Now that you have completed your meal planning preparations, (if not, go here), you are ready to tackle the meals you would like to include in your calendar or schedule. There are multiple ways to approach this, but for purposes of this series, the entries will be organized by protein type. Recall that I use a theme for the week, (Meatless Monday meal, Taco Tuesday, Italian Wednesday, Sandwich Thursday, Grill or Pizza Friday, Seafood Saturday, and Soup/Stew Sunday), which also helps to guide my decision making. Once you have established your core meals by protein, I would recommend tagging them with themes — if you want to get fancy, you can make a spreadsheet or chart to help organize your options!
Chicken (and for the purposes of this post, you can substitute turkey if you’d like), is a versatile meat — you have whole chicken, chicken breast (bone in, bone out, skin on, skin off), chicken thighs (with all the same options as breast), chicken tenders, chicken wings… In many recipes, you can substitute or interchange the different cuts based on what you have. A few notes to keep in mind: bone in meat will take longer to cook, skin on meat tends to retain more juices naturally, but will also possibly have a fattier end product (depending on how it’s cooked and if you eat the skin), it’s very important to cook meat to 165˚F. (Note: if you do not have a meat thermometer, I highly recommend investing in one. It is not only a good tool for safety and health, but it makes preparing meals a lot easier!)
Aside from the various cuts of meat, you can do virtually anything to prepare chicken – roast, sautéed, bake, grill, stir fry, shred, dice, and slice! You can add sauces, cook it in a sauce, add other toppings (cheese, herbs, bacon!), mix it with vegetables or fruit…. The possibilities are endless. It is fun to get creative and try new things, but if you aren’t comfortable with that yet, let’s discuss some of the techniques I use.
I often will think about my weekly meal plan in terms of how I can prepare food one day, but get a few meals out of it. If you aren’t cool with a repeat of the same meal (aka leftovers), repurposing leftovers will be your friend. That is what I will focus on here, but feel free to repeat the same meal if your family enjoys that!
If you have a roast chicken one day (let’s say Sunday since you have more time, while Sunday is my ‘soup/stew’ night, when I do a roasted meat, it generally falls on Sunday as well), roast it with some onions, potatoes, and carrots. You can serve it along with those vegetables and a salad — feel free to add bread or another vegetable to your liking. I recommend picking the chicken meat off the bones that day. The bones can be used to make a stock (go ahead and freeze them if you don’t have time that day or want to save more bones). Later in the week you can use that leftover chicken in many ways: chicken tacos, chicken enchiladas, chicken fajita, chicken alfredo, baked chicken pasta, chicken salad, chicken sandwiches, toppings for a pizza (buffalo pizza anyone?!), or chicken soup (you can use the veggies you roasted with the chicken, add some pasta or rice, and even make your own stock with the bones!). You can also serve the chicken as is on a salad or have a ‘picnic’ style dinner.
These options will require a bit of planning (to make sure you have the ingredients) and time for preparation, but a good portion of your cooking is done by having the chicken ready. Some of these ideas also lend themselves better to being some of your lunch ideas for the week (we will have a post on planning breakfast and lunch also!)
If you don’t have a roast chicken from Sunday, that doesn’t mean you can’t do your chicken preparation ahead of time. This may look like baking a tray of chicken on Sunday… if you are trying to simplify your meals and cooking time, ALWAYS cook extra. It does not take one more ounce of your energy to cook two pounds of chicken versus one… and now you have twice as much to work with. You can take one pound to make your chicken enchiladas for the week and the other to slice up for chicken sandwiches or dice up to make a chicken salad. You can also freeze the cooked chicken for a tough week when you don’t have the time to do your Sunday preparation. This same principal goes for grilling your chicken. If you are following my themes, on Friday when you make BBQ chicken on the grill, go ahead and double the meat — you don’t have to BBQ the extra, but you can cook it for an upcoming meal. (This holds true if you make something like a breaded chicken that can freeze well – make double, which is a bit more time, but no extra mess, and freeze half for a future meal.)
Some other chicken tips I can offer are if you have an instant pot, frozen chicken will cook up quickly (less than 30 minutes) without any hands on time. There are also lots of recipes for making your whole meal (think dump dinner, set it and forget it style!) in the instant pot with using frozen chicken (and other meats). This is especially helpful to have items on hand so that if something comes up and your day takes a left turn, you can still have dinner on the table before midnight without having to go through drive through or losing your mind 🙂 This use of the instant pot is one of my favorites.
If you know you will have an especially tricky night, but you have time to plan ahead, the crock pot can be your friend. You can have your meal prepared in the fridge the night before, put it on in the morning, and it will be done by evening. Some crock pots even have delayed start times and keep warm settings. Depending on the ages of the members of your family, a meal like this can have a range of serving times to accommodate different schedules.
What are your favorite chicken recipes? Are you on the hunt for a perfect one? What challenges do you have with chicken? As I mentioned, you really can mix chicken with almost anything — which is your friend if you are getting bored with “just chicken” or the same old. A lot of these ideas will save you time and energy in the long run, but initially may take a bit of extra planning and preparation. New habits can be a little tricky, but I promise once you get the hang of this it will make your life so much easier!
Happy Chicken planning!!
xoxo, Gretchen
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