This week I managed to create 14 servings from 1 medium sized chicken, and a friend of mine suggested I add it to this blog as it might help other low income people.
My husband and I had a roast chicken dinner (2 servings), 2 different casseroles which lasted 4 meals in total (8 servings) and a bacon and potato soup (4 servings).
Ingredients
1 medium Chicken (often in a 3 for £10 offer at the supermarket or around £4 each)
1 large bag of carrots
1 bag of potatoes
3 parsnips
1 swede
5 onions
dried herbs like thyme, parsley, rosemary
garlic (I use the Lazy Garlic as I find it works out cheaper than fresh)
100g suet
Self raising flour (about 300g)
Chicken gravy granules
2 rashers of Bacon
Day 1 - Roast Chicken
Prepare the chicken for roasting by sprinkling some seasoning on the skin, what ever flavours your prefer. Roast in the oven at 180C for around 2 hours (check the packaging of your chicken, as this depends on the weight).
Prepare potatoes, carrots, and 1 parsnip for roasting. I don't peel the potatoes as there are lots of nutrients in the skins. I also don't bother peeling the carrots unless they look a bit manky.
Put these veg in a roasting tin that has some oil in the bottom.
Peel and quarter 1 onion and add this to the roasting tin as well, roasted onion is lovely. Roll the veg around so that they are all coated in the oil.
45 minute before the chicken is cooked put the veg into the oven, this means they should be cooked at the same time.
Make any other bits you want for your roast dinner i.e. stuffing, yorkshire puddings etc.
When the chicken is cooked, check if the potatoes are fully cooked by stabbing them with a fork. If they aren't, leave them in the over for another 15-30 min. You can cover the chicken with foil to keep it warm, this is also supposed to make the chicken juicier. Just before you are ready to serve up, make the gravy.
If two people are eating this meal, you get one chicken breast each, if you eat more, you wont have enough left for the other meals, but the amount of veg you've done should make this into a filling meal.
Day 2 - Prepare stock and then casseroles and soup.
Stock
Peel and quarter 1 onion and put it into a large (the largest you have) pan, this is for the stock.
Now you need to remove the meat from the chicken carcase, this is a bit messy, but very easy. First pull the legs off, remove the skin and put this in the pan for stock, remove the meat from the legs using your fingers, knives are useless for this job. Put the chicken meat onto a plate, and the bones and stuff into the pan. Next move onto the wings, there isn't much meat on these, but there is some, get as much of it as you can. Now you are left with the body of the chicken, there will probably be some meat left in the breast area, there are also bits and pieces on the back, again pick off and set aside as much as you can. Break the body in half, this helps it fit into the pan.
You should have a plate of chicken meat, and a pan with all the bones and skin. Cover the contents of the pan with boiling water, and put a lid on it. Simmer gently, I use number 2 on my electric hob, for about 2 - 3 hours. Then turn the heat of and leave it to cool.
Once it's cool, drain the stock into another large pan or dish. Once it is fully drained, bin the chicken bones. You now have home-made chicken stock. This will be used in the 2 casseroles and the soup, you could prepare them all today if you wanted to, or prepare one today and refrigerate the stock, and half the chicken for up to 4 days (rough estimate here), or freeze them for longer storage.
Casseroles x 2
If you have 2 large casserole dishes you can make them both at the same time which will save electricity, if not save half the chicken and a third of the stock, in the fridge/freezer and make the second casserole another day.
For each casserole, put half the chicken into a casserole dish, add diced potatoes, carrots, parsnip, onion and swede (if you make sure the veg is all roughly the same size it will all cook at the same speed). Add some herbs and seasoning, what ever you want. Then add a third of the stock to the casserole dish, if this doesn't cover the meat and veg, just add some water.
Cook the casserole in the over for 45 min at 200C.
Then use the suet and flour to make dumplings, tasty, filling, and cheap. Follow the directions on the box of suet, this is very easy. Put the dumplings on top of the casserole and cook for another 20 - 25 minutes at 180C.
Each casserole should provide 4 servings, if you want more food just cook some extra veg to go on the side, I'd recommend some cabbage, lightly stir-fried for about 5 min.
The left overs can be refrigerated or frozen.
Soup
Chop up two rashers of bacon, and dice 1 onion, put these and the crushed garlic into a large pan and fry for a few minutes, if they start to stick add a spoonful of stock to the pan.
Dice potatoes, carrots, and any parsnip/swede you have left into small ~1cm cubes and add to the pan. You can also add any other veg you have like leeks or cabbage, but wait until the last 15 minutes of cooking time for this.
Add the stock (a third of the total amount you made) to the pan, if this doesn't cover the veg, add some water. Add any seasoning you want, I added a few chili flakes to mine. Bring to the boil, them simmer gently for about 30 min until the veg is tender.
This should make at least 4 servings, it can make more if you add a bit more bacon, and more veg. Leftovers of this can also be refrigerated or frozen.
In total this cost me less than £10, for a family of 4 you will have less chicken left after the roast dinner, so will only be able to make 1 casserole, but you will still be able to make the stock and soup, perhaps add more bacon and veg to the soup and use two thirds of the stock for the soup, so that it makes 8 servings.
Enjoy.
