Chicken - moneysaving or ethical?

Lillibet_2

Freerange organic everytime for me, I figure there is very little health or nutritional beenfit in the battery chickens (or other meat for that matter) & there is no point money savign with your helath as you can't enjoy your savings when you are dead. I would rather skimp on other areas than food quality.

I guess the best advice is not only to buy them reduced, but to s-t-r-e-t-c-h your free range chicken for as many meals as possible, rubber chicken all the way! Perhaps alternating with veggie & fish meals?

Does he eat turkey? Or would he know if it was mixed in to pasta bakes, curries etc? A free range turkey is a more expensive outlay than a chicken but goes much much further & £ for lb usually works out about 1/3 cheaper than chicken.

FemmeAuFoyer

Organic free-range for me. Not cheap, here in France I paid 10euros, about £6.50 for one that weighed 1.4kg. Then I just have cheaper meals to make up for it, normally lentils, beans, etc. The flavour from the stock more than makes up for it. I stretch mine by doing a risotto the next day with some of the stock and meat, a pie with some more meat, etc and the reamaining stock can be used for a soup or flavouring a mixed bean stew

LittleBill

Free Range ...

I used to hunt rabbits to eat ... I understand that may sound 'cruel' to many ... but it gives you a respect for your food .. how it lived .. and died ... and what effort you had to put in to get it ... that you could never get from buying in a plastic box from the supermarket ...
A very similar thing to growing your own vegtables ... it makes you have greater respect for the item ... how you use it and cook it!

... back to the Chickens ... I bought a medium Free Range the other day ... £6.07 ... There are four of us ... two bigs and two smalls ... although one of the smalls eats as much as a big! .... I chopped off the legs and de-boned the meat and made 2 Pasta, Vegetable and Chicken bakes ... then I made stock out of the bones ... and had in risotto ... a highly under-rated dish! .. I still have two large breasts! .... :rotfl: steady on .... to play with!

Buy well ... Eat well ... Use your imagination ... and have Respect ....:o

julbags

Organic chicken here if bought from a supermarket. I can afford to buy it and can't justify it to myself not to. I need to get more organised and make a monthly trip to our local farmers market as the meat available there is fantastic and has been looked after well.

Money~Bunny_3

I can't afford free-range meats, and I know too much about production methods for cheap meat to eat it (Animal cruelty, adulteration of the meat with additives and water, and the over-use of antibiotics). I don't consume a lot of milk or dairy products either because I feel strongly about the conditions of dairy cattle (although this I appreciate is more complex).

Bottom line I manage very well and cheaply without eating meat, and if I did need to buy it (cooking for a friend say) I'd buy free range or organic.:D

EDIT : I am really pleased that so many people support free-range farming! :T

Alfietinker

Free range, absolutely. If you can't afford to buy it then don't eat it as much, have it as a treat and stretch it as much as you can (repeating what has been said).

I used to buy value chicken breasts. Then I got my 3 pet chickens and suddenly realised, watching all their little ways, instincts and preferances, how terribly cruel it is to deny them this.

I can now no longer bring myself to buy anything other than free range which I can't afford to very much. So we just don't eat it as much. Simple really. And have taken to buying whole chickens and making them last and last instead of breasts all the time.

Incidentally I now can't bring myself to order chicken when eating out for the same reasons.

coffeeandfags

I stopped buying chicken after THAT Dispatches programme a couple of years ago. i couldnt afford free-range at the time, so just cut it out of our diets.
Jamies school dinners put an end to all meat-based processed food, so thats been cut out!
There was a "You are what you eat" special on tv about 13 months ago, which banged almost all processed foods on the head for me!
So, i am now almost veggie....cant give up bacon, sorry veggies! However, the health benefits are enormous! i suffered from really bad acne for 17 years....its gone!! I lost a stone in weight in a space of around 3 months, without trying, and its stayed off (also without trying!). My hair and nails also seem a lot better......so there is SOMETHING to be said for cutting out processed and mass produced meat products!

Paige

Organic for me too. I buy from my local farmer and as his fruit and veg are much cheaper than the supermarket I can justify the extra cost spent on organic meat. SinCe I have been buying locally I do not waste the food I used too as the veg keep loads longer. Paige X

Boatie_Bird

It has to be free-range for me - preferably organic too. If I can't afford the good stuff then I don't buy it at all.

DH took me to my favourite restaurant on Friday night as a treat for stopping smoking (day 12 today) and I had chicken as it was free-range. It was very strange to eat chicken in a restaurant, I can't remember the last time I did that!

Free range chicken breast with a pancetta and fennel potato cake. Mmmm my mouth is watering just thinking about it. Is it lunchtime yet?

npsmama

Very interesting topic.
For us it used to be economy, then we tasted organic milk and thought 'Well, if it tastes so different to non organic what on earth are they doing to the non organic stuff??'.
Since then more and more things have been at least free range and preferably organic and as far as possible not from supermarkets.

I bought organic meat from Sainsburys once to see if the difference was worth it - it was tough and yucky! But then I went to my local farmer's market and bought free range meat and wow, it was amazingly tasty and didn't dissolve into water or shrunk when I cooked it.

Since then we only buy free range at least and organic preferably. But we eat far less of it. But then again we really looked forward to it and enjoy it when we do have it instead of wolfing it down mindlessly.

I couldn't buy economy chicken anymore. Look at a supermarket chicken. Then look at a free range chicken at the farmer's market/butchers. They look so different. Supermarket ones are smooth and pink (like the plastic food toys kids play with). Free range are bumpy, plump and greyish.

No contest for me. Well, not now anyway!