How to Cook Chicken for a Week’s Worth of Dinner

We know how important staying on a budget is to families. It may seem almost impossible to find cheap and frugal recipes that can feed a family and still be delicious. But at RecipeLion, we have a slew of budget friendly recipes that can help you get through the week, and also have you eating like kings. For example, in our collection of 25 Poor Man Cheap Meals and Frugal Recipes, you’ll find casserole recipes, pasta dishes and so much more that can all help you save every last penny.

We received a great guest post from our friends over at Tip Hero on how you can use one chicken for a week’s worth of dinners. Now that’s frugal cooking! Keep reading below to see how you can make the most of your chicken and make some delicious budget friendly chicken recipes. Enjoy!

Use a Chicken for a Week’s Worth of Dinners

By: Tip Hero

This awesome post by Max Wong over at Wise Bread immediately caught our attention. We’ve featured a lot of ideas in the past about using a whole chicken for several meals, but never before have we seen a full-on breakdown of how, specifically, someone uses up that chicken each day of the week.

Max’s post is based on an actual week of his life when he purchased a $5 4-pound chicken and made it last from Sunday to Saturday. Here’s the quick run down of what he did:

Sunday: Did the brunt of the cooking. Also made gravy and giblet juice. Had an old-fashioned meal of roasted chicken, biscuits and gravy.
Sunday Night: Pulled the meat off of the cooled chicken. Split the meat in half – half in the freezer and half in the fridge. Cooked the chicken carcass in the crock pot with 10 cups of water, celery stalk and rice to make jook.
Monday: Used leftover biscuits to make chicken sandwiches.
Tuesday: Made fettuccine alfredo by cubing leftover chicken.
Wednesday: Using one of the leftover thighs, he made Chinese chicken salad with the help of a 10 cent package of ramen noodles.
Thursday: Add chicken meat to a pizza or a quick quesadilla.
Friday: Used the remaining chicken pieces to make a chicken chili. You could use a chili as a taco or sloppy joe filling to feed more people.
Saturday: Defrosted the frozen jook and had that for dinner.

To check out the full post and get started with your own plan (perhaps using leftover Christmas turkey or chicken), head over to Wise Bread Get a Week’s Worth of Dinners Out of One Chicken.