I saw a link to this video on Facebook yesterday. After watching it, I went food shopping and bought a price-reduced free-range chook ($11.60) and followed the instructions on this video. From one chook I made 6 cups of chicken stock, 2 large chicken breasts, 2 drumsticks, 2 thighs and 2 wings. Apart from the savings dollar wise, I'm also happy with the reduction in packaging that I would have had to throw away if I had bought these products separately. No stock packaging, no meat trays wrapped in plastic for the chicken portions, just one lot of plastic packaging that was wrapped around the chook to have to deal with.
So if you're looking to save money and packaging for chicken portions and stock, and don't mind spending a few minutes cutting them up yourself, give this a go. I chucked the backbone and any other bones and skin that I removed in my slow cooker with a carrot and onion and some parsley, with enough water to cover the carcass, for 4 hours on high. Put it in the fridge to cook and then skim the fat off before putting into containers to freeze.
Also, I put the chicken portions into reusable freezer safe containers and labelled them.
http://www.nytimes.com/video/dining/100000002155362/cutting-up-a-whole-chicken.html
