Let's settle it once for all: How many adults can big chicken feed?

[LondonFox]

I am talking about chicken as main protein in a dish in normal 1 to 2 course eating. Not 8 course meal.

My guess when cooking would be 1/4 chicken per adult so four people.
2 x breast and wing
2 x leg quarters

Person in my family suggests 10 easily:
2 x wings
4 x white
2 x drumsticks
2 x tighs.

AIBU chicken can easily feed 10.
AINBU ten people will be very polite and say nothing but stay hungry. Share among 4.

You won't settle this argument. People have wildly different ideas about what constitutes a large chicken, a large adult, a large portion and the truth.

I know! That’s what I said! That’s insane, right?

It depends what I'm making in this 1-2 course meal. If I'm making a roast then 4 adults and a child, with veg, Yorkshire's, gravy etc.
If a whole chicken was shredded into a chicken and veg pasta dish, with garlic bread then probably 6-8 adults, because it goes further.

Xl 2.5kg chicken will do me, dh and 3 teens - we like out grub so portion sizes are big. Usually not much left but use rest to make chicken soup

6 for a roast dinner but I do a huge dinner, ill have leftover for a stir fry. 4 if it's something small like chicken new potatoes and salad.

They already do. I saw a post on Dull Men's Club. Can't recall which supermarket, unfortunately. To be fair, we buy chicken breast from Costco and they are absolutely massive. I wouldn't be able to finish the whole one.

I wouldn’t be happy if I got a wing portion 😂

I think you are both thinking of the lower part of the wing, but there is also the shoulder bit which, on a large chicken, can be substantial.

I love wings (as they have high bone to meat ratio lol).
Family member asked me if I want WHOLE wing. As you can separate it into drumette and tip. Apparently eating smal portions and almost no meat is very feminine so if you have female guests there is pleanty to go around 🙄

There would be mutiny in my family if I served a plate with half a chicken breast 😅
I refuse to believe that would be enough for an adult.

A decent portion of protein alongside various veg is filling and tasty and sets everyone up to make better choices throughout the evening/night.
(If health is a concern).

Waitrose say that their pack of 2 chicken breasts serves two people and M&S say their rotisserie chicken serves four people.

So Google is definitely wrong haha

We'd (2 adults, a 14 year old and a small dog) would have half of a big chicken (2 kg) in one meal and the other half the next night. Bones for stock and any scraps for sandwiches and dog.

3-4 adults in our house, there's only 2 of us and it does a meal with usually a leg or breast left over for DH to take to work to snack on the next day. He prefers the dark meat and I'd rather have white. The wings get eaten when DH is carving it up.

Tiny portions with a side of food shame. I’d have got a Big Mac on the way home 😂

A portion of meat is about 80-100g cooked meat so long as it is being served as part of a balanced meal with plenty of veg and some carbs. A large whole chicken is about 2kg of which about a quarter is skeleton and once cooked the edible meat will be 1.0-1.2kg depending on how much it was pumped up with water so it should be possible to get 10-14 adult meals from a 2kg chicken if you can be totally efficent about using every last scrap of meat and are careful not to let anyone take too much (providing plenty of cheap potatoes to fill up on). Given normal levels of inefficiency 8-10 is typical.

Surely it depends what you serve it with? Our roasts have stuffing and Yorkshire puddings and 5 or 6 veg so no one would be going hungry even if they didn't eat any chicken!

I expect a big chicken to feed 4 adults twice (so 8 in total). Other half goes in a pie or curry with a bunch of veg (and carbs).

Last time I cooked a chicken for more we had 5 adults and 3 children and not all the chicken was eaten.

Are you feeding the Borrowers? Good grief a chicken leg is 2 bites of meat in this house.

A large chicken would feed 3/4 adults, I’m leaning more towards 3 and the dog has the skin and the scrappy bits.

What a dreadful question. In our family, it appears that one large chicken does 3 people. So basically not really enough!

Medium chicken, roast for 4, with stuffing.

Large chicken, roast for 6 and something with the leftovers: curry, pasta bake, chicken salad.

XL chicken roast here yesterday. Fed 5 with enough on the carcass to make a nice soup for lunch today. And that's it. No more.

Well the OP says a large chicken, so of course a breast serves two as part of a roast with vegetables and potatoes. The weight of meat in half a breast will probably exceed one recommended portion, let alone serving a whole breast per portion.

Then you have two legs including thighs and the itty bits left over.

The legs and thighs will be plenty for another meal such as a curry, pasta bake or pie for four people.

Then you can make stock with the carcass and pick off the remaining bits, wings, oysters, bits of remaining leg and breast and you can make something like a noodle soup. Possibly not four but certainly a couple of portions, so supporting a previous post of 10 portions from a large chicken.

I'd happily serve one for 4, and would stretch to 5 or maaaybe 6 but that would need a lot of side dish and pudding. Definitely no more than 6.

Just about 4 adults.

One whole chicken 2kgs or more feeds a maximum of four in this house.

Give over 😂😂😂

Meanwhile in the real world....

No, trust me, I know what a whole wing looks like and the three parts you can divide it into. But there’s still quite a lot of bone, and I wouldn’t be arguing that it has much more meat than a drumstick vs. a breast or thigh. But I appreciate we all have different opinions. That’s what makes these questions worthwhile.