I\u2019m on rather an economy drive lately, but I like to eat well.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve discovered a way to save a whole bunch of money on meat.\u00a0 In my area, a boneless, skinless chicken breast runs over three bucks a pound when not on sale.\u00a0 Even on sale you\u2019ll never see it for less than about $1.99\/lb.<\/p>\n
I can pretty much count on one of the area grocery stores having a sale on whole chickens for between $0.89 and $0.99\/lb most weeks.\u00a0 Now, you might say that you get sick of a whole roast chicken all the time, and fair enough.\u00a0 Sure, I do the thing where I roast a chicken, save some of the leftover meat for chicken salad, then make Garbage Soup out of what\u2019s left every now and then, but it\u2019s not all you can do with a whole chicken.<\/p>\n
One thing I\u2019d never done was cut up a whole chicken into its various parts.\u00a0 If I was going to use the parts, I bought the chicken cut up.\u00a0 Noticing how much cheaper the whole chicken often is, I decided I needed to learn to cut up my own.<\/p>\n
I tried it yesterday, just because, well, I like learning new things.[1]<\/a> I watched a video on Youtube<\/a> about it, then on my very first try<\/em> it took me something fewer than five minutes.\u00a0 It might not be as cool or as pretty as a professional can do it, but it\u2019s a large enough money savings, I\u2019m all good doing this.\u00a0 Yeah, it\u2019s a little yucky, but I feel like if I\u2019m willing to eat meat at all, I need to suck it up on the yucky anyway and get real that I\u2019m eating an animal.<\/p>\n Now, not everything I make uses chicken with bones in.\u00a0 In fact, a lot of it doesn\u2019t.\u00a0 Next time I find a good sale on chickens, I\u2019m going to learn to debone the chicken.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been given to understand it\u2019s fairly quick and easy.\u00a0 I think Elliot Yan claims to be able to do it in 18 seconds, so I\u2019m sure I can do it in a couple of minutes.\u00a0 The next time I buy a chicken, I\u2019ll debone it and possibly even portion it out already cut up for stir fries.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n I\u2019ve seen people talk about the waste involved.\u00a0 We don\u2019t eat the bones!<\/em> Who eats the wings?<\/em><\/p>\n No we don\u2019t eat the bones, but I cook with chicken stock a whole bunch, and not just soups.\u00a0\u00a0 Rice made with chicken stock is delicious.\u00a0 Beans and rice, jambalaya and many other dishes that use water have a richer flaver, and are more nutritious[3]<\/a> with the stock anyway.\u00a0 Bones and chicken backs make fine, tasty stock.\u00a0 So, no, it\u2019s not wasted.\u00a0 I just save them in a bag in the freezer for the next time I\u2019m going to make stock.<\/p>\n As far as the wings?\u00a0 Don\u2019t you ever have parties?\u00a0 Buffalo wings, and variations thereof are pretty popular \u2018round here.\u00a0 I\u2019m saving mine for the next party I throw.<\/p>\n It does take some time to cut up and repackage a whole chicken, but it doesn\u2019t take that much and it\u2019s not even hard.\u00a0 If you\u2019re looking for a way to save money on meat, I have to encourage you to give this a try.<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> And next week, it might be a new programming language.\u00a0 C\u2019mon guys, I wasn\u2019t kidding when I said it was my job <\/em><\/strong>to learn stuff then talk about it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Which will make my son happy for the nights he cooks.\u00a0 He detests cutting up chicken.<\/p>\n
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