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Chicken: is it what's for dinner?


sassenach
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147 members have voted

  1. 1. On average, how many nights a week do you make chicken for dinner?

    • 0
      12
    • 1-2
      81
    • 3-4
      51
    • 5-6
      3
    • 7 It's all chicken, all the time, baby!
      0


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I make beef tacos on Wednesday, but other than that, if we have meat, it's usually chicken. Maybe a couple of times a month we'll have spaghetti or bacon (breakfast for dinner) but that's about it.   We do eat meatless a couple of nights a week, so 3-4 nights a week it's chicken. 

 

Would recipe variety help dh eat chicken without complaining? Chicken pot pie, chicken and rice, and chicken parmesan served with spaghetti are some of our favorites here.   How do you like to cook your chicken? Maybe you can find a few new ways to serve it. 

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I voted 1-2 but it really varies. Some weeks I'll roast up a large chicken and then use the leftovers for a few more meals. Some nights we use eggs as our protein in the form of dumplings or breakfast for supper. I use a fair amount of hamburger around here too.

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Over a two-week period we probably eat seafood 5 - 6 times, chicken twice, beef, pork or lamb (all counted as red meat regardless of what they say about pork) two times, and veggie the rest. We just don't need that much meat. Rather than eat chicken twice or three times, we'd have fish once.

 

Chickpeas and beans in soup are nice. I love lentils.

 

I would rather go veg than eat the same meat three times a week. Seafood is different because we can do shrimp, pollock, salmon, more salmon, clams, cod... No, the kids don't always eat all of it but they are developing a taste for it at different rates. :)

 

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If I could cook chicken all the time, I would. Sometimes I make something else just to make something else, honestly. I probably like the flavor of other things better - fish, steak, really perfectly done pork - but I find that they're more trouble, or more expensive, or less healthy (or all three) most of the time. Thus, chicken.

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DS thinks I make chicken too much.  I think it's cheap and easy. We probably have chicken in some form 4 nights a week.

 

Perhaps you need some different cheap-and-easy dishes to put in the mix?  

Consider eggs (technically chicken, but different taste-wise and cost-wise; put them in quiche, strata, fritatta), beans (Mexican dishes, Italian veg with white beans, veggie chili, bean soups, hummus), lentils, or nuts (butternut squash ravioli with a sauce using red onion, tart apples, and walnuts).

Think about skillet dinners using hamburger (stretch it with beans and lots of veggies).

Fish is nice but often not cheap; still, like the more expensive cuts of meat, you can use it as an accent rather than the focus of a dish.

Perhaps ds can suggest a few dishes, and maybe help you make them?

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I do something with chicken every week or two, but it's more like a condiment than a main dish. Serving chicken as the main thing with a side or two? That only happens twice a year when ds requests sweet and sour chicken on his real birthday and the day we celebrate his birthday.

 

I'm trying to use chicken a little more, but I still can't manage to do something with it more than once a week. I think fish is a lot more interesting and since I can buy mahi mahi here for about the same price as boneless, skinless chicken, I buy the fish.

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Chicken is pretty pricey here. My family love getting a break from less-expensive ground beef, and welcome chicken when it's what's for dinner.

 Really?  Where do you live?

 

Here it costs $1.99 - $2.99 a lb for chicken breast and thigh while ground beef is $4.99/lb.

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We have it at least once but usually twice a week. I can't handle having it much more frequently than that. I love chicken, I really do, I just get tired of it very quickly. I think this is due to the fact that chicken breast was/is my mom's favorite meat and so I had it very frequently growing up. My husband will eat just about anything but my kids tend to prefer pork or beef.

 

FWIW, ground beef runs between $2.99-3.28/lb, boneless chicken (both white and dark) runs $1.99-2.49/lb, bone-in dark meat/whole chickens are currently $1.29/lb, and pork (not bacon or sausage) runs $2.68-$3.68/lb.  Technically chicken is the cheapest but when I make chicken I tend to have to make more of it because for whatever reason it doesn't stretch as far - I need what I make to be dinner for that night and lunch for DH. Largely because we seem to prefer chicken dishes in which the chicken is a "stand alone" (with a few exceptions like Chicken Pot Pie) but prefer ground beef in casserole or secondary scenarios. We all seem to find pork to be more filling so we don't use quite as much per meal so in the end it all balances out.

