HELP ! how much chicken ?

rachbc

even if you use thighs with the bone in the bones are way too big for a child to choke on! Thighs will def be cheaper, tastier and more tender/ moist than breast.

bitsandpieces

Depending how confident you and hubby are with handling meat, have you thought about using whole chickens? Lidl do free range birds for £3.29/kg and cooking them on the bone will give you good flavour and gravy. You could either joint the birds then stew and serve with bones (the bones are fairly big) or poach the birds whole and strip the meat off the bones when cooked. Either would work out cheaper than just breasts and give a great stock, though it is more work.

JulieGeorgiana

If you are slow cooking then don't use chicken breast... it drys out and tastes horrid (I know this from experience).

Chicken thighs and legs taste so much better, and stay moister then slow cooked, if you use it on the bone then you get more flavour... but you have to remove the bone later which as a vegetarian you may not want to do.

ubamother

Unless you're stuck on chicken, have you thought of other meat - my reasoning is that chicken portions are exactly that - one portion per person. In your family you will have, I'm sure, big eaters and little eaters, the big eaters and the small eaters will both get more or less the same size chicken portion and you'll end up with waste. In large-scale catering, scaling up is not done exactly per person - for ten people you cater for ten - for twenty you cater for eighteen, for thirty, twenty-six or thereabout. This really does work - if you think about a family dinner, there is almost always a scrape of mash, a few carrot slices, or a scrap of meat left. These leftovers scale up as well, and make a whole portion fairly quickly.

If you have a pork/beef/lamb casserole type dish with pre-cut cubes or whatever, you will save money using this principle, and also not make the big eaters feel underfed, and the little eaters feel bad about leaving some.

ALIBOBSY

Aldi may be your friend here. Our Aldi regularly have the FR chicken, both whole and breast reduced.
To day I got 4 packs of half priced breast meat. Can't remember the weight, but 2 reasonable sized breasts in each pack for £1.30 ish.

I also look for their FR chickens, normally £5 for a medium sized bird (still cheaper than most of the supermarkets), but again when spotted at 50% off £2.50 is so cheap. Mind you as meat eaters we get the cleaver out and me and OH set up a production line to portion up the whole chickens to freeze. Our local store seems to do reductions on thurs/friday (mostly friday). Plus they reduce stuff with still a day to go (unlike the big 4 supermarkets who only reduce on the day).

FR chicken is FAR more filling and dense than broiler ones. But as they are also lower in fat (by a huge amount in some cases) can dry out more easily. I rarely do chicken in the slow cooker unless it is on the bone. For tea tonight I did a creamy french style chicken in sauce dish. I stir fried the chicken until cooked through then put to one side and made the sauce in the same pan and allowed the sauce and veg to cook down and simmer until tender/thickened then added the chicken back at the end.

So you could put the sauce and veg in the slow cooker and let simmer all day to cook down, then brown off the chicken last minute to add to the sauce. If you can manage whole birds, roast them and strip the meat into the already cooked sauce, this would mean tastier meat and you would get more meat for less cost. Plenty of veg and pulses will make the meat go further. I would do this with rice or cous cous as a fairly easy meal?

good luck whatever you decide.

ali x

JAZ63

Thanks again to you all.
you havent let me down at all with your great ideas

Im thinking I will dio chicken thighs rather than breast ,as Im slowcooking,

I will take on board that I can probably under cater by a couple of portions so that will help.

I cant cook pork, personal reasons (Im not Jewish ) but a good idea.

Also like the idea of doing a shepherds pie with a veggie shepherds pie ,will definitely do that next year (Im in tunnel vision casserole mode )

Thank you all ,hope this thread is helping others

Jaz