So that mythical MN roast chicken

[MoonahStone]

What meals do you actually turn it into to make it last a number of days without your family dying of boredom (or food poisoning) 🐓

Roast dinner (1 drumstick per child, 1 thigh per adult

My DC would start a protest at only one drumstick each...my oh would probably leave me if I served him up one chicken thigh!

Ok so first of all, I buy a big chicken, and it's between two adults and two primary aged children not 3 rugby playing growth spurting teenagers who could strip a carcass in seconds. I think the latter makes magic chickening more difficult! Secondly, pretty much everyone playing the magic chicken game makes stock and counts this, and thirdly people tend to be using the scraps for meat flavoured meals more than meat meals if that makes sense? And often lighter lunch meals. I'm not going to get eight or nine roast dinners from one bird but if I use the stock and scrappy bits for a big pan of soup, that's four already.

I'd divvy it up into a few types of meal with each bit of the bird. Some meals are in more than one section. You could also do a really chicken heavy noodle dish or a veg noodle dish with a bit of chicken in.

Main bits of the chicken- roast, curry, chicken heavy pie or pasty, chicken salad

Scrappy bits you pick off from the carcass- soup, noodles, pasta, egg and chicken fried rice

Stock- soup, risotto. There are about a zillion soup recipes involving chicken stock so you could do a different one every week for months before repeating. I do also use stock cubes and find them useful, they just do different jobs. Risotto with stock cubes only is a bit grim, sorry, but equally I might use a stock cube where I wouldn't bother with proper stock.

Also if you get fed up a lot of the magic chicken dishes can freeze.

The coop roast in a bag chicken is magic. I've never seen so much meat on one bird, its just coming

Just kept coming*

Honestly with such tiny portions is it worth having chicken at all!

I.think people on mumsnet confuse chickens with turkeys😂seriously though a roast chicken will.do one meal.two adults and two children and the dog gets the left overs .

We never have chicken left after a roast!

x2boys I think they confuse them with dinosaur legs!

Ahhmm going to be goady here 😁

How many meals do you get from one quail?

Can't get my head round the number of meals you get from a chicken.

When mine were little we used to make to scale meals for fairies using quail’s eggs. The fairies particularly loved egg and chips...

Look. Some people have no choice but to make their chicken stretch. No need to be sneery about that, is there? They might not to be able to stuff themselves full of it but that doesn’t mean it’s ‘not worth’ having it - you learn to eat more slowly, to savour every bite, to enjoy the portion you do have. You can still enjoy a very good standard of food even if your portions of meat are vastly reduced, in fact sometimes it makes you an even better cook by necessity - you make up for it by making your meals more flavourful and imaginative. No one needs two breasts or half a chicken for one meal.

Other people prefer to have less - a lot of people can’t eat huge portions. It’s stupid to presume that just because you have a huge appetite, that everyone else has to as well (and I say that as someone who does have a huge appetite. I could eat half a chicken in a sitting if I wanted to, and once in a while I do. But most of the time I consider that a ridiculous waste of money, and of food). I don’t need to watch what I eat from an economic perspective, but why should I waste money and resources just for the sake of it?

I hate stinginess with food, and I really dislike moral superiority in relation to ‘greed’, so I make no judgement on how much people choose to eat. But it does really irritate me when people seem to be unable to understand that for a lot of people it simply isn’t an option for everyone in the family to eat as much meat as they want, or that there might be people who just choose to eat differently to them.

But it's ok for people who stretch their food out to sneer that we are greedy bastards?

I’ve already said I don’t make any judgements on thar. I like my food myself and I eat plenty of it. I ignore those who might sneer at me for that - I give no fucks what they think.

If you have a problem with people sneering at your eating habits take it up with them, that’s nothing to do with me.

