Let’s face it: good food costs good money. In my area, a nice pasture-raised broiler fetches between $4 and $5 / lb. I count my stars that it’s this low considering that some national retailers of pastured poultry get away with charging twice that to their customers. It’s expensive, especially when you can run to your corporate-owned, national grocery store and buy a whole roasting bird for a flat $3.99.
While it may be easy to balk at paying upwards of $30 for a single broiler, it’s a cost that’s well-justified. That single, good-quality bird can provide up to five meals for an average family of mindful eaters. You see, a pasture-raised bird – expensive as it might seem – provides more nutrients than a conventional bird. Pasture-raised broilers, allowed to access a natural diet, are richer in beta carotene, retinol and omega-3 fatty acids than their factory-farmed, $3.99 counterparts. A good quality, pastured bird goes a long, long way.
Meal #1: Roast Chicken with Vegetables
Start it simple; prepare a good roast chicken. It’s a classic one-dish meal – gently season your chicken and add it to a casserole dish or clay cooker, add chopped root vegetables to the dish as well and bake at 325 º F for 3 hours before turning the oven up to 400 º F for the last ½ hour. If you’re planning to make this bird last all week long, take care to carve it well and serve small, but satisfactory portions. Two good slices of breast meat and two chicken legs should be enough to feed a family of four, provided you include plenty of vegetables.
Need a little more inspiration? Check out these roast chicken recipes: perfect roast chicken, roast chicken with prosciutto and herbs or Moroccan roast chicken.
Meal #2: Chicken Sandwiches
The next day, slice the remaining breast and tender meat thin and serve them on a good, whole-grain bread with plenty of mayonnaise for lunch. Try nice additions like wasabi mayonnaise, ripe avocado, vegetable sprouts, heirloom tomato and a good raw cheese.
Meal #3: Chicken Salad
For your third meal, try preparing a nice chicken salad. Now that the breast meat, tenders and drumsticks are gone you have the thigh and back meat remaining. Thigh meat is particularly well-suited to chicken salad as it’s moister and more flavorful than breast meat and easier to use than the meat from the drumsticks. Chop the chicken thigh meat well, mix it with mayonnaise, halved grapes, minced parsley, chopped celery and walnuts for a great chicken salad that’s best served over greens.
Meal #4: White Chili
Lastly, pick any remaining meat off the chicken. The back of the chicken is much-neglected in this regard. Fry the meat with onion, garlic and stew it with white beans, green chilies, cumin and oregano for a delicious and simple white chili.
Meal #5: Chicken Soup
Lastly, when the bones have been picked clean of any remaining meat, toss the carcass into a stew pot or slowcooker to prepare a nourishing, mineral-rich roast chicken stock. From here you can prepare many nourishing soups, and you’re also likely to have stock leftover for more uses. Try chicken and wild rice soup, kale and white bean soup or lentil stew.
All in all, at least five nourishing meals from a single broiler makes the price tag of a good, pastured chicken worth it. Remember, budget cuts in your kitchen should come not from cheap food, but from properly managing your kitchen and reducing waste where you can – a whole bird can be stretched, used and stretched again to make that initial investment last.
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plus good, pastured chicken makes beautiful, mouth watering meals whencompared with the taste ofa grocery store bird! here in MN I can get pastured chickens for about 3.50/lb, vs. 2.50/lb for local “free range” chicken.
i thought paying 3.69/lb. for a pastured chicken was high. but really, i would definitely pay whatever the price was. you cant put a price on good nutrition! great ideas, especially the chili which i hadnt thought of! thanks =)
Jenny, I love the chicken post. I rolled out the Frugal Shopper Challenge to my clients in January 2009. This exercise taught people they could actually buy whole (and some organic or beyond) food while staying within the US maximum food stamp allotment. At that time, the maximum allotment for an individual was around $40.62 / week…a family of 4 received about $137 / week. For a sample grocery list, recipes and nutritional values, visit http://www.stanlywellness.org. Look under archived classes for the video class, and under documents for printable support materials. I’m no longer employed by the hospital, but they still use my stuff. You can also find the Frugal Shopper Challenge in Hawthorn University’s archived teleclasses (I’m a student there). Thanks for the great site!
