A Chicken Story

Five Meals From One Chicken

Recently I bought a chicken. Here is the story of that very bird…

In my kitchen, we usually cook from scratch and are not at all wasteful. We simply can’t afford to be.

Occasionally we will buy a whole chicken. Free-range, for many reasons I won’t go into here, but overall because they taste better. I am a huge fan of chickens. I mean, come on, they give us eggs too.

Recently I bought a chicken for £5.90. Here is the story of that very bird!

The Chicken’s Tale ~ Meals for Two People

Meal One

Mostly my partner cooks. He enjoys it. For him, it is another creative outlet. So when we bought the poultry, he butchered it. Cutting off the legs, thighs, and wings, which we then froze.

The first meal from this wonderful chicken was a roast, just using the crown. It was accompanied by roasted potatoes, onions, and parsnips. Plus steamed greens and carrots.

He does a little trick while roasting the bird. For about forty minutes, when he firsts puts the bird in the oven, he cooks it on it’s back.

This really leads to very moist meat and crisp skin.

The meal was delicious, but with just the two of us, there was plenty of meat leftover. We stored it in the fridge for a couple of days, ready for the second feast.

Meal Two

Neither of us anticipated the second chicken meal would be so big. But there was a lot of breast flesh leftover, and it all went into a curry. I sometimes cook curry. I do prefer the meals you can make all in one pot. But my partner once again took this on. We use fresh chillies, and create our own spice mix to marinate the meat. Not only that we have recently discovered how to create Indian base gravy which makes any curry extremely authentic. It is a rich base ingredient made from various herbs and spices, onions, and carrots. A perfect method of delivering your five a day. We sometimes make a pot of it and freeze it in individual containers for future curry days.

The curry was served with a potato and spinach bhaji, rice, and homemade flatbreads. Delicious. We had a portion leftover, so covered it and put it in the fridge.

Meal Three

The following day, we eat the leftover curry for lunch. It tasted even better after the overnight stay had caused the spices to flavour the chicken even further. We licked our plates clean. Not kidding!

Meal Four

As you can imagine, by this time we had eaten our fill of chicken. But that was OK. If you remember, the remainder was chilling in the freezer. So we eat other things for a week or so. Then we returned to the legs, thighs, and wings of that very chicken.

Once defrosted, my man cooked one of his favourite meals. Chicken Chasseur. Full of wonderful tastes — tarragon, tomatoes, mushrooms, and white wine. Over time, we have realized this teams up very well with savoury rice. So that’s what we had. Along with a green vegetable I can’t recall. By the end, we were stuffed. But we still hadn’t eaten the chicken wings, quite a bit of sauce, and some rice. Once cooled, we put it in the fridge.

Meal Five

Yes, you have guessed it. The following day we warmed the leftovers thoroughly and eat them for lunch alongside some garlic toast, simply created by rubbing a clove of garlic over some warm toast, (cut from a homemade loaf). We commented how the taste seemed even better in the follow-up meal.

Conclusion

For all of you who are reading this and thinking how boring it must be to have the leftovers of a dinner for a meal the next day then either you’ve not experienced excellent cooking or you have much more money than sense, and should send some my way.

I think the chicken itself, would be pleased nothing was wasted. Its life was taken, so the least we can do is respect that and appreciate every… last… morsel.

Often, if we start by roasting the whole chicken, after that meal we strip the carcass of meat and use the bones to make a soup. This has a lot of nutritious value.

Because we hardly ever eat any processed food, we have to plan our meals ahead. It takes time and effort but is worth it. The nutrient content you get from the food is much higher and the pesticide/additives much lower. This all goes for better taste and health. A neat trick I think…

More from May…

Another chicken story by Gabriela Francisco