Rubber Chicken – How We Used to Stretch One Chicken for Days….

Years ago, when the kids were younger, I used to talk quite a lot on here about something we called rubber chicken. 

Basically, it was our name for buying one whole chicken and stretching it across as many meals as we reasonably could. It worked really well when the kids were little because portion sizes were smaller and somehow one chicken seemed to go on forever.

I haven’t used the phrase for years, but it popped straight back into my head this week when I picked up a whole chicken for just £2.27 in the reduced section at Asda. I often see whole chickens in the reduced section but, and I’m not sure if this makes me a hypocrite as I’m not a vegetarian, I try and only buy free range when I buy meats and the ones that I see usually aren’t labelled as free range so I tend to leave them behind. 

This one was organic so it went straight in our trolley and I knew straight away that I wanted to see how far I could make it stretch now.  The answer is not quite as far as it used to, which is hardly surprising when the kids are grown up and everyone eats bigger portions, but I still managed to get three meals from it in one way or another.

I do see people on my social feeds who seem to stretch one chicken into meal after meal after meal and I always think they must either have much smaller appetites than we do or they’re buying absolutely giant chickens. 😂

Day one was roast chicken

The first night we had the chicken fresh from the oven as a proper roast dinner with stuffing, roasties, vegetables and Yorkshire puddings.

And while we’re talking about Yorkshire puddings, I’ve always loved the fact that they used to be served as a starter in some households because they were so cheap to make and helped fill everyone up before the more expensive meat was served.  Such a simple idea, but a clever one.

Back to today’s roast and I definitely wasn’t holding chicken back from the roast just so I could say I’d stretched it further though. I’d much rather everyone had a decent portion and enjoyed their dinner.  That’s probably the biggest difference between rubber chicken now and when the kids were younger. Back then, one chicken really could stretch over several meals because we just didn’t need as much of it.

Day two was chicken fried rice

After the roast, I stripped off what chicken was left and we used it the next day for chicken fried rice. There wasn’t enough left that I’d want to serve chicken as the main part of another meal, but there was more than enough for this.

I just cooked some rice and added the chicken along with a couple of eggs, some peas and soy sauce. Nice and easy, and because the chicken was mixed through everything else, it went much further than it would have if I’d tried to make it the main part of the meal again.

If you’ve got more leftover chicken than I did, I’ve got a post with 8 ways to use up leftover chicken which might give you a few more ideas.

Day three was homemade chicken soup

The carcass of the chicken wasn’t going in the bin either.  I popped it into the slow cooker overnight with some water and a few bits to make some homemade chicken stock, and then the next day I used that as the base for a soup.

There really wasn’t much chicken left by this point, just a few little bits that I picked off once the stock was done, but that was fine. I added those back in with some veggies and that was meal number three.

So that £2.27 chicken gave us roast chicken on day one, chicken fried rice on day two and homemade chicken soup on day three.

It definitely doesn’t stretch quite as far as rubber chicken used to when the kids were younger, but I wouldn’t want it to if that meant cutting everyone’s portions just to make it last another day.

But three meals with one bargain chicken as the base?  I’m definitely calling that a win.

If you don’t want to miss future posts, you can add your email address to the subscribe box on this page and new posts will land straight in your inbox. You can also follow along over on my Facebook page or on Pinterest for more money-saving ideas, recipes, family life and everything else I share on Frugal Family.

And if you’re looking for some extra meal planning inspiration, you’ll find me over on my other blog, Meal Planning Made Easy, where I share simple meal plans, family-friendly recipes and plenty of ideas to make feeding everyone that little bit easier.

Do your future self a favour – Pin this post for later.