How I Feed My Family of 4 + 1 Baby 5 Meals From 1 Whole Chicken
Here’s how I save money by feeding my family of 5 with one whole chicken for 5 meals. I watch my local stores for when they put whole chickens on sale. Typically, I can get the free range/organic much cheaper and sometimes, even cheaper than a regular store brand chicken if I catch them on sale. I aim for at least 6 lbs of chicken when purchasing for my family. Sometimes I will buy 2-3 whole chickens if there is a solid deal on them. Even our local farmer here will put them on sale if he has too many meat chickens - these are my favorite!
Day 1: cook the whole chicken. Sometimes this looks like a roast, sometimes it’s in the crocpot, sometimes in the instant pot… it really doesn’t matter. Save all the bones - you can make brother with them and use it for the week!
Meal 1: Cut chicken breasts and mix with frozen broccoli and carrots. Usually I will bake 2-3 potatos to serve with it.
At this point, cut up the remaining chicken and divide it into 4 portions. Make bone broth with the rest of the bones, skin, cartilidge, etc. Make sure to add in the juice from the crocpot! After the broth is cooked, I’ll pick off any remaining bits of chicken and save them for soup later this week.
Meal 2: Shredded chicken and egg salad! A fave around here. I stretch the protein by adding cooked egg to it. Mix in mayo, pickle, onion, celery, whatever else you like. I serve it on sourdough toast (honestly you can get two meals out of the chicken salad because the egg stretches it so far).
Meal 3: Chicken and rice casserole. Throw in veggies (frozen mixed is an easy one to add to this for an easy dinner night), cream of chicken or mushroom soup - I literally just use whatever I have in the kitchen. It’s a great kitchen clean out meal!
Meal 4: Butternut chicken chili. I will add butternut squash to make it hearty and use leftover bone broth.
Meal 5: Chicken noodle soup. Again I wing it and use whatever veggies, seasoning, etc that I already have on hand. Plus the last bit of bone broth.
Other meal ideas that you can switch into the rotation: chicken burrito bowls, white chicken chili, regular chili, chicken tortilla soup, chicken and green bean casserole, Mediterranean style chicken bowls, salad, there’s so many possibilities and you can’t mess it up!
I typically divide the meat as I have listed below or I will shred it all and divide evenly.
Carcass: I will use the remaining bits for soup. 1 meal
Drumsticks, wings: 1 meal
2-3 lbs of breasts and tenders: depending on size of the chicken (I’ll usually take a bit of this to throw into the soup) - 2-3 meals (depending on size and if I use for soup or not).
2 thighs - 1 meal
