I bought an 8 pound (3.6 kg) chicken the other day. I partially deboned it, placing the wing tips, neck, and carcass into a stock pot with some vegetables and aromatics, and made some stock, and set aside the meat.
Dinner 1: One boneless breast, probably about 1.5 lbs (0.7 kg), got cut up into cubes to cook into a soup noodle dish (think fancy ramen, but lazier).
Dinner 2: The 2 thighs, 2 drumsticks, 2 wing drumettes, 2 wing flats were deep fried (breaded for the big pieces, naked for the wing parts) and served as fried chicken with some sides.
Dinner 3: The remaining boneless breast was cut up into cubes for a homemade kung pao, using a modified recipe from Kenji Lopez Alt. I served it with rice and a separate stir fried broccoli dish.
Each meal fed me, my spouse, my 2 young kids (who eat slightly smaller portions). I didn’t set out to be frugal with it, but I think each meal cost less than $10 for 4 portions. And I managed to pull it off on weeknights after work, after picking up my kids from school/daycare, so I’m pretty proud of that.
So much cheaper to break down a full bird than buy the pieces separately. And it might take 2 minutes to do once you’re practiced. Even quicker to spatchcock it and then strip the meat down after roasting, and toss the carcass in the soup pot.
I have literally never heard of an 8 pound chicken. That is fucking huge. Hope it was tasty though!
I normally buy air-chilled chickens around 4 lbs. Those run about $3/lb where I live, at Whole Foods.
But I’ve been boycotting Amazon/Whole Foods, so I bought my chicken from a big box store near my house. There, the whole roaster chickens are ordinarily gigantic (6-10 lbs). And the chicken already cut up into parts might be 12 lbs or more.
But there was a particularly sad looking 8-lb chicken for $1/lb, nearing its expiration date. I figured I had a plan to use it up within 3 days, so I bought that one.
Long term I might need to find a better chicken source. There are some specialty butcher shops in my city but I’d have to drive out there.
Wow that is truly blowing my mind lol I guess I forgot that they use different breeds for whole chickens which run smaller. And the woody breast thing is a symptom of the birds getting huge really fast so I should have inferred they were getting that big but it’s just like tripping me out. Like a dinosaur chicken lol. Chicken sourcing is tough right now, especially if purchasing from a farm is out of the question, and unfortunately, for most it is. Glad you rescued that one! Good luck out there!
Average chicken size has risen significantly through the introduction of specialized huge breeds. This article summarizes an academic paper that describes how we went from breeds that averaged 900g (2.0 lbs) to 4.2 kg (9.2 lbs) at 56 days old.
Sounds delicious, I would like to see the recipe for the soup noodle ramen dish (or the gist of it).
Honestly, just noodles (I went with some generic “Asian” dried noodle from a big box U.S. grocery store), carrots, ginger, scallions, a lot of black pepper, and the simmered meat, in the stock I had made. I basically did it countdown style: added pepper and ginger at t minus 10 minutes, added carrots and meat at t minus 7 minutes, added scallions and a little bit more black pepper as I took it off the stove. I stirred in some chili crisp for my own bowl, but the kids got a non-spicy version.
I strive for meals like this but man does it seem a long ways away. Feels like a lot just to heat up some noodles and sauce most nights. Sounds like some good cooking, thanks for sharing!
Cooking is my happy place. I now have a white collar job, producing words on a digital page, where most projects are measured in months and even individual tasks within those projects are measured in weeks, so I like to work with my hands to turn around something tangible on shorter timelines. Cooking is how I can turn raw ingredients into something delicious and beautiful.
It also helps that I used to cook professionally, so I have a lot of useful experience and knowledge about how to do things quickly and efficiently.
Well done! Feels good to get full use out of the things you buy.