 

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Hubby brings home cooked chicken rice to work every day. For dinner we cook vegetarian. Chicken drumsticks (non-organic) is $1.49/lb

 

How about giving your son who is complaining a budget for 7 dinners and let him do the buying and cooking. He and your other son can take turns.

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Roughly: chicken twice; fish twice; red meat once or twice; veggie once or twice.

 

FWIW: whole free-range chicken is £4.50 a kilo; free ranged chicken breast is £14 a kilo; factory-farmed chicken breast is £4 a kilo; lean minced/ground beef is around £8; fatty minced beef is around £4.  These are standard grocery store prices; Aldi is cheaper.

 

L

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I voted 3-4 times a week.  It would be more than that if we didn't go out to eat a couple of times.  Chicken is pretty versatile.  This time of the year in addition to the usual baked chicken recipes and stir frys I'm using it in a lot of soups.  DH has to watch his red meat intake, and  I despise  cooking fish.

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Chicken has a versatility that works well with how we eat. For example, in cooler weather we might have roast chicken one night, leftovers in a burrito or stir fry the next, soup later in the week. I suspect this is true for many.

 

We ate grilled burgers made with ground chicken last night (we don't eat red meat).  We had vegetarian food over the weekend (homemade calzones with escarole and shiitakes on Friday, Trader Joe's pumpkin raviolis with kale pesto on Saturday).  Tonight we are having a frittata--eggs so I guess that is chicken. 

 

We probably eat chicken 2-3 times a week, seafood twice, vegetarian 2-3 times.  Meat is rarely the focus of our plate so it is hard for me to vote.  I might use homemade chicken stock, for example, in an otherwise meat-free dish.

 

I encourage seasonal eating to add variety to the menu.

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 Really?  Where do you live?

 

Here it costs $1.99 - $2.99 a lb for chicken breast and thigh while ground beef is $4.99/lb.

 

Same here...... I can usually get good quality (nothing I need to cut off to use) boneless, skinless breasts for $3/lb. It's on sale at that price at least once a month, so I buy a month's worth at that time. Good quality (93%lean) ground beef is around $5/lb. But we eat more chicken because it's healthier than the beef. We usually eat sea scallops or shrimp once a week, chicken 3-4 times a week, 1 meatless and eat out once or twice.

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Never.  Dh has some kind of poultry allergy or intolerance or something and eating it makes him violently sick, so we almost never eat it. (On the extremely rare occasions I do make chicken, I make him something else.)  I miss chicken. :(

 

We've been eating a lot of pork lately.  My mom bought half a pig from a farm in her area and gave us a cooler full of different pork cuts.  Normally our meals are divided pretty evenly between pork, beef, and veg.  We don't eat seafood too often because I'm allergic to shellfish and dd just isn't a huge fan of seafood.

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I voted 3-4 but it really varies.  We have chicken fajita macaroni and cheese (seriously so good and easy.  Make chicken fajita filling (I add onion and finely diced carrot to mine for added veggies, also corn sometimes). Make mac and cheese.  Stir together and serve- crumbled tortilla chips on top are a favorite here) almost weekly, chicken soup, chicken stir fry, sometimes homemade chicken tenders, roasted chicken sometimes...it's cheap and easy. :)

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We have 2 chicken, 2 fish, 1 beef or pork, 1 bean or lentil, and 1 clean out the fridge night each week. I'm trying to work toward more fish and bean/lentil meals, but dh is very resistant. Our current rotation is his compromise to help me with the anti inflammatory diet. It used to be 2 chicken, 2 beef, 2 pork, and 1 clean out the fridge night. Dh is very much a carnivore.

