Quote:Why bother if you are not going to enjoy the crispy skin? What other junk? Did you pick the bones clean? Did you consider reserving the carcass and boiling it for soup stock? A whole chicken can stretch a very long way if you don't waste any of it. With throwing things to the dogs and tossing the bones you wasted a big portion that can be used for good food stocks.
I can tell you what it's worth to me,, The value is the quality of the food I put into my children, not price per pound from the bird. Do the math on my investment,, This is if I process 8 of my original 12 Cornish Xs and get 4lbs each. Initial cost of chicks, making brooders, waters, feeders, I'll guess 100 bucks 6' chain link fence for a 20x40 run,,, my guess is 3-400 dollars. The price of materials for my 6x8' coop,, has to be 1200 for all the pressure treated lumber, 3/4 BC plywood, 3D shingles, thermal pane windows, ect. So I guess it's worth about 50.00 a pound to me,,,, and my first dozen eggs will be worth about 130.00 a piece, all before feed,,,gas for trips to the feed store and Home Depot, all the other little things I ended up buying, and the real kicker would be if I included my time invested @ 48.72 an hour Talk about the Barred Rock that laid the golden egg huh? My kids are worth every penny.
Quote: I once read a calculation that a Snicker's bar costs around $20/pound... yets people have the gaul to complain about $4/lb for chicken? Crazy.
Quote:Sounds to me like the dogs got an awful lot of your food You have to pick the whole carcass clean -- a LOT of the meat is in smaller packages than the breasts. Use the little bits for sandwiches, chicken salad, pasta, croquettes, whatever. And as Miss Prissy says, the skin is edible, and use the carcass and any skin you don't eat to make broth, and then use the broth to make, oh, any number of things. Plus I love the legs but when I went to pull them off only a stick came out ! See, here is where it's sounding like the dogs ate most of the PERFECTLY GOOD chicken meat -- when you overcook a roast chicken, then indeed the bones will pull out of the legs and leave the meat still attached (in the skin) to the main part of the carcass. All you have to do is a) adjust your cooking method, b) learn to find the hip joint with the tip of a knife so you can cut the ligament and make the leg easily removable (carving is not hard, you just have to find out how to do it!), and c) check the carcass just in case there's any useful meat still attached to it. Honest, just because your first experience with roasting a chicken did not work out the way you expected, is not the chicken's fault There just may be a bit of a learning curve involved, is all, no biggie Have fun, Pat