It’s true — quality often carries with it a price tag. But, that $30 goes further if you’re really using every last part of the chicken. I always giggle with delight when I can buy pastured chickens on sale through our local co-op for $2.99/lb. That brings down the cost considerably, so we stock up on birds and freeze them for later.
What a great post! I just posted my recipe for Roast Chicken yesterday and talked about all the things I did to stretch it into several meals (made chicken stock, soup, enchiladas, etc). I’m still working my way up to buying the pastured chickens. I know it is the best option, and your post definitely makes a good case for it! Hopefully I can purchase a few at my local farmer’s market next weekend. Love your blog!
Cara -
I just saw that roast chicken recipe on your site – KILLER! I love it. We live off roast chickens, I swear. So good and they last so long. I really think that the flavor of pastured chicken is much better than that of conventional chicken and so is the texture. It’s definitely worth the extra $.
- Jenny
Lynn -
That’s fantastic about your class! On my first (now defunct) food blog (La Cucina Povera) which was kind of a precursor to Nourished Kitchen in 2005, I did the exact same thing. Challenge myself to stick to a foodstamp budget and still make high quality, wholesome meals. In fact, it’s not all that hard. I’m actually planning to revive that challenge next month complete with shopping lists, meal plans and the works.
- Jenny
Emily -
I completely agree. The flavor and texture of pasture-fed birds is so, so much better. The conventional stuff as the texture of mush and no flavor by comparison. Seriously, if I’m going to bother to put time, love and energy into cooking you better damn well bet I want it to taste as good as it can.
- Jenny
The comments crack me up! Our family of six budgets $150 a week for both groceries and gas (and you know with six of us we do not have a little economy car.) I have found that eating a whole food diet costs quite a bit less than processed foods.
I learned this when I started meal budgeting. Though we don’t have access to pastured birds (though working on having our own come next Spring) I do buy the best we have available and get at least 2/3 meals out of one small fryer. I’ll have to try the white chili. I’ve never done that one before. We like a chicken burrito too after the roasted chicken and veggies.
Excellent post. I had no idea that pasture raised birds had such a nutritional benefit. Your wasabi mayo sounds great as well!
This is a great post, Jenny! I love roast chickens, as you know from my most recent post. I think next time though I am going to try to stretch it even further! Thanks for all the great tips!
Great post! I do something very much like this. We actually find that by the time we’ve used up all of the leftover meat, we are tired of having chicken everyday, lol! It’s much easier to stretch a chicken than you think.
I L O V E this post! Beautiful work!
Allison -
Thank you so much for your thoughtful encouragement! I’m glad you like the post and there’s loads more ways you can stretch a chicken.
- Jenny
We feed seven of us at least three meals on a frying chicken. That initial sticker shock is difficult, but those three meals are wonderful! I credit the homemade chicken stock I get into my diet daily as being one of the major reasons I no longer walk with a cane.
My mom says I pinch pennies so hard they scream for mercy. This post is right up my alley!
Wow. I thought I was paying a lot for the broiler chickens I pick up at a local, family run farm. I pay $14-$15 for a broiler chicken of the same size. I will not tell the farm family that they could be getting oh so much more for them! I like that I see them running around on the farm and the next week one of those may be our dinner!
I, too, stretch that chicken. I make a roast (mostly in the crock pot). Then, I use left over for a thai curry dish. Then, broth, etc. I know I get my money’s worth and I take great pride in how far that chicken goes! Great post.
Natalie -
Thanks for your comment! We love using leftover roast chicken in curry too. I made a killer Vietnamese sweet curry the other day that was out of this world good – and so easy to make. Leftover rice, leftover chicken, some onion, chilies and basil and plenty of coconut milk and curry. It’s great to see how far you can stretch a single bird, you know?
Take Care -
Jenny
I would like to try and find pastured chickens, but get confused by all the marketing claims. If a chicken is pastured, does this mean that they only eat grass and nothing else? Is it okay for chickens to be feed any grains? I want to make sure I’m buying a chicken is actually nutritional and worth my money. If you could offer any insight, I would appreciate it!
I get more pushback on chicken prices at the markets than anything else (the ones I sell are $4.25/lb). While I can understand the reluctance, that’s simply what it costs to grow them and process them. Those customers who do take the plunge almost always come back,though.
