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.

We are usually 3 people for dinner. If I make a roast chicken, the breast is untouched and would be eaten in sandwiches.

Interested to know where you get your 3 legged chickens from ?

I would never have one chicken for 6 people, even with a big tray of cold meats/cheese prior to the meal. Those cold meats were tapas to go with a drink, You still needed to serve a main meal and a chicken was not enough for 6 people.

I make a large chicken do 6 adult portions, which are usually 2 drumsticks, 3 white breast meat, 1 consisting of all the other bits.

I usually have roast drumsticks & wings, then make a chicken casserole or fricasse, adding mushrooms etc to bulk it out.

I always use the carcass to make soup or stock.

I can get 4+ generous portions out of a medium chicken but I carve slices and take the meat off the legs.
The last roast chicken dinner I cooked with sausagemeat and stuffing balls; roast potatoes, carrots and parsnips; broccoli, peas and Yorkshire puddings fed 4 for Sunday dinner plus an extra meal for my son to take home and I think there was still some meat to go into a salad (and I ate the wings later).
I would expect a large chicken to easily feed 6 and probably have left over meat for a stir fry for 2.

I large chicken for son and I yesterday for a roast dinner, it made sandwiches for us both as a packed lunch today. Chicken curry for tea for us both today. Chicken is such good value isnt it? And my son loves to eat the skin and pull the wishbone. (We also dip bread in the chicken juice juice when it comes out of the oven 😋)

Person 1 - whole leg
Person 2 - leg below the joint plus 1 wing
Person 3 - leg above joint plus 1 wing

Normal chicken here feeds 5 for one meal (2 teenage boys) and a substantial soup for 4 of us on another day (DS1 won't eat soup). Dh and I are not slim by any means.

Those of you serving 1 chicken to 4 people are probably leaving loads on the bone, or chucking loads away.

I think some of you are muddled up. Our Christmas TURKEY only just stretches to 10.
This is my all time fav thread ever

How many potatoes do you have? I am guessing a lot, ravenous from lack of chicken

5-6 max and thats a large chicken.

There is very little actual meat on a wing. A drumstick without top of leg/thigh will only really feed a child unless its part of a sauce padded out with other things.

Id say for a normal meal, 2 breasts might feed 3 adults. Then there would be the legs & thighs & bits & bobs would feed another 3 max.

I think some people would give a single rather thin slice of meat to each adult - we'd be hungry. We wouldn't serve bread to bulk out the meal

I think some people would give a single rather thin slice of meat to each adult - we'd be hungry. We wouldn't serve bread to bulk out the meal

But presumably you serve other things? Potatoes and other vegetables.

What's wrong with one thigh? I'm not an under eater but one thigh with carbs/veg/sauce is fine for me and would be what I worked off for a one pot dish

I think some people would give a single rather thin slice of meat to each adult - we'd be hungry. We wouldn't serve bread to bulk out the meal

But presumably you serve other things? Potatoes and other vegetables.

Yes but those things contribute quite a low amount of calories & little protein.

I would expect (for a roast dinner for example) the meal to be at least 600 calories for an adult or older child. 1 whole chicken breast is around 175 calories. You might get 100 calories combined from decent portions of broccoli, green beans, and carrots, leaving another 300+ that isn't all coming come from the potatoes.

Well, I literally do not know anyone in real life who would eat just one thigh.

I was at nandos the other day. Their quarter chicken LEG and thigh is just 260 calories or so. So let's assume the thigh alone is significantly less. Yes, one thigh can massively be bulked out with other things, but no, I do not consider one thigh an appropriate portion.

I would do a thigh per person in a curry, but that would be bulking it with lentils or chickpeas, as well as adding coconut milk & ground almond, in a deliberate effort to make it a low meat meal.

I wouldn't do that with a roast dinner.

Yes, this. I don't want the bulk of my calories, or my family's, to be coming from carbohydrates. I want a balanced meal.

For us 2 adults, 1 teenagers, 1 9yo I will do medium chicken for one meal and a bit of leftover for sandwiches, or large chicken for a meal and enough leftover to make another meal like a stir fry/curry/pasta.
So for 1 roast dinner, large chicken = 6 adults I would say

4 for a roast dinner with enough left over to bulk out with mushrooms, peppers etc for wraps the next day.

chernobyl?

Large chicken:
2 people - slice of breast meat and a leg between us.
Plus chipolatas, potatoes, parsnips, carrots, poss other green veg, sage and onion stuffing and gravy.

Same next day.

Some more cold in sandwiches or Coronation chicken.

The rest all boiled up for stock, picked over thoroughly and used to make a chicken noodle soup, cream of chicken soup or cock a leekie.

Same for a medium one without day two roast.

Yum might have to go and get a chicken.

Look, it’s probably time for a name change, because we’ve all been talking about your DH and we ALLLL know he’s doing taxidermy, then putting the animals in fancy dress.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Wasn’t the REAL big chicken actually the friends we made along the way?

I would suggest you invite the person in your family round for a roast dinner and only serve them a chicken wing, whilst the rest of you tuck into proper portions.

A large chicken here does a roast for 4 (2 adults, 2 teens - tho DS2 hasn't hit crazy food intakes yet).
Then DH and DS1 will have the scraps as lunch the next day, or I'll turn them into a veg heavy chicken risotto (and the other 3 in the house will complain, and fry an egg each afterwards).

I wouldn't want to try and serve more than 5 from a supermarket large chicken - and that's knowing most of my household will eat the darker meat by preference. If you had a whole table of 6 wanting white meat, it would be very scant servings.

I wOuLd nEver havE oNe cHicKen fOr 6 pEople

I am sure if people made several big slices of bread topped with meat and cheese they were fine. That alone is sufficient meal.
This is why my original post specified chicken as only meal. Not as part of multicourse dinner as then you need less of each.
And you cannot count two toddlers as adults.

Tbh we drank and ate starter for around 2h before chicken was served so no one was starving at that point. People unsurprisingly ate more of nice cold cuts than bog standard chicken. This is the whole point of having amazing appetizer/starter as everyone is hungry then.

I think 6