How do I use up leftover roast chicken?

A roast chicken is the best value in the meat aisle if the carcass is used. The whole thing depends on doing the stripping straight away, because the safety window closes in two hours and the job becomes unappealing once it is cold.

Safety

Step by step

1. Strip the carcass while it is warm.Within an hour or two of serving. The meat comes away far more easily, and it needs to be refrigerated within two hours anyway.
2. Separate the meat by type.Breast for sandwiches and salads, thigh and darker scraps for anything cooked. They suit different things and the darker meat is better in a curry or a pie.
3. Refrigerate the meat immediately.Shallow container, covered, in the fridge. Use within two days or freeze in portions.
4. Make stock from the carcass the same day.Bones, skin, any trimmings, plus onion, carrot and celery. Cover with cold water, bare simmer for three hours, strain. It costs nothing and it is the best value in the whole exercise.
5. Make the first meal something cold.Sandwiches, a salad, a wrap. Breast meat is best not reheated — it dries out badly.
6. Make the second something wet.Curry, pie, risotto, soup, pasta. Sauce disguises the fact that the meat has already been cooked once, and the darker meat suits this.
7. Reheat properly.Piping hot throughout, once only. Add the chicken near the end of cooking rather than simmering it for half an hour — it is already cooked.
8. Freeze what you cannot use in two days.In meal-sized portions, labelled and dated. Cooked chicken freezes well for a few months.

Tips

• The oysters — two small pieces of dark meat either side of the backbone — are the best bits and are usually left on the carcass. Find them before it goes in the stock pot.
• Freeze the carcass if you cannot face making stock the same day. It keeps until you have a free evening.
• Chicken and a jar of curry paste is the most reliable second meal there is, and it takes fifteen minutes.

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