Anyway, to get back to the OP - I really wouldn’t eat chicken 4 or 5 days in a row. If we have enough left over for two meals I’d skip one day and then have one meal, and then either freeze the rest or do the same thing again - skip one day and then have another meal. I’m happy to use meat up to five days after it’s been cooked, as I store it carefully and fully understand the principles of safe storage and cooking and reheating.

I've had to do this all my adult life. It started off not being a choice but now I wouldn't serve more meat even if I could.
I'm vegan but my kids are not and they like the taste of meat, so I feel a moral obligation to make any meat that I do but stretch as far as possible.
I don't make roast dinners because it is a very inefficient use of resources, to my mind. I cook a chicken and strip the meat from the carcass. I make stock from the bones. Then I make a big pan of soup with the stock and some scrappy bits of the meat which does lunches for 2 days.
I use the meat to make at least 3 meals e.g chicken and leek pie, creamy chicken and broccoli pasta bake, chicken and dumplings, chicken and mushroom pie, creamed chicken and veg for baked potatoes, savoury rice, stir fry, Malaysian chicken and noodles, chicken and veg curry, risotto, fajitas, wraps, chicken chilli, baked Mexican tortillas... The list of things to make with leftover chicken is almost endless.
I tend to take the same approach to any meat that I cook. It seldom forms the main feature of the meal.

If you have a problem with people sneering at your eating habits take it up with them, that’s nothing to do with me

I don't . I don't give a shit. You are the one saying people should not sneer at those who eat less. It works both ways, that's all

It’s slightly different when people might well be making that choice due to having no choice.

I'm sorry if I have offended you ninka. Of course I'm not commenting on people who cannot afford meat.

What i/we are gumbsmached about is the number of dishes some get from one chicken, when if we feed a family of four don't get any leftovers.

Again sorry, but I think it is a different discussion.

Oh no honestly you haven’t. I tend to sound a bit combative when I don’t actually mean to, it’s just how I write.

Like I said, I make my choices based on what I like and what feels right to me. But I bear in mind when discussing it that I do so from a place of privilege, which means it will likely feel completely different to me than it might to someone else.

When I've been on a very tight budget, I've bought a whole chicken, cooked it and treated the whole thing as leftovers rather than eating it as a roast then using the rest of it up. I would get lots of meals out of it doing it that way.

You all know that a serving size of meat is the palm of your hand, right? Of course you can eat more than that if you want but people getting several meals out of one chicken are probably using that model. We have dinner for 4, lunch for 2 and soup out of a regular size roast chicken.

Slowcooker chicken/stock is easy it must be because DP manages it.

Chicken - season, bung in herbs, shove breast side down in the SC, turn it on, leave it. Turn it over at some point if you remember. When you can smell chicken, it's done. (No point doing it in the oven when you've been bollocked for your cholesterol so many times that chicken skin really isn't worth it). The extra fat and water comes out and sits in the bottom of the SC. Remove the meat (which comes straight off the bone as it's so tender) and chuck the bones back into the pot.

Stock. Add a good slosh of boiling water to the bones, skin and scrappy bits, chuck in a bit more seasoning and leave it to get on with cooking. At some point in the next 12 hours when you're ready to deal with the stuff, take the lid off and let it reduce a bit. Then let it cool in a large jug, bung it in the fridge overnight and remove the fat off the top if you wish. Tip the stock into containers/bags and dump in the freezer or use it straight away.

Before I bought the SC, I'd take the chicken, use scissors to cut along the spine and then thump it one on the breast bone so it looked more like a squashed frog, then I'd put it in the wok with a heavy lid and a small splash of water to discourage sticking/catching. Cooked far more quickly than in the oven that way.

There’s five of us, i tend to buy a pack of thighs instead of a whole bird.

Leftovers get shredded and added to jumbalaya, mayo for sandwiches, or rice for special fried rice.

I cook a lot of thighs too,so tasty and hugely underated

Yes we usually use thighs for things like curries, casseroles and tray bakes. Lovely flavourful meat, moist and a great texture. Mmmm I’m hungry!