The 50 Cent Meal Part 3

Ok, if you read the previous posts you know that we have now made 10 meals from one chicken and we've barely dented it.

We had 2 meals of the meat when we first roasted it and then 8 total meals of biscuits and gravy using the drippings from the pan to make a gravy with some flour and salt. You may have used other spices for this as well, I'm just keeping this super simple so that anyone, even when supplies might be limited, can make what we've discussed so far.

Ok, we've finished the biscuits and gravy or have saved them for breakfast meals and still have this partially eaten bird sitting here.

Now we boil the whole chicken.

The whole thing, just throw it in a pot and boil it. I use a 2 gallon pot for this, using a smaller one will result in less food in the next part.

After I've boiled the chicken for maybe an hour in 2 gallons of water (more water, more food but thinner soup) I will pull it form the pot and let it cool enough to pull apart some of the meat on it.

I pull what was left of the first breast and the whole second breast, plus the tenders, off of the chicken and leave the rest on. Then stick that back in the fridge (or whatever way you're keeping it good)and keep the broth and breast for this next part.

In my pot I have around 1.5 gallons of fresh made chicken broth. I start by adding a lot of salt to the broth to bring out the flavor. In this amount of broth I use around 2 tablespoons of salt, so you need a lot to bring this broth's flavor out where you'll like it. You could use salt and pepper if you have them both or salt and whatever you like in chicken noodle soup. I usually do salt, pepper and red pepper flakes. These spices and salt cost almost nothing... pennies.

For $1.50 I can get a big bag of egg noodles. I usually use only half of the bag for the 2 gallon chicken noodle. The noodles usually swell up so far there isn't much water/broth in it.

First though I'll pull out 4 cups of this broth and store it for later. You can do a quick canning on this by just cooking a jar with a lid on or adding the broth to a jar while its really hot then sealing the lid. This will hold like this until the seal pops. I've had broth like this for months without proper pressure canning stay in great shape.

Ok, from the chicken noodle I just made my son and I, get 3 full meals each plus about one bowl left so 7 meals but I'll round that to 6 total meals so it's easier math.

To recap we are no up to 16 meals from that single chicken. For the biscuits and gravy I added maybe 25 cents to our running total in flour and salt/pepper. A little more if I made milk gravy.

Then we just added 75 cents of egg noodles to make a huge pot of chicken noodle, again adding negligible amounts of salt and pepper.

So, we are now up to 16 total meals and we have only spent, in USA, 7 total dollars.

But wait, I still have a full chicken in the fridge that has now had only 2 breasts eaten from it, a drumstick, maybe 2 drumsticks. It still has wings and thighs and all the other meat left on it.

We just hit our target of 50 cents per meal and we're still going.

To be continued...

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Michael David Talks Food #4 | The 50 Cent Meal Part 3
by Michael David
Co-founder of #thealliance and loyal since before the egg.