Great post! I could never stretch one chicken for 5 meals in my house; with 2 teenagers, a husband that does physical labor and a nursing mom, we’re lucky if we have any leftover meat when I make a roast chicken, even with a LOT of vegetable sides. Using the back meat for chili is a really good idea, though. We usually just have the roast chicken and stock, and maybe one person’s lunch if we are lucky.
I love how you spread this one bird into five meals. I usually start with stock and then use that meat for meals throughout the week. However, I can’t roast a small chicken or my hubby will polish it all off in one setting, lol!
This subject has really been tugging at my heart lately. the high prices of good quality, pasture raised meat. I definitely know that it has to be higher because of the way they are raising them, I have backyard chickens, have my own organic gardens and farmers as friends so I know the labor that goes into it, but I’m starting to wonder how many producers out there are deliberately raising their prices beyond reasonable measures because it’s “pasture raised”. I am so blessed to be from Iowa but I was raised in California and although I know prices of living are higher in larger area’s, some of the prices I’ve seen are outrageous. This is just me being me, lol, but I would love to be able to really find out what cost of feed is, maintaining pastures, etc.. and what kind of profit some producers are making by say charging $20 a gallon for raw milk. Being a minority and involved in the Latino community, it’s difficult to see some people without the option of providing nourishing food for their families and children. Sorry Jenny, a subject I’ve been really interested in lately, didn’t mean to hog our space
As always, great post!
Oops.. I meant hog your space
We live in North Central Wi. And raise Grass-fed Angus beef. We also raise pastured poultry, we sell them for $2.00 lb. professionly processed & shrink wrapped. We currently have cornish game hens(aprox. 2 lbs each). It sad to see the store prices, how can this encourage people to eat healthier…
Ohhh how I love this post! I, too, love stretching whole chickens! I grew up on chicken breasts because of the low-fat craze (blech) and when I started buying nourishing foods as an adult, specific to this post, pastured chicken, I couldn’t believe the huuuuuge difference in price for skinless/boneless chicken breasts from a pastured chicken (around here in PA, about 8 or 9 dollars per pound). I initially started buying whole chickens simply to save money, but as I immersed myself in The Ways of WAPF (lol), I found that I preferred them because they are so versatile. I’ve always liked things like whole milk and dark meat, even though they were preached to me as “no-no’s” growing up. Eating those two things rekindled something inside of me. Right now it’s only me and my hubby, so typically I buy 4 or 5 pound birds, which run me usually anywhere from 10 to 13 bucks per bird depending on the weight, and I can get about 3 ish meals (sometimes 4) out of one. Two nights ago, I made a lovely roast chicken with herbes de Provence, rice, gravy made from the pan drippings, and an arugula salad with balsamic vinegar, EVOO, and parm cheese (I only used a leg/thigh for each of us). YUM! Last night, I tore the breast and back meat apart and made sandwiches on homemade bread, and I dressed them with a pesto I made with salad leftovers: a small baggie of leftover arugula, walnuts, and a small hunk of leftover parm, and EVOO. Delicious! I had one more sandwich for myself today for lunch, as I work at home, and I love leftovers more than my hubby does lol. I stuck the bones in the freezer for this weekend to make stock, and I saved the rind from my parm cheese as well – it will go in the stock to flavor it, as I plan on making a big pot of Zuppa Toscana (sp?).
It’s so satisfying to me to be able to get so much versatility and varied meals from one lovely animal
Hi Jenny -
I did a similar comparison of my chicken and several other meals for cost with all organic or natural ingredients. We are a family of three, and the cost per person per meal was about $3.79 with our final total for 7 meals (three people eating each meal) was $79.79, which I think is a fantastic deal. Here’s the post:
http://www.agriculturesociety.com/?p=2523
The chicken cost around $21, and is pasture-raised, but still not cheap. I have a friend who has six people in her family and always reminds me that they could not eat for that cheap – of course, you’d have to double that cost for three more people. They don’t buy much organic, typically buy the most economical food to save money, don’t shop through farmers or go to the market. She truly believes her family can’t afford to eat the way we do. I’ve tried to think of ways to convince her that they could eat healthier, but she just doesn’t think so.
But it’s great to have comparisons like this to give people hope that they can eat healthy if they are willing to be creative and try things they haven’t before. I know we eat really well, but we are always extremely tight on money and do without pretty much everything except paying our bills. We are just starting a new solar and green IT business as of last year, so we have to watch every penny we spend. Thanks Jenny!