We had a roast chicken on Friday, so I had lots of lovely leftovers to do something with. This is the first thing I did, a lovely buttery leek base, along with the chicken, in a white sauce, and topped with an oaty savoury crumble with a hint of stuffing. The topping is similar to the Vegetable Crumble but I left out the cheese and added some stuffing mix.

The picture is of the crumble taken straight from the fridge, I’ll take another tonight, should look better

Chicken and leek crumble

For the base

360g leeks, I used 1 very large one, £1.73/kg, 35p
50g butter, smart price, £1.23/250g, 25p
200g cooked chicken, see below, £1.83

For the crumble topping

100ml vegetable oil, £1.15/litre, 11p
100g flour, 52p/1.5kg, 3p
75g oats, 75p/kg, 6p
50g salted peanuts, smart price, 48p/200g, 12p
40g uncooked stuffing mix, smart price, 19p/85g, 9p
2 tblsps sesame seeds (optional), £1.28/150g, 10g? 8p

For the white sauce

60g butter, smart price, £1.23/250g, 29p
35g flour, 52p/1.5kg, 1p
200ml milk, 99p/2.27litres, 9p
Tsp mustard

If you don’t have leftover chicken to use, a large breast or 2 thighs would substitute. I have priced the chicken using the same prices from when I did a rubber chicken feature. The chicken was in the freezer and I didn’t weigh all the meat, so this is the nearest I could get.

Slice the leek and make sure it’s clean, no grit. Sauté until soft with the butter. Add the chicken. Cook it first if raw.

Make a white sauce. Melt the butter in a pan, stir in the flour and cook off for a minute or two. Season well with salt, pepper and a good teaspoon of mustard. Combine the white sauce with the leeks and chicken. Taste and add more seasoning if it needs it.

For the crumble topping, simply mix everything together. No need to season.

Put the chicken mixture into your dish and top with the crumble. Bake at 190c for about half an hour until the topping looks cooked and is a golden colour.

Priced at Asda using mySupermarket, September 2017

Makes 4 generous servings, will freeze well
Nutrition per serving (4) 874 calories, 56g carbs, 60g fat, 29g protein
Nutrition per serving (6) 582 calories 37g carbs, 40g fat, 19g protein
Total cost £3.31. Cost per portion (4) 83p, cost per portion (6) 55p

 

Verdict

Really happy with how this turned out, delicious. Having now worked out the nutrition, I think next time I would reduce everything. What I’d probably do is make half the recipe, and make 3 portions with it. That would make it   582 calories a portion.

We had ours with runner beans from the garden.

The base is deeply savoury, and the topping crunchy and delicious with all the different elements in it.

Using just 50g chicken per portion really stretches that meat out, and would be about 35g in the smaller sized version, even cheaper. You could divide into 6 of course and freeze for wonderful home made ready meals.

Variations

When I was first looking at the stripped off chicken from the carcass, I was thinking of doing something with mushrooms, but saw the lovely leeks when out shopping, so used one of those instead. A mushroom version is definitely on the cards though.

I would also do this with leftover roast beef, again, with mushrooms or leeks. Would make a nice change from the classic cottage pie, wonderful though that is.

Leave out the salted peanuts and/or stuffing from the topping if you don’t have any to hand. If you have chicken fat from when you roasted the chicken, use that in the topping instead of the vegetable oil for another level of flavour.