One pasture raised chicken, so many uses! This blog post will tell you the ways I use up one chicken to feed our family a few meals, our dog one meal, and the garden too. Zero waste chicken uses? Yes please.
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Feed The Family
At least twice a month, our family takes one pasture raised whole chicken, about 3.5-4 pounds, from Wild Pastures (meat delivery helping support small-scale American farmers, regenerative agriculture, and chemical-free farming practices) and makes it into a few meals. I’ll either roast it or slow cook it in a pot of its own liquor (potlikker if you’re from the south). Our family of four will eat a meal of roasted chicken and vegetables or chicken and rice “soup/stew” with chicken salad on the side.
UPDATE:
Since the original posting of this blog, our family has begun to raise our own chickens. It is such a great feeling knowing where your food comes from, what it ate, how it was treated, etc. We give hearts and livers to the dog raw and use the feathers and blood in my garden and compost. The feet get washed well and saved for collagen-rich bone broth. Truly a zero waste experience! Or mostly zero waste.
Then after the chicken has been picked of all meat I simmer the bones in a pot of water with carrots, celery, garlic, and a splash of apple cider vinegar to draw out all the good stuff from the bones. This makes us a good chicken broth to use in a soup later in the week.
Let the broth cool then add it to a couple of quart jars to put in the refrigerator for later in the week or bag it and freeze it for much later use.
I love to pour the broth into ice cube trays to make small batches to use in recipes like a side rice dish I want some added flavor in.
Using these cubes helps me to avoid using chicken bouillon but still get that chicken flavor I want in some of my dishes.
You may simmer your bones again in water with new carrots, onions, etc but know this broth will not be as dark as the first.
Additionally, you may pressure can the chicken broth to make it shelf stable. I LOVE using my Presto Digital Pressure Canner!
Feed The Pets
Any extra gristle and skin goes in a pot of frozen green beans from my garden from the summer before and cooked for our dog. I’m not a veterinarian so I will not pretend to know what’s best for you to feed your family pet but I’ve done my own research on a raw food diet for dogs.
I mean, our dog eats chicken poop in the yard and cat vomit if we don’t watch her well enough. Surely some cooked chicken skin and gristle won’t hurt her. Also, have you read what’s in dog kibble? As pricey as the “good dog food” is, we can make it ourselves at home if we really wanted to.
No, this recipe isn’t raw but it’s yummy and why waste food, though? After all, this post is trying to teach you zero waste chicken dinner uses!
See my DISCLOSURE statement on health related comments based on my personal experience and opinion.
Feed The Garden
Think you’re done with those bones yet? Wrong. Now it’s time to use them to feed your garden. I told you this was a zero waste chicken!
Bone meal is an excellent garden fertilizer that can be bought in the store. If you’ve got a few extra bones, why not give this a try, save some money, and boost your garden at the same time?
A good rule of thumb is to test your soil first to see if it is deficient in phosphorous. Phosphorous is what bone meal is good at providing your garden soil. Then you’ll want to have a plan of what you’re going to plant where. A garden journal is SO helpful to successful gardens! Some plants like more phosphorous and others like more nitrogen. It’s best to amend soils in your garden plot for those plants with what they need the most of.
Organic fertilizers like bone and blood meal smell awful. Fair warning! But animals, especially dogs, love the smell of it so use caution. You’ll want to mix in your bone or blood meals into your soil well and then top dress with soil. This way animals will have a harder time getting to it. The soil will help dilute the stinky, but most beneficial, smell.
How to Make Bone Meal
A great how-to for making bone meal at home from your scrap chicken bones is here. If you do not have a dehydrator, use your oven on 170 for a few hours (that’s my oven’s lowest temperature). I do not have a food processor but do have a blender! I sure did blend my bones in my blender and it worked great. Blender is still alive to tell the tale, too.
Using a meat tenderizer hammer works well with larger bones. Between two dish towels on a safe, secure surface, beat the bigger bones into smaller pieces for the blender to easily handle first.
Another recipe for zero waste chicken use
If you get bone-in chicken thighs in your Wild Pastures order, you can still save those bones to use too! After dinner, rinse bones well and store in a ziplock bag in the freezer. Wait until you’ve got enough to make it worth your while to simmer, grind, then dehydrate.
Our family likes this simple recipe for dinnertime too.
Raising your own chickens
There may come a day when you decide to raise your own chickens in your own backyard like we did in 2023! We’ve since raised several sets of birds from babies to the dinner table. Here are a few posts about what we’ve learned on that journey:
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