From one chicken you can make three meals: a delicate and nourishing stock to use in a huge variety of other recipes, hot poached chicken to eat straight away, and the leftover meat to keep in the fridge for another meal. In Italy you can easily buy an old chicken that has passed retirement age for egg laying. It will have been plucked and cleaned but have the feet still intact (the birds are usually yellowish in colour as they are corn fed). The old birds are tough and need a long cooking time but have a better flavour than a young bird.
In the UK I can’t easily get hold of an old bird so I buy a whole large chicken with the giblets. The giblets are really important for a good flavour in the stock. Once a week I poach a chicken with vegetables and seasoning, taking the chicken out of the stock halfway through once its cooked (unlike the Italian way, as my chicken isn’t old so it doesn’t need as long as an old hen). I pick the meat off the carcass and put the bones back into the stock to strengthen the flavour. I use the boiled skin to make chicken crackling. We eat the juicy poached meat hot with salsa verde, or I leave it to cool and make salads, panini, meatloaf, risotto and soup. Nothing goes to waste.
If we use chicken thighs, we buy ones with the bone in for more flavour and the skin on to make chicken crackling.