How to stretch a £2.67 Sainsbury’s chicken - your best tips please

MSE_Jenny

Sainsbury’s is doing a 1.6kg whole chicken for £2.67 for Nectar members, normally £5.35. You’ll need to be logged in with your Nectar card and choose a delivery or collection slot between Wed 22 Oct and Tue 28 Oct to see the deal in your basket - full details in the Supermarket Savings guide. The offer's UK-wide online and in-store.

With this in mind, we'd love to hear your tips on to how to make the most of one chicken - from roast dinner to sandwiches, soups, stocks and more.

How do you stretch a chicken to make it go as far as possible? Do you have clever recipes, thrifty tips or creative ways to use every bit?

Thanks so much,
MSE Jenny

Brie

Is it available if one doesn't do delivery or collection?

MSE_Jenny

Brie said:

Is it available if one doesn't do delivery or collection?

Yes, I confirmed this with the press office and offer's available in-store for the same dates. :-)

PipneyJane

Good question @MSE_Jenny.  Here’s how I routinely do it.  One thing to note is that supermarket chickens are often quite small - the ones I buy from the butcher are half a kilo larger. 

Meal 1:  Roast chicken with stuffing and roasted vegetables (potatoes, sweet potatoes, parsnip).  Since there are only two of us, we’ll have a leg each and leave the rest.

Meal 2:  Chicken Risotto made with one of the breasts.  My recipe feeds 4, so two portions will go into lunchboxes.

Meal 3:. Chicken fajitas made with the meat from the other breast, sliced onions, mushrooms and peppers and served on tortillas.  (I use a BBC recipe.)

Meal 4:  if there is any meat left over, a stir-fry.

And, finally:  Chicken stock with the carcase.

HTH

- Pip.

PS:  there is a rubber chicken thread around here somewhere.

CapricornLass

I do all of those things too. OH spatchcocks the chicken, so I make a stock with the spine and the wing tips as well as another later in the week with the cooked carcass.   I also make a pie with the addition of veg (lots of it!) sauce, and a pastry lid.

singhini

semi-skin and portion the chicken up   
2 drum sticks with skin-on
2 skinless thighs
2 skinless breast
1 skinless carcass with 2 wings)

Meal 1: Two herb coated roast drumsticks with roast potatoes, roast veg and salad
Meal 2 & 3: chicken curry with rice   (2 thigh curry)    [1 thigh per meal]
Meal 4: chow main (dice 1 breast, wok fry with veg and 20p noodles. add soy sauce, seasoning, garlic, ginger)
Meal 5: Chicken pasta (dice breast add oil, garlic dry herbs, mushrooms, water, corn starch to thicken + pasta)
Meal 6, 7, 8: Chicken carcass soup (carcass and wings into a pot with oil, garlic, thyme, stock cubes, potatoes, carrots and 1.5 kettles of water). 

Nelliegrace

I buy a medium chicken at Aldi, minimum weight 1.55kg. They have they have the weight on the pack, so my first tip is to choose the largest, plumpest one available at the price. That can be almost 300g more, an extra meal for two. 

There used to be a bag of giblets, heart, gizzard, liver, and neck, to simmer for gravy and then make a simple pâté or eat the best bits in a fry up or with toast. 

I cook the chicken in a cast iron casserole in the oven. The skin doesn’t brown much, but the meat doesn’t shrink or go dry, and the useful meat juices and fat stay in the covered pan instead of on the oven walls. I strain most of those into a jug to cool and use the fat later to sauté vegetables and the gel part as stock. I make the gravy in the pan using the remaining dripping and water from cooking the steamed vegetables. 

I fill the oven with a fruit cake, a baked pudding and then a batch of small cakes, to make the most of the energy. 

The chicken makes meals for several days, cold with jacket potatoes, salad or sandwiches, hot with a buttery white sauce, in an omelette, a stir fry, then the meat scraps are picked off, not forgetting the underside. The carcass is then simmered to make stock, and the bones picked over again, the last scraps going into a risotto padded out with mushrooms. The last of the dripping and stock go into a large pot of soup. 

The dog gets the remaining skin and cartilage, being very careful not to let her have any bones. 

MOTB_MAY_19

There are usually 2 of us so:
Roast chicken dinner
Sandwiches/wraps
Chicken pie with leeks,sweetcorn etc - usually enough for one for the freezer
Stock from carcase for risotto with chorizo and veg
Rest of stock for soup with veg which needs using up, add pulses to bulk out - usually enough for 3 meals