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.

I couldn't get past the chicken wing as a portion I'm imaging some poor sod looking at the other plates and wondering where it all went wrong !

Op just 2 people here a chicken lasts 2 meals and some sandwiches.

Well that's fine if your family only want a tiny bit of chicken and huge portions of veg great ,but no i would of thought in the real world most people could manage a whole breast ,and who decides on what a portion is anyway?

A 1.8-2kg free range chicken feeds me and DH for 10 meals:
roast chicken x 2 people x 2 nights
curry/risotto/pasta x 2 people x 2 nights (using the stock for the risotto or freezing it)
2 x sandwiches
skin and gristly bits for the dog
sometimes I make Thai chicken noodle soup with the last scraps too, so 10-12 meals

I use all the tasty brown bits from underneath. However, if my greedy friend comes over for lunch, he will literally eat half a chicken by himself.

The breasts you buy in the supermarket are about the top third of the actual breast injected with water to make them bigger, which is why they are so small when cooked; the rest is turned into goujons or strips so the supermarket can sell the same breast in three packets.

Surely it depends what sides you do? All the trimmings then feeds 6 no probs. Serve it with a side salad and a few new potatoes then might be less if everyone is hungry

We are greedy and a large chicken would feed up to 6 quite easily. If there are only 4 here there would be left overs for sandwiches the next day.

Oh, and I grew up on a chicken farm - an extra-large chicken used to weigh 2.5kg but the drugs they used to give them to get them that fat were banned and it’s no longer economical to try to grow them that big as it takes too long/they start dying. So older people will remember having a bird that stretched round a family of 6 with leftovers for the next day and then soup and they aren’t lying/using tiny amounts.

most folk have a very skewed idea of how much protein they need to eat

Yeah, mostly the diet moralisers on Mumsnet 🙄 Daily requirement for the average adult is around 50g. That's one large chicken breast or two small ones.

four here max. If any more I’d cook two. Generally an adult has a breast or a leg. The wings are not a portion.

We feed 5 out of it and some left over to make a curry with. 2 adults, one teen and two younger dc

5 at a push - and that's accepting everyone will get enough but probably not as much as they'd like

3-4 adults max. Anything more is not giving people a proper portion surely!

Served with all the trimmings of a roast I get 2x roast dinners for 4 (original meal and leftovers) then I have some chicken left over for sandwiches or to do as egg fried rice.

If I were buying chicken portions for a meal then 2 thighs each is a generous portion if just served with veg. A whole leg is too much I find.

My chicken goes far with roast potatoes roast veg and stuffing because I give the dc a leg each and then dh and I will have a bit of breast and a bit of the leg meat. Still leaves a lot of breast plus scraps like wings to do another meal for 4. Often I chuck half a breast later in the week having forgotten to make a sandwich with it.

I see the MN chicken's making itself known now 😂 I was about to send out search parties!

What?
Adults need 50-55g of protein per day.
If you are not engaged in any physically demanding job or sport.
100 cooked chicken is 16g.
So unless you eat very protein heavy breakfast and lunch you will struggle to get to that level.

I am not even sure you can devide roasted chicken in 14 pieces that look normal?
I would serve 10 for toddlers.

4 people here if picked to the bone
Although it does depend on your definition of large
None of us like Turkey so for Xmas I always buy a very big locally farm reared chicken, I also cook another meat (this year was beef) the chicken would easily have fed 8/10 people it was huge!!!

How big are the chickens near me?! I pick the largest chicken our butcher has. It feeds 6 of us (one elderly, three late teens, including two bulk-obsessed gym boys). Sometimes there’s leftovers for an omelette/sandwich/risotto.

if the company was “politer” than the teens, it would probably stretch to 8 people.

But I “pull” the chicken. Can’t remember which chef suggests it. Rather than carving, I pull the lot apart and leave it in the roasting tin, so the meat mixes with all the juices. So I don’t have ti struggle with portioning white/leg meat. And it’s delicious!

4 adults at most.
Not counting the morsels for sandwiches and boiling the carcass for stock.
The dogs get nothing (we buy separate chicken pieces for them, when they have chicken and rice dinners)

I get 2 meals for 4 out of a large chicken.

Roast on Sunday with loads of roast potatoes, veg, Yorkshire pudding, stuffing, etc for 4

Then cold chicken with mashed potatoes, salad, pickles, etc on a Monday.

None of us are all that mad on meat though.

We eat a largish chicken breast between 2 of us with plenty of vegetables etc.. on the plate.

We don't eat teeny portions and aren't left hungry afterwards.

It's not about cost, or trying not to eat meat for us.
I think it's just about what you are used to and we are used to smaller portions than many people seem to think are appropriate.
We use smaller plates for meals too as find many modern ones are very oversized.

I can't imagine trying to eat a quarter of a chicken by myself.

I'd expect a whole chicken to be enough for 6 adults, maybe 8 if it was a really big chicken.

This really amused me! And you're right. DH would eat one chicken breast. I find it too much. We usually make a whole chicken stretch to two adults and three primary aged children, with a bit left over. Nobody gets 'just' the leg or anything. We chop/slice the various bits so everyone gets a bit of everything. And what's left becomes soup.

So this is mainly going by supermarket sizing, such as small, large etc. and do most supermarkets have relatively similar parameters?Or by weight? I think I still loook at weight more. I was going to say it might feed fewer people if on a roast dinner than other main meals; thought maybe not so much would be eaten per perso if there's lots of sides, partic roasties etc. but then thought maybe not cos a big roast might make the whole eyes bigger than belly thing so may still have same amount of meat relative to big plateful/large size sides? I guess I do also look at actual weight, usually more guided by that than category, but obviously generally guided by that categorisation initially where shops place in sizes rather than weight, but will then still look at weight. Tho, tbh I would be more likely to go by category and then weight for cooking a roast chicken for more people than I would usually cook a roast for (maybe for 6+ people [ie, tho not the mumsnet chicken, if I was doing a traditional roast Xmas meal with turkey]for more than that) I'd look at guide sizes more.

A roast chicken with different sides or a different type of meal altogether? Like w a salad and new pots? No idea, not something I would normally do - I have a roast dinner so rarely (esp a roast that is meat based vs vegetarian) that I'd probably be far more likely to make the whole roast. Then I'd usually be so fed up of the cooking I won't fancy it by then, so I'm really not the best guesser of this question (I have just realised! 😆).

A chicken that is the main protein of many meals where it isn't necessarily the main star, as it were, but still the main/only protein I actually think would serve more than the classic roast chicken (even if not a roast dinner roast chicken). With chicken as part of a meal (eg pasta, curry, tagine, whatever) in the same way as veg are then definitely a smaller per person portion. I do tend to use a lot of veg in most meals though, so that may be different for others.

Although, in contrary to the above I'm definitely a person who would usually over cater if dinner guests, whether that be a roast or within a meal, so may disregard all of the above, so I'm sure my answer has been entirely unhelpful! 😁

I don't think I've ever met anyone who couldn't eat a whole chicken breast ! If I'm roasting a chicken we have a breast each, and my husband also has a leg. I usually buy two ready cooked half roast chickens each week which he has for two lunches. I don think I've got a very big appetite but I would be starving if I ate the portion sizes that some people on Mumsnet claim to eat.

1 large chicken does us, 2 adults and one teen, a roast, pasta/curry/risotto the next day and enough for 1 adult and teen to have sandwiches the next day. I think people in general have a distorted idea of portions nowadays.

Ooh I'm going to try this!

1 chicken to 3 people here. It wouldn't feed the 4 of us.

Might depend on if you have teenage boys!