So, here's a great way to cut your chicken costs.
Look for sale prices on SCD legal, bone-in chicken breasts. I've seen several legal brands of these available fresh. Foster Farms and Sanderson Farms are two brands local to me (I live in Los Angeles).
Much of the time, I can get these for $2 per pound regular price, and 99 cents per pound while on sale!
But of course, this is an SCD blog. And one of the major themes of SCD is "make it yourself"!
This overwhelms a lot of people, but the secret to surviving is to buy, and cook, in bulk.
So! Here is about 10 pounds worth of bone-in chicken breasts, ready to go into the oven. I can fit two 9x13 glass pans side by side on the top shelf, and I have a slightly larger glass pan that I put on the bottom shelf.
I cook these at 450 degrees for about an hour and fifteen minutes. There's no need to cover them if you leave the skin on.
I was going to take a picture of the chicken after it cooked, but I forgot. Sorry!
Anyway, what I usually do is I cook all of this chicken. Then, I personally eat all of the skin. This is a meal for me, because my son is the only child in the history of the universe who does not like chicken skin. I know, I know. What is the world coming to?
After the chicken has had time to cool down, I pull all the meat off and store it like so in the refrigerator:
This way, I have food for at least four days or so, and it took at most an hour of work total. I eat it on salads, or alone with olive oil, salt and pepper. You will have to re-season it, though, since most of the seasoning was probably on the chicken skin.
Once you've eaten chicken breast off the bone, I swear that you will never want to go back to frozen chicken breasts. This stuff tastes WAY better.
And guess what else? You can save all those bones to make the best chicken stock ever. If I'm not ready to make stock, I just throw all the bones and leftover little pieces of chicken and cartilage and stuff into large ziploc bags for later use. Occasionally I'll just throw a bunch of bones in the crock pot and let it cook all night long.
So there you go -- cheap, fast, easy, delicious (and convenient) chicken!
2 comments:
I actually find a whole chicken even easier to use. I separate the skin from the meat but leave it attached. I season the skin and also the meat under the skin. I bake it covered in the smallest dutch oven it will it into for 1 hour or so, and then remove the cover so the skin crisps up. The chicken meat has lots of flavor after this since the seasoning was on it too. I use the leftover bones for stock...oftentimes, I don't even wash the dutch oven, but rather, add back the bones, water and soup vegetables and recycle the natural chicken juice/seasoning mixture into the soup. I think whole chickens are probably cheaper too; and dark meat has so much flavor!
Elana's Pantry chipotle chicken is my favorite...I wonder if you could make that scd legal by using a legal honey.
Good luck
Hi M!
You are probably going to laugh, but every time I make a whole chicken (baked), I hate it. I especially hate baked legs and thighs. I have tried many times to get over this, to no avail!!
I keep meaning to try that chipotle chicken with honey. Thanks for reminding me!
Susan :)
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