Work that chicken: Clever money-saving recipes

Country Living magazine's smart dishes that'll make that roast go so much further. By Elisabeth Luard

Free-range, organically reared, maize-fed, farm-assured... the not-so-humble roasting chicken wears more labels than a designer-dressed Hollywood superstar. As with couture clothes, it's what happens behind the scenes that counts. Chicken wellbeing comes as a result of a healthy diet and conditions that mirror a bird's natural desire to roam - and wellbeing delivers flavour, texture and a proper balance between bone and meat.

 

It's not really a matter of size. A small, muscular, free-range bird might be twice the price per pound of a large, flabby, soft-boned, indoor bird, but it'll more than earn it back in the way it cooks and tastes. In Mrs Beeton's day, the hen was too valuable an egg producer to be popped in the pot until her laying days were over. And Victorian households kept a stockpot fortified with an old boiling-fowl as the basis for the everyday dishes. Young Isabella Beeton suggests plenty of ways in which small quantities of expensive ingredients can be turned into‘made-dishes' -  the dishes we now buy as ready-meals.

 

In the absence of a sinewy old boiler (hard to come by nowadays) here's how to to prepare a useful stock from the carved-out carcass of a cooked chicken... Set aside the meat and pack everything else into a roomy pot with celery and leek tops, carrot peelings, onion, bay leaf and peppercorns, cover with water and bubble gently for an hour, strain, bubble up to concentrate and add a little salt. You now have the makings of a good few delicious meals. Make poached or roast chicken, create a stock (referred to as hot chicken broth in the recipes below) and then use it to create more delightful chicken dishes...

THE RECIPES...

 

Poached chicken with spring vegetables

 

Chicken rice and peas

 

Chicken and asparagus pancakes

 

Valencian chicken pie

 

Potted chicken

 

 

Look here too...

 

More Country Living recipes

 

More chicken recipes

 

Cheap and chic homestyle tips

Subscribe Save up to 47%