We eat chicken quite a bit too (and pintade and fish) and always use the bones (and fish heads etc) to make stock. Can’t beat home made stock in soups but also in all sorts of other recipes. This time of year though, soups are very comforting.
My personal favourite amongst many recipes we have is pot-roasting pintade on the wood burner, with onions, leeks, carrots and mushrooms and a decent amount of red wine. Cooked slowly, it makes delicious meals for several days, ending with soup of course.
I cook a lot of chicken as we know my FIL who has dementia will eat it, so cooked in the instant pot and then roasted in the oven for 15 min, curries as well, there is no point in doing any fancy cooking as he just won’t eat it, proper cooking is reserved for when we have guest’s as I need to cook for him separately.
It is good for gammon joints in cola and beef joints as well.
We bring loads of gammon joint back from the UK and freeze them, as I have never found the French equivalent to be very good.
You won’t be bringing gammon joints back unless you take the risk and don’t declare them.
the last customs guy just laughed and said I was making him hungry, we only had 15 though
We’ve always used poultry, lamb and beef bones and bits and pieces to make stock. It’s a no brainer.
Mum worked at a butchers when we were very young and she always brought loads of bones with bits of meat attached home and boiled them up. It only needed some veg, pearl barley and salt to make delicious broth. I can still taste it.
yes, the old-fashioned stuff (from my youth) still works well… only problem is that we don’t buy meat with bones in it these days… 
our lifestyle/diet is very different
EDIT: I must correct myself… we do buy tins of confit de canard… which does have bones.
Never thought to boil those bones, but we do save the duckfat… marvellous for cooking with.
Our fish stall is happy to give us bones and fish heads - they thought it was for the cat 
Oh yes, still do that now. Throw in some onions, celery, carrot and apple and when strained to get rid of any small bones, whizz into soup or stock for the freezer. I paid over €60 for a fresh local produced chapon two years ago and was not going to waste anything on it for that price.
Simple Carbonara tonight as per… Antonio Carluccio… with a glass of Pressac… 
and later… a gentle dessert… stewed apples and yoghurt, with a light sprinkling of cinnamon… ab fab… 
Beef stew tonight, made with the last glass of a merlot I brought back, served with jacket potatoes and sugarsnaps. Good, rich winter food. 
Something slightly spicy, especially koshari or chorba. And local boulangerie does a thick fluffy semolina galette that goes perfectly.
Just had a great slab of Cantal jarret de boeuf that weighed a little over a kilo (€6 a kilo!) wanted our butcher to cut it in half, but he wouldn’t, so very slow cooked the lot with dried cèpes, mushrooms, beef stock, a head of garlic and four large anchovies - served half with buttery pappardelle and froze the rest - remarkable value - the meat content of the meal was €1.50 per person.
That said, or rather written, most local Aveyronnais dishes are winter comfort food - confit de canard, cassoulet, tripoux, aligot, truffade, also stockfish and morue (despite our being some distance from both Norway and Portugal).
OTOH there’s only really the salade Aveyronnaise for the summer (everything culinary you can do with a duck plus some leaves and a walnut oil dressing).
If you buy your butcher’s steak haché, you shouldn’t get any fat at all. French mince is used differently to the UK - here it’s mainly a veg stuffing ingredient.
Bought 1.5Kg of steak haché from our local (halal) butcher today, along with 1Kg of Jarret. Jarret was €8.50 per kilo, but worth every penny. It’ll be cooked tomorrow, some for a beef pie and the rest frozen for probably two more meals.
I can’t praise my local butcher enough. Good quality local produce at a reasonable price, with a chat and a smile. Same as what I had in Yorkshire before I moved to France.
Must confess I was amazed the first time I watched our butcher pick up a glorious piece of beef and offer it to the “haché” machine… and moments later… I was presented with the number I had requested… just like that
it cooks in a trice and tastes delicious… and I use it in any dish requiring “mince”…
Our local butchers are not the best, so I buy my own beef in bulk and DIY.
They look fab 
Interesting, where do you buy beef in bulk? and what’s it like price wise?
Chicken curry authentic, home made, with either chapatis or rice
My comfort food:
https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/product/jjames-family-cooking-bacon-500g
Bacon: bacon & eggs; bacon baps, bacon & baked spuds!