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I haven't voted. But, we eat chicken a lot. However, we raise/keep chickens. DH just did one more butchering day, so I think we finally have all the chickens we want to butcher this year butchered. (The rest we will keep as layers. Oh, plus the 2 roosters.)

Anyway, our freezer is full of chicken. I cook/bake at least 2 chickens a week generally. Often 3. So we have chickens those 2/3 nights, plus leftovers. Which are either eaten for lunch or another dinner. So we are currently we eat chicken 4 or more times a week. 

We need to eat it more. I need freezer space for Christmas cookies. 

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I voted 0. Up to about 2 years ago it would have been 2-3. 

 

Then about 2 years ago my middle son started to become a vegetarian, at the age of just turned 6. :) He first gave up turkey (at Thanksgiving) and then chicken because he loves birds and couldn't bear to eat them. Then it extended to other meat that was obviously meat (steak, pork chops, etc). The last thing to go was bacon, since he loved the taste and he could kind of pretend it wasn't meat. For the past year and a half he's been complete veg and even is very strict about labels on things like soup. 

 

So, since then our weekly meals are more like 3-4 vegetable, 1-2 meat (usually beef since the meat eaters in the family prefer it), and 1-2 leftovers. We try to have fish roughly once a week, the vegetarian eats vegetarian sushi those nights. We might have chicken or pork one of the meat nights, but it would be something like every other week for both of those. Those of us who do eat meat are fine with it but it's just easier for me to do meals that we all eat and it's also probably healthier for all of us anyway. 

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Since I schedule things together, we may not have chicken every week but when we do it would be 3x (roast chicken, soup, enchiladas for example). We tend to have meat 4x a week, bean or dairy protein 1-2x, and an egg meal 1-2x. 

 

Our meats are mostly chicken and pork with beef occasionally thrown in. Of course, winter is here so I may be sending dh to look for cheap beef cuts because I love braised beef and noodles. Mmm.

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I answered 1-2, though if we eat leftovers it could certainly be one more.

 

I try to keep our meals rotating among beef, chx (or turkey), pork, seafood and vegetarian.

Besides the beans/veggie option beef is actually our cheapest to buy high quality (grassfed/pastured for beef, pork and poultry, wild caught with no preservatives for seafood).

We have lamb once a month or so and I have contemplated goat steaks, but not tried them yet.

Dh likes chx, but kids not so much. I like cooking whole chx, but dh doesn't like dark meat. Boneless skinless breasts are not my favorite. I prefer to buy bone in skin on and roast them for the meat, but they are becoming hard to find. Pastured chx is pricey, but yummy.

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We have chicken fajita macaroni and cheese (seriously so good and easy.  Make chicken fajita filling (I add onion and finely diced carrot to mine for added veggies, also corn sometimes). Make mac and cheese.  Stir together and serve- crumbled tortilla chips on top are a favorite here)

Gotta try this!

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We have chicken once a week, on Friday. We may have chicken sausage cut up in a pasta dish a couple of times a month. We might have ground beef twice a week, not because it's that much cheaper, but because it's easier to stretch by putting small amounts in several dishes. When we have chicken, it is in whole pieces, 1-2 pieces per person, so it adds up. Otherwise, we have veggie pizza, a bean-based soup or Mexican dish, meatless pasta and fish a couple of times a month.

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We are very chicken based here. I would say if there is meat in the meal it involves some form of chicken. I only buy red meat when there is a good sale. Same for fish. Although, I wish we could have fish more often.

 

We buy frozen fish and frequently toss it in a grain. I have a bazillion recipes for cooking fish from frozen--even breaded.

 

http://www.thenourishinggourmet.com/2010/01/six-tips-for-eating-quality-seafood-on-a-budget.html

 

If we ate meat every night we could not afford fish as often. We also try to eat ethical meat. What this translates to is very small meat portions (no paleo diet here) except on special occasions; vegetarian nights several times per week; and fish almost as a seasoning in some dishes.

 

Tonight I made chowder. $7 of salmon was spread between meals for eight and it was great--plenty of food to go around.

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