Stretch One Chicken Over 22 Healthy Meals for Less than $50 [Food]

 

 

Sent to you by David via Google Reader:

 

 

Stretch One Chicken Over 22 Healthy Meals for Less than $50 [Food]

via Lifehacker by Matthew Rogers on 6/20/11

A whole chicken doesn't have to last one meal, only to become a day's worth of leftovers before making its way to the trash bin. Kerry Taylor managed to stretch one enormous chicken into 22 meals over a five-day period, and it's wasn't as insane (or meatless) as you might think.

To kick the whole thing off, she started by baking a 6.28lb chicken, whole. Doing this not only guarantees the first day's food, but it also leaves enough leftover materials (like the bones) to make a large pot of chicken stock. That stock is what allowed her to stretch the bird past the three-day mark, because soup and stew are both easy and filling.

Plenty of vegetables and herbs mean any two days' soup or stew can be completely different in taste, despite coming from the same chicken stock. There's also types of noodles, beans, or pasta to consider, making the combinations pretty easy to come by. Chicken White Chili may not be too common a sight in most kitchens, but it doesn't exactly sound bad, either.

A $20 chicken seems like a big purchase when you see it at the store, but if it can stretch out to an entire week's worth of meals with a minimal investment in side items, it starts to look pretty cheap. Getting the oven-use for the week done at the outset is also a great thing for Summer, which is an added bonus. Photo by Steven Depolo.

1 Organic Chicken, 22 Healthy Meals, $49 Bucks | Squawkfox

 

 

Things you can do from here:

• Subscribe to Lifehacker using Google Reader
• Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites