texture in soups and sauces.
The bones are last but not least. Meat bones are full of nutrients, minerals and gelatine and throwing them away is a complete waste. There are two options with the bones, you can either use the carcass to make a broth straight away, or you can freeze it and wait until you’ve collected the leg and wing bones as well – it depends how patient you are and how much room you have in your freezer! I’ll post up a how-to for bone broth later this week, it’s a versatile liquid that you can drink plain or use as a stock for soups and casseroles, and it’s something everyone should know how to make.
So there you go, how to make one chicken into nine meals! Complementary to this post, I will be uploading some chicken recipes this week to show you just what you can do with all that chicken. If you have any requests, questions or comments, you can reply in the comments section or feel free to email me at aimeerhiannon@gmail.com
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