Thursday, October 30, 2008

Saving Money with Chicken Breasts

I use boneless, skinless chicken breasts in my cooking a lot and have found a few tips for saving money with them.

1. Always buy them on sale and stock up if you can. It's better to buy them on sale than to pay full price later. Albertson's sells them fresh at the butcher's counter for $1.88 a pound on a regular basis. I ask them to wrap my chicken breasts with two breasts (the photo below is one breast) per package. This saves money for me because I don't have to repackage them at home. Safeway sells them for $1.99 a pound when they are on a good sale but they are prepackaged in sets of 8-10 breasts. This means I spent a little extra repackaging them. Costco sells the flash frozen chicken breasts in a bag for $2.15 a pound. Most people think Costco is a good deal!

2. Cut them into bite-sized pieces whenever possible.
About 1 inch pieces are good. When serving a whole breast, most people serve an entire breast for each person. When you serve them in bite-sized pieces, you can easily feed 4-5 people with only two breasts.


3. Many pasta and rice recipes that call for chicken breasts can be adapted for chicken pieces instead. Chicken Fetticini Alfredo (homemade recipe coming soon) can be served this way. I have a recipe called Southwest Chicken and Rice (recipe coming soon) that is served this way, too. Tonight I cooked a recipe called Easy Chicken Paprika from the can of Chicken and Mushroom Soup that called for four chicken breasts to be cooked, added to the sauce, and served over noodles. I used two breasts and cut them up into pieces before adding them to the sauce. It worked out fine.

4. Popcorn Chicken goes a long way. Try following my recipe or any fried chicken recipe only use half the amount of chicken you'd normally use. You'll be surprised at by the size of the pile of chicken.

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1 Comments:

The Four Week Vegan said...

Great idea about having the butcher package the chicken breasts 2 at a time. I never thought of that. I always serve chicken in bite-sized portions, you're right it is a money-saver.