17 meals, 5 dishes, 1 chicken, 0 mayonnaise

Cheap, Healthy, Good is one of my favorite recipe blogs. Today, I noticed a challenge post of theirs from last year that breaks down the details of an inscrutable magic trick I never managed to successfully learn from my elders: Getting a couple weeks worth of food out of one roasted chicken. The rules:

• The budget - for EVERYTHING - was $25.
• I had to use as much food already in my pantry as possible.
• Each meal had to feed at least two people.
• Bonus points for leftovers.
• The chicken had to be used up within a few days, so it wouldn't go bad.
• The meals had to have reasonable variety, preferably from a range of cuisines. It couldn't be Chicken with Spaghetti on Day 1, then Chicken with Penne on Day 2.
• The meals had to have very little added fat, since the leftover chicken would provide most of it.

The results look so fabulous that I think I'm going to give this a shot next week. How about you? How far have you stretched a chicken?

Image courtesy Flickr user thebittenworld.com, via CC

• [sam1148]

  Left over roasted Chicken bits with skin.
  Coat with Hosin Sauce..skin side up. Broil to crisp up skin.

  Tortillas..brush with sesame oil and place ‘face to face’. Cover with wet paper towel and nuke 15 secs or so.

  Serve with chopped up green onions..in the wraps, and maybe some chopped carrot or cabbage.

  And more Hosin sauce for the wraps.

  (also works well with supermarket roasted chicken).

• [Jamie Sue]

  Roast Chicken, Barbecue Chicken, Chicken and Rice, then Chicken Soup is about as far as I can get that sucker to stretch.

• [apoxia]

  It’s certainly commendable, and the food looks great! I imagine that for many Americans, however, each dish would have significantly less meat it in then what they are used to consuming at an average meal (and calories too I suspect). I think eating less meat is noble (I try to do it myself), but will it get public buy-in?

  I suppose that’s not the point though. I imagine the people interested in that food blog are already looking at ways to reduce consumption of expensive parts of meals (ie. meat).

  I’ve read much about people losing the skills of cooking, and I mean cooking real food, but using the microwave to heat a frozen ready-to-eat. What would have come so naturally to generations older than me is now largely lost knowledge (at least in my generation).

  I sew clothes – really well actually. I sew a lot of shirts and pants for my bf. I often get looks of shocked amazement when I state that I made something he or I is wearing. A few generations back most mothers sewed clothes for their children. Once again, the knowledge is being lost.

  • [Jamie Sue]

    I’m really struggling to wrap my head around sewing, so kudos to you!!! I wouldn’t DARE tackle dress clothes as I can barley manage a skirt (drat waistbands!) I would love to be able to make stuff I could actually wear outside.

    • [apoxia]

      Luckily I learnt to sew gradually starting from childhood. In that sense it was kind of like learning a language (slower of course), which means I can’t remember much of it actually happening. I have said a few times to people that learning to sew from scratch as an adult would be something I would likely not find the time to do. Thank goodness for my mother’s sewing and for social learning theory!

• [jaytkay]

  Yowza! I thought I was doing good by roasting a chicken, making stock and eating leftovers for a couple of days.

• [Antinous / Moderator]

  I’d just as soon sit down with a knife, a fork and a glass of wine and eat it in one sitting, thanks.

  • [freshacconci]

    For good or bad, I can eat a disturbing quantity of roast chicken. A meal of just a whole chicken sounds mighty appetizing.

• [batu b]

  FWIW, that’s not a couple weeks worth of meals, it’s a work week’s worth (say that 10 times fast!). I regularly stretch a chicken over about 4 days between 2 of us. Whole chicken is fantastic. I recommend “El Pato” chilie sauce (green or yellow can) for making a nice tinga-style chicken for tacos.

  • [Maggie Koerth-Baker]

    Just 5 dishes. But the blogger says they got 17 meals out of it, counting leftovers used for dinners and lunches.

• [blueelm]

  Roast chicken with bread stuffing, chicken based soup with dumplings from the left over icky bits and bones, chicken tacos, chicken cacciatore, chicken apple quiche, any leftover little bits can be put on a pizza. Wheee! I’ve done this before, although it wasn’t an internet challenge.It was a you have x amount of money and these things on hand challenge. People who tend to have a lot of stuff on hand in their pantry, or who already do a lot with flour, yeast, eggs, etc. would probably fair better at this. Between two light eaters though I never made a chicken stretch more than 8 days, and never ate that chicken for all my meals. Not to mention eating the same thing a couple days in a row because I’m lazy.

