You can save lots of money learning how to butcher a chicken. Buy whole chicken (cheaper than pieces), cut it up into pieces yourself. It’s easy. The video below is less than 3 minutes long.
Save money - learn how to butcher a chicken
Daisy
#2
I have had the no wastage message drummed into me from an early age so I always wince when people throw scraps and bones in the bin without making stock out of them first. I used to buy turkey carcasses from my butcher in the UK after they were done with it for cold meat cuts. I used to get loads of meat off for pies, then the most amazing stock and then to the dogs. All for £1.
Fiorella
#3
You are a smart, smart gal, Daisy! 
The best part, too, is that the almost-free food is so delicious! Nothing can beat that!
Daisy
#4
Yeah, it tastes soooo much better doesn’t it? The cracking I make from the free skin the butcher gives me here is the best ever!
I think enforced budget provokes creativity. You don’t need too much imagination to make a great meal out of a prime bit of steak really do you?
jfricke
(Guardian of the bacon)
#5
The masses want the breasts. I find that I can normally find legs and thighs on sale cheaper than whole chickens / lb
Fiorella
#6
I think you are absolutely correct. Enforcing budget improves ones cooking skills. The “nasty bits” and “cheap cuts” have so much flavour and have become forgotten in the age of “unwrap, place in microwave…bing…done…eat”
Daisy
#7
Yes. Also if something doesn’t taste great or is a bit tough, you need to get creative with herbs and spices and cooking techniques.
Daisy
#9
Yeah, see. Peasants have been laughing behind their Lord and Lady’s back for centuries. Budget = Yummo!
Fiorella
#10
Exactly!!! All the best recipes are treasures from the indentured class. Makes me laugh when I see something like escargot served on a bed of purslane salad. These were wild field pickings of the poor, lifting and seeing what was behind the big rocks, scavenging dinner items.
Daisy
#11
What I find super annoying though is when all these cheap cuts get ‘discovered’ and stop being cheap. Lamb shanks used to be dirt cheap. Now they cost the earth!
Fiorella
#12
Yeah, I know! I’m seeing the same trend with beef cuts, too. I think sous vide technique will help propagate that trend further.
Becky_StrattonCooper
(Becky Stratton Cooper)
#15
My budget experiment began with moving to Alaska to teach last July. In September we bought goats, in October we received egg laying hens from some locals, in November, fertile turkeys to lay and hatch eggs for next fall, and in December we started to breed rabbits for meat. We also have some salmon in the freezer, along with moose and caribou :). We are moving toward raw and natural feed for the family AND the animals (I just started growing fodder inside for the livestock animals, feed bones and stock and other cuts of meat to the dogs and cat). My hope for next year is almost 100% food security as well as super cheap keto budget! Starting this summer (hopefully, if my doe has been bred) our dairy products will be mostly home grown, as well all our green leafy veggies. Our meats will mostly be homegrown or hunted/fished. I wonder if there are others out there going keto and growing/raising their food themselves.
Fiorella
#16
Wow, that’s incredible. Tom Naughton (he produced and starred in the Fathead movie) moved away from the big city and bought some farm land. He’s not at the same 100% independent level as you are, but similar philosophy.
Becky_StrattonCooper
(Becky Stratton Cooper)
#17
We aren’t 100% yet, but we move a little closer every month.
jfricke
(Guardian of the bacon)
#20
No plans or desires to be 100% but we are growing our own beef, will raise a lamb or 2 in the spring, Going to be raising our own laying hens soon. My wife has a coworker whose husband raises hogs outdoors on a small scale that we purchase from. We plant a decent garden.