How to Get the Most Out of a Chicken

When I am talking about how to get the most out of a chicken in this Hub, what I am referring to is how we may go about utilising the bird as best as possible. I am looking at how we can cook it and subsequently divide it up to get the most meals we can from the one chicken. The chicken recipes on this site will all be extremely easy, as healthy as possible and totally geared towards getting our money's worth out of what is an extremely adaptable cooking ingredient.

When we visit our local supermarket or butcher and buy a whole, raw chicken, such as the one pictured to the right, the first task is to decide how we are going to cook it. We can consider roasting it whole, poaching it whole, or we may wish to chop it up prior to cooking it in order to such as stir fry the raw flesh in a Chinese style dish.

Bearing in mind the purpose of this Hub is to look at how we can get the most out of a chicken, however, I am going to poach it in water, for reasons which I promise will soon become evident.

In order to poach the chicken, I am using - as well as the chicken! - one small onion, one carrot, one small parsnip, two cloves of garlic and as much boiling water as it takes to fill my pan.

There is no need to peel the carrot or parsnip. Simply washing them thoroughly is sufficient. I tend to peel the onion and the garlic but even this is not necessary. The vegetables in this instance are only for flavour and will be discarded at the end of the cooking process.

Wash the chicken and place it in the bottom of your pan. Season it well with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Roughly chop the vegetables and put them down the sides of the chicken. Add sufficient hot water to come within about an inch of the lip of the pan and bring to the boil.

It will take an hour to an hour and a quarter for the chicken to cook. I like to turn it half way through this period. When you remove it from the pan, stick a skewer or fork right in to the thickest part of the thigh and check that the juices run clear. This confirms that the chicken is properly cooked and that we have eliminated as far as possible the chances of contracting food poisoning.

Although the chicken featured in the video above has been roasted, the procedure for actually carving it after it has been poached is identical. I prefer to action the legs and thighs (as in the video,) followed by the wings, followed by the breast fillets.

When we have removed these pieces of the bird as instructed, we will find small portions of meat still on the carcass, which we should then take a minute or two to pick off by hand. This can account for a fair bit of meat - especially on a large chicken - so when we are looking to get the most out of a chicken, this is something which we should not fail to be attentive to.

Remember to refrigerate any chicken which is not to be used that day.

When we have removed as much of the meat from the remaining part of the chicken carcass as possible, in keeping with the spirit of getting as much out of a chicken as possible. we should return it to the pan and the cooking liquor in order to further impart some flavour to same and essentially produce for us pure and healthy chicken stock.

We should simply place it back in to the still warm liquid and vegetable pieces, put the lid on the pan and leave it to cool.

When the stock has cooled, a thin film of fat will have appeared over the liquid in the pan. We should carefully scoop this off and discard it. Thereafter, remove the chicken bones and vegetable pieces with a slotted spoon before straining the finished stock. This stock can be frozen in an appropriate container for up to three months prior to being utilised.

Getting the most out of the chicken from this point onwards will of course depend more than anything upon how many people it is intended to feed. Each breast fillet and leg/thigh should serve as a portion in its own right with appropriate accompaniments, so that is four meals straight away.

For the remainder of this article, I wil assume that the chicken is designed to feed two people, several times. 

For these delicious wraps, I have utilised the chicken breast fillets while they are still warm.

The wraps themselves can be bought from most supermarkets, generally in a pack of about six. They are simply heated for about twenty seconds in a dry pan or skillet. We then simply add some shredded lettuce leaves, small tomato slices and the sliced chicken breat meat as shown. Some low fat soured cream (in this instance with crushed garlic added) should then be carefully spooned on top before the wrap is folded over and rolled.

Each chicken breast fillet should easily provide enough meat for two wraps but the sundry pieces of chicken can also be used at this stage, if required.

In this instance, the egg is the first ingredient in this incredibly simply chicken omelette recipe -two of them, to be precise.

This is an excellent way of ustilising the meat from the chicken wings or any scraps of same which we may have left over. This chicken omelette is a perfect lunch for one, or can simply be made with more eggs and served with such as a sald for two.

Break the eggs in to a bowl and beat thoroughly with a whisk or fork. Season to taste with saland/or pepper. Melt a knob of butter in a small, non-stick pan and pour in the egg mix. Draw the mix gently in to the centre from the sides, all around, until the egg starts to set.

When the eggs are almost set, sprinkle some chicken pieces over one half of the omelette as shown. Simply then fold the omelette over and serve. 

Chicken salad as prepared in this fashion will use up the legs/thighs of the chicken in a light but tasty lunch for two.

I have simply hard boiled an egg, chopped up a tomato and served them with the chicken portion. Any other salad ingredients available can of course be used, or you may wish to serve these parts of the chicken with such as boiled new potatoes in the form of a more substantial, evening meal.

It may be the case, for any one of a number of reasons, that you have purchased a whole, raw chicken but wish to cook such as the breasts and the legs separately. In order to achieve this, you will naturally of course first of all have to chop up the whole chicken.

The following two videos show you in detail the various stages of how to chop a chicken.