Spinning Chicken – Ekeing out Quality Meat to avoid buying Mechanically Processed Meat – Part 1

My challenge for a lot of this year is to find ways to make quality meat affordable and a good purchase for everyone.

Bearing in mind that my family would wolf down a big pack of chicken nuggets in one go, it would work out about a fiver a meal just for those, which is likely to have e-numbers, additives, sugar, added salt and much more depending on the manufacturers.

I think the very real after effect of the horsemeat scandal is that we really don’t know what’s in processed food, even if it tells us the ingredients on the wrapper.

I get chicken from the Andrew Gordon Butchery in Aberdeen.  It costs on average £25 for 10 very large chicken breasts.

To buy the same in a supermarket, I’d probably have to get 15 – 20 breasts weight wise, and at todays prices, that seems to work out quite high to me.   I live happier knowing that the meat I eat has had a good life before it hit my plate.

I used all 10 chicken breasts to make mango chicken for wraps, with the intention of splitting the batch down the middle as soon as it was cooked.  To spin it out even further, a cook could add vegetables, lentils, noodles or much more to the cooking process.

The intention was to feed a family of 6 twice with each half of the batch.  One portion for eating, and one for freezing for another day.

That would give me the equivalent of a full belly x 24 for the £25 worth of good meat by adding cheap and healthy ingredients to bulk it out.

I cooked the second half of the batch on the same day, with one portion in the fridge for the next night, and another one in the freezer for another day.

Come back tomorrow to see what I turned the Mango Chicken into.

First step, the Mango Chicken.  I added salad vegetables, wraps and sauces to make the meat spin out.

Mango Chicken Wrap

Print recipe

• Print with all photos
• Print with main photo
• Print text only

Serves	6 - 8
Prep time	10 minutes
Cook time	20 minutes
Total time	30 minutes
Allergy	Egg
Misc	Freezable, Pre-preparable, Serve Hot
By author	Lesley Smith

Ingredients

• 10 Chicken Breast Fillets (Diced)
• 2 Fresh Mangoes or 1 x 400g Tin of Mangoes
• 3 tablespoons Mango Chutney
• 3 tablespoons Rapeseed or Olive Oil
• 2 Eggs
• Beetroot (To serve as garnish.)
• Baby Leaf Salad (To serve as garnish.)
• Wraps

Method

Step 1.	Simply add rapeseed oil to a deep bottomed frying pan or sauce pan. I like to use my huge trusty old Cosco cast iron saute pan. Shallow fry the chicken until almost completely cooked.
Step 2.	Add eggs and mango chutney and simmer on a low heat for ten minutes, while turning frequently to stop the chicken being burned.
Step 3.	Add chopped or tinned mangoes for the last few minutes of cooking.
Step 4.	Serve with wraps, garnish and salad vegetables.