Roast Chicken Four Ways, Day 1

This is a short series about reducing food waste and saving money. Reducing waste is good for the planet and its good for your wallet and its just a smart way to live, no matter your level of income. One of the bones I have to pick with a lot of the recipes you see today is that they don’t tell you what to do with leftovers or scraps. And if you’re making several different recipes each week, you can be left with a collection of partially-eaten ingredients without a use, that eventually go bad in your fridge.

This post covers how to use up a roast chicken and save time and money on dinner by making your food stretch and last for up to a week. Or skip the roasting and grab one of those juicy hot rotisserie birds you can get at your local grocery. The hard part is already done when the chicken is cooked, fresh and hot, so you can focus on throwing together a quick and delicious homemade dinner.

Most of these recipes are scaled for two people. If you are making dinner for four, simply scale the recipes up 2x – so for example, you might use two roasted or rotisserie chickens and double the other ingredients.

A rant about serving sizes: Recipes have traditionally been scaled for 4-6 people. But times are changing and less people are cooking for a big family. I generally only cook for myself and my partner but you rarely see recipes for two servings – trust me, I’ve looked! This is yet another issue that contributes to household food waste. If you’re cooking a recipe scaled for four or six people but theres only one or two… you end up with a lot of leftovers. For me, that means a lot of waste because my partner and I will usually avoid leftovers in lieu of a freshly cooked meal, because many things taste the best the day they are made.

Remember to save all your vegetable scraps along the way for a bonus round at the end of the week!

Day 1 – Chicken Dinner

You can approach this in a number of ways. One is to roast your own chicken. The pros for roasting your own are that you can choose the quality of the chicken and you can season it with your own personal style of flavors. The cons are that it can take a while to roast which might not be a practical step on a weeknight. Another way is to purchase a Rotisserie chicken from your local grocery store. Both approaches have value. So why not use both? My suggestion is to roast a whole chicken on the weekend, but use a store bought one during a busy week.

Quick + Easy Weeknight version: Store bought Rotisserie chicken. Carve yourself a bit of breast or cut off one of those leg-thigh combinations, put on your plate and spoon on a Simple Gremolata and some great sides like steamed veggies, mac-n-cheese, crispy smashed potatoes, and corn bread.

Weekend Meal Prep version: Whole Roast Chicken. I don’t know where the word “spatchcock” comes from but its a silly word for a clever way of cutting a whole chicken so that it cooks evenly and quickly. One of the common pitfalls with roasting a whole chicken is that it can take ages to cook and you can end up with overcooked and undercooked pieces because different parts of it have different density. Spatchcocking is a foolproof way to give every part of the chicken an even chance of cooking properly by reducing the density and increasing the surface area.

Why it works >>> Think of a whole chicken like a jet-puffed marshmallow and imagine if you are holding it over a fire. The outsides will heat up first and get hotter and hotter while the heat is trying to reach the center. By the time the center gets as hot as you’d like it, the outside will be burnt to a crisp. Now imagine smashing that marshmallow down so that its flat. It’s now wider than it was but a lot less thick, or dense. Holding it over the fire now will allow for much more even cooking – the center will get to the right temperature almost as quickly as the edges do.

Apply that logic to a whole chicken. A whole, 4 pound, chicken will cook in about 1.5 hours or, spatchcocked, will cook in about 45 minutes with reduced density and increased surface area. Not to mention, the meat ends up juicer and evenly cooked.

How to spatchcock a chicken:

Using kitchen scissors or a sharp knife, cut out the backbone of the chicken. Then flip it over and place the palm of your hand flat against the breastbone and push down. The breastbone will snap and the chicken will now lay flat. Now just season and roast. Bonus points for tucking the wing tips under the chicken (or cut them off and save for stock).

Here is a quick video tutorial

>>> go to Day 2