Stop buying chicken breast, whole birds are $0.89 a pound at my Kroger in Cincinnati | Budget Friendly Meals - Freelance Forum - The Community for Independent Professionals
Stop buying chicken breast, whole birds are $0.89 a pound at my Kroger in Cincinnati
I feed four people on about $85 a week and the thing I see folks get wrong is grabbing those $4.99 packs of boneless skinless breast. A whole chicken at my Kroger in Cincinnati ran $0.89 a pound on Tuesday, so a 5 pound bird cost me $4.45 and gave us two dinners plus 6 cups of stock I would have paid $3 for in a box. Yes you have to spend 10 minutes breaking it down, and no it is not hard once you do it twice. I roast the carcass with onion scraps for 40 minutes at 425, then simmer it while I do dishes, and that stock carries a whole pot of soup later in the week. Ground beef is the same story, the 80/20 family pack beats the 1 pound tubes by almost $2 a pound here. What is the cheapest protein per pound where you live, and is it beef, chicken, or pork?
The whole bird thing is spot on, but I'll add one step that saved me a bunch. After I carve it, I throw the bones and skin back in the pot with a splash of apple cider vinegar, maybe a tablespoon, and let it sit 30 minutes before turning on the heat. Sounds weird but it pulls more out of the bones and my stock comes out with actual body to it instead of tasting like hot water. Pork shoulder is my cheap one here in Dayton, $1.29 a pound at the Mexican market on Troy Pike, and it feeds us three nights easy.