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I remember my grandmother telling me how when she was a little girl she used every part of the chicken. She raised them and ate their eggs. When it was time for that chicken to pass onto the big chicken coop in the sky, the feathers went into pillows.
She cooked and ate the meat. Chicken fat (schmaltz) was rendered and kept for frying. The liver was made into pate. The bones helped make healthy chicken broth.
I thought that was the end of the chicken, but apparently I was wrong.
If you dry the bones and smash them to bits you get bone meal, an incredible soil nutrient that plants love.
Because most people are too busy to even think about deboning a chicken, we pay EXTRA for skinless and boneless chicken. Egad! We’ve thrown out the baby with the bath water.
Let’s consider the cost in lost nutrition of buying boneless chicken. Here’s the math.
Skinless, boneless chicken breasts can cost as much as $5.99/ lb. You cook those babies up, eat them and you are done. End of value. You got protein. And depending on whether that chicken was raised in a commercial farm or free range, you might also have gotten a bunch of antibiotics and hormones.
Let’s say that organic, free range chicken is going for $2.79/lb. You can get an entire cutup chicken for around $9. Make a fresh pot of chicken soup. Serve it as the main course for dinner for a family of four with a bit left over for lunch.
Reserve white breast meat to whip up chicken salad (shredded chicken, hard boiled egg, mayo and salt/pepper) for dinner the next night. Make a salads with greens, tomato, olives, cheese with chicken salad in the middle. Drizzle with olive oil and lemon juice. Serve with crusty bread.
But wait, there’s more. When you are deboning the chicken (after you have boiled it in the soup and are now taking out the bones and shredding it for the soup), take the boiled bones (remove any skin but keep the gristle) and put them in a small pot. Cover the bones with filtered water. Now slowly simmer for hours. All day would be good. Just make sure that you don’t run out of water. Keep the bones covered. Filter the broth and put in the fridge. The collagen from the bones should cause the broth to gel. Bone broth is nutritional gold since it is full of minerals which support the immune and digestive systems. Add it to rice or soups or sauces. Whatever will do well with a bit of liquid and a slight chicken flavor.
You’re not done yet. Now, take those bones and dry them by cooking them in a low temp oven (120 degrees) or microwave them. Now put the dried bones into a paper bag and pound at them with a hammer until they are crushed into bits. This is called “bone meal fertilizer.” A vital nutrient which provides plants with phosphorus and calcium which Miracle Grow sells a 3-pound bag for $14.99.
Are you now starting to see the money going down the drain when you buy boneless, skinless chicken instead of a real chicken with bones and skin and nutrients? By the way, the chicken manufacturers are definitely NOT tossing out all that good stuff when they sell you the overpriced skinless and boneless stuff. They are using it in a hundred different ways including selling the chicken feet as a delicacy in Asia. They must be laughing all the way to the bank.
I don’t really think that you or I are going to start raising, wringing the neck of and de-feathering our own chickens, but let’s at least get the most nutritional value out of the chicken as we can get. Or, maybe you ARE going to raise your own chickens. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.
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Welcome to Bargain Babe! I’m Mara, and I’m so glad you’re here. I am an obsessive bargain hunter and penny pincher, and I am determined to live a full life without EVER paying full price.
I use my bones for fertilizer, too, but I don’t work as hard at it After the meat and gristle are removed from the bones(beef, pork poultry) I run them through the dish washer with a load of dishes. The point of that is to remove the smell which would attract animals and remove the fat which would ruin the compost. Than I just throw them in the compost pile. I do not do this with small splintery bones that would hurt and animal that might get in the compost pile. Since I have a lot of leaves in the pile my compost tends to be acidic and the bones break down very quickly.
I’ve always used the bones and skin to make broth, which I cook down and refrigerate to make skimming the fat easier. When I came home from an all-day outing, it was so easy to grab a small packet of bones from the fridge, quickly make a broth (with an added can of broth), then add onion, carrots, celery, herbs, noodles, and leftover cubed chicken breast to make a nourishing pot of comfort food. Quick and easy and satisfying. Now that I know about drying and smashing the bones, I might give that try as well. However, I won’t use it around tomatoes, as their roots don’t want more acid in my already acidic soil.
The bones are good to use around tomatoes because they provide calcium and magnesium that tomatoes need. The bones themselves are not acid. They break down easily in the compost pile without being smashed because many other things like leaves and grass clippings are acidic.
@Linda Gertig – What a great idea – just put the bones in the dishwasher. I would never have thought of that. Thanks for posting your comment.
So now I am confused on whether the bones are good or bad for the tomatoes. Does anyone want to clarify this issue?
They are great for tomatoes
Bones (all ground up) can provide calcium and other nutrients to the soil. Tomatoes love the extra calcium. You don’t want any meat on the bones because that attracts scavengers such as rats, raccoons and opossums, and so on.
I never pay CLOSE to $5.99 for chicken breasts, I get it on sale for $1.99, individually freeze most of them……..if I learn anything from bargain sites, it’s buy in bulk when it’s on sale!
@ Kathie – Great price for those chicken breasts. Wish I could find a place where I could get free-range grass fed organic chicken for $1.99. I’d buy them in bulk if I could. Does anyone know a way to get free-range grass fed organic chicken at a great price?
How long do they need to be in the oven to dry? and how small do the pieces need to be smashed? I don’t want my dogs to be nosing around the tomatoes licking the soil. what other crops would like this?
lucky me. bones dry out on top of wood stove. warmer weather might have to dry outside or top of burn barrel. this week,chicken quarters are on sale for .59 lb.
I turn the bones into a delicious pate’ spread! Those bones that cooked all day (2 days in my slow cooker) are ready to crumble! I mash them with my fingers, process into a paste using a little broth, if necessary, then sieve through fine mesh. My bones are usually so well-seasoned that nothing more needs adding. Any slivers are discarded. When cooked long enough, splinters are usually non-existent! Pressure cookers work even faster.
The larger the bones, the longer the cooking time. Bones from capons or stewing hens require longer, or just discard any pieces that don’t crumble (or turn them into bone meal). Cornish hens take only a day or so.
Consistency should be that of Grey Poupon mustard. Everything is so smoothly ground that there is no chance of splinters or choking. Use hot or chilled. Can be frozen.
I like to use as a canape’ spread, with the usual garnishes. Friends are surprised when I tell them it’s bones!
Wow, I had no idea you could do that with bones! I’m going to have to try that.
Wow! I was just wondering about if I could make a bone dust. I am experimenting with making my own broth for the first time and was wondering if the dehydrated bones could be used for something else. Thanks
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