• [Symbiote]

  My parents cooked like this most weeks. It would last two or three meals for five people (two adults, three children).

  People who’ve said they eat half a chicken: do you eat anything else with it? Vegetables, carbs, etc? That’s what this whole “balanced diet” thing is about…

• [blueelm]

  No, I lie. We used to freeze things we got sick of to pull out on a day we didn’t feel like cooking. So given that I might have gotten more than I’m thinking.

  I was always pretty good with the ingredients stretching dishes. Croquets from previous days salmon, etc. Now days though I don’t have much time or reason to cook. I make fruit/veggie smoothies in the morning and that’s about the most of it. It’s easier when you have other people who also need to eat. Feeding me is almost to easy to warrant effort.

• [KeithIrwin]

  I’m impressed that they managed to do it even though they forgot to save the carcass for making soup. However, if I make a good roast chicken, I have trouble eating only five ounces of meat from it, so I don’t think I could stretch things quite as far as they did. Still, it’s a terrific round-up of good chicken left-overs recipes.

• [Church]

  Huh. A good week longer than I managed to stretch a bird. Hat off.

• [patricia]

  We got asked to do a United Way challenge this year and we took a whole chicken quite far. While the challenge itself was quite flawed (can’t use anything in your pantry, only for 5 days), it really did show how far you could stretch things if you really had to.

  We only buy whole chickens and the occasional packet of chicken wings from a local farmer, so we always like stretching our chickens as far as they can go. Chicken stock goes into beans, chicken skin is roasted and rendered to make gravies, and the chicken is first a meal plain and then is used in some sort of casserole.

  It is a lot easier to stretch a piece of protein when you get it attached to bones which themselves lend flavor.

• [efergus3]

  I once got one out to 2 1/2 feet, but it wasn’t good for much afterwards.

• [bishophicks]

  Speaking of chicken, I just figured out the answer to a question that occurred to me a while ago: How much would I save if I bought whole chicken on sale and cut it up vs. buying chicken parts?

  I bought chicken on sale for 99 cents a pound, cut it up, weighed the parts and make chicken stock with the remnants. The chicken cost 3.75 and once it was broken down, the parts were worth over 8.50. Interestingly, a significant portion of the “profit” was the quart of chicken stock (worth about $2.50) and it’s better than anything you can get in a can.

• [Camp Freddie]

  Not bad, but a huge fail for forgetting the stock.

  With a normal sized chicken, my wife and I get 2 days’ meals from leg/wing meat, 2 days from breast and 2 days of risotto or soup from the stock.

• [Anonymous]

  This is nothing. My mother could have fed a family of 5 for a week off one chicken.
  1. Stuff chicken full of sage dressing and roast it, serve the breasts and dressing with rice, which is dirt cheap. Makes 4 servings.
  2. Pick the remaining meat off the bones, shred it, use it to make a casserole with 3 pounds spinach, chopped onion, garlic, and a can of cream of mushroom soup. Makes 6 servings.
  3. Take what is left, including the skin, put it in a pot, add 6 cups of water and a tablespoon of white vinegar, boil it until the water is reduced by almost half, sift out the solid pieces remaining, throw in chopped potatoes, onions, carrots, mustard greens, garlic, basil, pepper…add a bit more water and you get 10-12 servings of chicken soup. The vinegar helps break down the bone marrow so the broth is a bit richer.

  Total cost for vegetables and chicken, less than $20.

• [bcsizemo]

  Hats off to them trying and teach people how to stretch food, but it’s all a nice slight of hand.

  The budge for everything was $25…well minus everything I already had.

  Like dish #2, which they had everything on hand already.
  There’s nothing wrong with that, but then again it doesn’t take into account the full price of the meal. At some point you have to restock rice, flour, sugar, eggs, ect…

  I dread those days about as much as buying the bigger priced items. You can burn through $100 at Costco/Sam’s Club/BJ’s in a hurry if you aren’t careful.

  And it really wouldn’t be fair if I said well one 7lb chicken and the 2 gallons of milk I already have on hand, along with flour, spices, a tad of butter. That should give me about 8-10 servings of chicken stew. Only for 7 dollars! *sigh*

• [bcsizemo]

  Well before I get flamed to death, I went back and looked at the price list. Alright they do break it down by price per item used…. It’d be interesting to see the rate usage of the items they cook with. Like soy sauce or flour.

