Affording Free Range Chicken
Various channel 4 programs airing in the UK in January of this year brought to light the true methods of chicken farming to the majority of the nation. Yes it was old news to some (I’d seen it about 15-18 months before then on TV, and some people I’ve spoken to were campaigning for this in the 80s/90s!), but to a lot it wasn’t, and it’s already been proven that a percentage of people have changed their buying habits, and have moved on to free range chickens.
However a lot of people’s arguments were that free range chickens were not affordable to them. Personally I don’t really agree with this argument. A whole chicken in Sainsburys can cost around £4.50, and that would feed a family of 4 and leave the carcass for making at least 3 or 4 decent bowls of soup too. So for about £1.12 per person you’d get enough meat to go with your dinner, and a bowl of soup. From one of these chickens the 2 of us (who are big eaters) get our roast dinner and enough meat left over for risotto the next day plus a large bowl of soup each for lunch.
The trouble I’ve found is that buying free range chicken breasts is expensive, and not very affordable to us. Free range leg and thigh packs are not too badly priced, and we had a box of chicken wings for about £1.50 for 8 the other day, and I love chicken wings! However the chicken breasts are expensive, and whilst free range turkey is cheaper, it’s just not as good for fajitas or stirfry (seems to dry out quicker). I tend to find the breasts at about £3-4 for a pack, yet a whole chicken costs about £1 more!
We’re quite lucky in that we can go shopping to our local Costco, and they’ve started to sell free range whole chickens, typically in a large format (around 2.3kg per bird!), but at a cheaper per kg price than the supermarkets. So today I’ve spent the afternoon with 2 large chickens and have cut them up into 4 large breasts (1 breast is more than enough for the two of us, so that’s 8 dinners), 4 leg/thighs which will do for a roast dinner (so 4 more dinners) and 4 chicken wings, great for the BBQ. Plus I’ve taken both carcasses and am currently making soup with that, which I’ll freeze, ready for when I fancy something warm for lunch. I should get about 8 soups easily out of them. The cost of all this? £15 and less than an hour of my time. Now I’m no butcher but it’s relatively easy to cut up a chicken, and even if it’s a smaller one from a supermarket, it works out so much cheaper than buying things separately.
So in the future, if you want to save yourself some cash, buy the whole chickens and cut them up yourself. All you need is a good short but sharp knife to cut through the cartiladge (you can twist the leg and wings first to get the bone to pop out). From £15 we’ve got 8 dinners of fajitas, stirfry or risotto, 4 roast dinners, 4 wings and about 8 soups for lunch or a light dinner. I really don’t think you can complain with that return of investment! And, of course, it tastes so much better than indoor reared chickens 
- August 2nd '08
I just finished making about 2-3 litres of chicken soup from the 2 carcasses! That’s without any veg or vermicelli added. I’ll add that in when I reheat it.