Cheapest roast meal?

[flamingobingo]

Wanted to start doing roast sunday lunch sometimes, but wondering what's the cheapest way to do it? A chicken?

How many do you want to feed?

When it's just DS and I, a roast chicken works out very economical as we can stretch it out for four meals, or I buy chicken legs and thighs and just roast enough for that meal.

IMO you don't want to skimp too much on the meat though, so if you do want red meat you're best off going to your burther and buying a small amount of good quality stuff, and 'filling up' on all the accompaniments, instead of getting most of the meal form the meat if that makes sense?

If you like fish, it almost always works out cheaper than the same weight of chicken or meat.

Agree that it depends on the quality of the meat. You can get an enormous chicken to feed 6-8 for £3, but free range would cost twice that, and the birds are smaller. I think chicken is still cheaper than most good roasting cuts of red meat eg rib of beef, or leg of lamb.

Turkey is cheaper than chicken - you can get a boned turkey leg (easy to carve and no wastage of bones) which will feed 6-8 if you do plenty of lovely accompaniments - cauliflower cheese, loads of roast potatoes, broccoli, carrots, parsnips etc.

If you want "red" meat pork is cheapest for a prime cut, but if you get shoulder of lamb it is much cheaper than leg and just as nice.

I think a couple of good slices of really nice meat plus loads of yummy veg side dishes is the best way to have roast dinner - much cheaper too.

And good cuts of meat are always cheaper from a butcher or farm shop than a supermarket, I find. Tesco sell an organic chicken for about 9 quid - at my local farm shop it's more like 6 or 7.

Thank you :-)