• [Tom Hale]

  Nice self discipline, eating so little – We have half a chicken per man at my station – cooked on the charcoal grill – delicious

• [Anonymous]

  We do this all the time, 17 still seems like a bit of a stretch. Maybe we get less use because we strip off all the skin and fat to add to our dogs food. We also use a smaller, organic, free range bird. Here’s what we do:

  1. Roast Chicken, the best and most simple recipe is Thomas Keller’s “My Favorite Simple Roast Chicken”: http://bit.ly/aQcn4C
  1a. Make stock from carcass

  2. Leftover chicken is for one or more of the following with plenty for lunches:
  Enchiladas (with lots of veggies mixed in the filling)
  Vietnamese noodle salad
  Soup
  Pizza
  Sandwiches
  Chili
  Nachos

  3. Use the stock for the one of the following:
  Risotto
  Polenta
  Ramen Base
  Rice

  But seriously, go with that chicken recipe, it’s so easy and so delicious, it will become a staple in your home cooking.

• [seyo]

  Very cool. But, As I am not a skinny blogging hipster, I eat a half chicken in one sitting. I’m not big on carbs either, so stretching the meat isn’t really possible. I require about 150 grams of protein per day, so meat is the main event at all my meals, even breakfast. So one chicken can last, at most, three meals for me and me alone.

  • [dculberson]

    That does not sound like a healthy diet.

• [PaulR]

  1) Would it have been cheaper to compare with turkey?

  2) But, but, but: mayo is so cheap, if you make it yourself. Really.

  /haven’t paid for ersatz mayo in about thirty years.

• [Berk]

  Aside from the serious lack of protein, and the boringness of roast chicken*.

  These people appear to dislike Mayo, which indicates to me they’re some kind of evil.

  *Yes, I know, I really like chicken, but if I had to go 5 days eating only roast chicken scattered over filler foods, I’d probably go wrong.

• [Anonymous]

  From Spot 1019′s “Five Meals from One Chicken”

  They came from home
  They came from outer space
  Big chicken dinner
  Bo Diddly’s place

  Come in the kitchen fellas
  I’d like to show you a little trick
  Might make you hungry
  If it don’t make you sick

  I can make 5 meals from 1 chicken…

  So you wanna be real, but you wanna be keen
  Tired of being a victim of the machine
  So you wanna get smart, but you still wanna have fun
  Fed up to here with tryin to be nice to everyone

  Try to make 5 meals from 1 chicken…

  I can never remember
  Aw, you must be pullin my leg
  Does the egg taste just like chicken, or the chicken taste just like eggs?

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVcO1MgO7z0

• [Anonymous]

  One way I stretch chicken for 5 people is to make real biscuits (took me years to get a good recipe!!), putting a very thin large biscuit on bottom, a mixture of cooked chicken & condensed cream of chicken on top(about 2-3T) then putting another very thin biscuit on top. Seal the edges with a fork and put a dollop of cream of chicken on top and spread it around. Cook 500deg until golden. Also, another great way to use a little chicken is in gumbo. I use Zatarain’s Red Beans & Rice (I know–but the gumbo is HOT!), cooked chicken, chicken broth, onions, bell pepper, okra & 1/2 more rice. It makes TONS & you don’t have to use much chicken if you cut it up small!

• [Cucina Povera]

  Sounds like many of the commenters have never been poor. Good for you (I mean that sincerely — I’ve been poor and it sucks even more than you think it does).

  But eating half a chicken at a sitting is something you just cannot do when you’re poor. You won’t have enough money to eat the rest of the week if you do. There may be a few points in the 1/17/$26 claim on which to quibble, but when you have to, stretching a chicken for a week is perfectly reasonable. There are plenty of people — even in the United States — who have to make do with less than a chicken a week. Be thankful that doing so is far beyond your ability to imagine.

• [GlenBlank]

  Bear in mind, too, that this is a 7-lb. roasting chicken, which is nearly twice the size of a typical 3.5-4 lb fryer.

  Even for a roaster, that’s a BIG chicken. A lot of roasters are about 5.5 or 6 lbs.

  This makes a BIG difference in how far it can be stretched.

  And a 7-lb. roaster for under $7 is a pretty good deal, too. I usually see good-sized roasters for $2.49-$2.99/lb. (But then, I don’t shop at Food 4 Less or Bargain Bin, so I’m undoubtedly missing out on the real bargain roasters.)