The cost of putting food on the table seems to be on the rise again. A few extra pence are being added to items here and there. It all adds up. If you want to spend less, stay healthy and make what you do by go further, here is a great tip for you. Use one chicken to make meals for the entire week with these leftover chicken recipes.
The Meals
There are seven meals you can create with your one chicken. If you are able to, buy a large chicken as you will get more meat from it, allowing you to add more chicken to your meals. The idea is to roast your chicken on Sunday and then use remaining meat and bones for leftover chicken recipes for the rest of the week. You will need other ingredients to go alongside the chicken but you’re able to use the one chicken to help cook meals every day for a week. You’ll be able to make two decent sized portions each day, perfect for couples or students.
- Sunday – Roast Chicken dinner
- Monday – Chicken legs and salad
- Tuesday – Chicken Fried Rice
- Wednesday – Chicken Fajitas
- Thursday – Risotto
- Friday – Chicken Pies
- Saturday – Chicken Soup
How To Do It
Get Roasting
On Sunday, roast your chicken. Use as much seasoning as you like, salt and pepper and a little oil. Maybe some garlic cloves or an orange or lemon stuffed inside the bird. Thyme goes really well with chicken so sprinkle some over the top – if you have fresh in your garden that’s perfect, but dried herbs are good too. For your Sunday roast, use the chicken breasts as your meat. Carve them off and serve with roast potatoes, vegetables, Yorkshire puddings and gravy.
Thinking Ahead
Once you’ve enjoyed your Sunday roast you need to start thinking about the rest of the week. Pile up your plates and let’s get sorting the rest of the roast chicken. Cut off the chicken legs, place aside and once cool, wrap in foil and place in the fridge for Monday. You now need to put the rest of the chicken in a large pan and boil it up in water to make a stock. Whilst you’re making that stock, the rest of the meat on the chicken will loosen so you’ll be able to pull away every ounce of meat available. After boiling away for a good hour, you’ll have a decent stock. Remove the chicken and bones and put on a plate. Pour the stock through a sieve to remove any pieces of chicken you’ve missed. You now need to split the stock.
Stock & Freezers
Looking ahead to your risotto on Wednesday you need three cups of stock for every cup of rice you use. One cup of rice should be plenty for two servings of risotto, so take 3 cups of chicken stock and set it aside in the fridge for Thursday. If you want to freeze it you can do, just get it out of the freezer on the Thursday morning. Click here for some decent risotto recipes that you can create using this stock. Be creative though, you can experience with extra ingredients once you’ve got the basic risotto recipe nailed. The rest of the stock will be the base for our chicken soup. Once you’ve made it, pop it in a Tupperware box or old ice cream tub and freeze it. My full chicken soup recipe is here, which is one of my favourite leftover chicken recipes.
The Good & The Bad
The chicken carcass should now be cool enough to start removing the meat. Be sure to get every piece of meat from the chicken. If you’ve not done this before you’ll be surprised at where you can find meat on a chicken and how much there is, even after you’ve enjoyed a hearty roast dinner! Once you’ve put all the good bits on a separate plate and are satisfied you’ve got everything off the carcass that you can use, bin the carcass.
Friday PieDay
Pop any remaining gravy that you made for the roast dinner with some vegetables and pieces of the chicken. If you have individual pie pots you can easily fill these now and put them in the freezer for Friday. On Friday morning, get them out the freezer, let them defrost and then add a pastry top before popping in the oven to cook. Serve with some chips and peas.
Complete Your Week
The rest of the chicken you need to split into thirds. One third of this is for your chicken fried rice on Tueday. You don’t need a lot of chicken in this as it’s meant to be quite light. Cook some rice, let it cool, fry it up with an egg, throw in some spring onion and peas and cut up pieces of chicken. It’s easy to make and delicious to east. The other two thirds of chicken is for your Wednesday fajitas. Take wraps, salsa, peppers, guacamole, cheese and chicken and you’ve got some delicious fajitas. You could even make enchiladas it’s its a cold day. Use the same ingredients, add plenty of spice and then roll up the wraps before lining up in a baking dish. Cover in a tomato sauce and more cheese and bake. Utterly delicious.
One Chicken, Seven Meals
So that shows you just how a chicken can help you eat all week long. Try different variations of these leftover chicken recipes and get creative with other ideas too. Stretching how far our food can go is one way that we can save money and eat on a budget. So many people are still buying individual and more expensive chicken breasts which just cover that Sunday meal. You might even have a bit left over for a chicken doner kebab after a beer on Friday!
If I take Asda as an example supermarket, just to compare prices, four chicken breast fillets is £3.40 as I write this. A large chicken is on offer at £3, usually £3.28. You can see quite obviously that you get more for you money if you’re the one who roasts the chicken and gets the meat off it yourself. Whether you’re s student looking for leftover chicken recipes so you have more money for the pub, or a family looking to cut down on it’s food spending, these ideas will definitely help you out.
