What to do with the rest of a pack of chicken thighs
Chicken thighs are sold in packs of four to six. Dinner for one person is two. So two thirds of every pack is a problem to be solved on the day you are least inclined to solve it.
How long it actually keeps
In the fridge, use them by the date on the pack, and that date is short. The better answer is the freezer: split the rest into pairs, wrap each pair, and freeze them on the day you buy them rather than the day before they turn. Defrost in the fridge overnight, never on the worktop, and once thawed do not refreeze them raw.
Five things to do with the rest
Freeze them in pairs, not as a pack
A frozen block of six is a thing you will never use. Two thighs in a bag is one dinner you can take out on a Tuesday without planning ahead.
Put them in a traybake
Thighs, whatever root vegetables are about, oil, salt, half an hour at 220°C. One tray, one person, almost no washing up.
Cook the whole pack at once and eat it twice
Roast all six, eat two hot, and keep the rest cold. Cold roast chicken keeps two days and is better in a sandwich than it ever was on the plate.
Poach them for something else entirely
Simmered gently in stock for twenty minutes, then shredded, they become the filling for a noodle soup, a wrap or a rice bowl later in the week.
Use the bones
If they are bone-in, the bones make a small amount of very good stock. Cover with water, simmer an hour, freeze it. It costs nothing but the gas.
What not to do
Do not leave the pack in the fridge deciding. Chicken has the shortest useful life of anything in this list, and a pack bought on Saturday to be dealt with 'in the week' is usually a pack thrown away on Wednesday.
The better fix is not buying it twice
All of the above is damage limitation. The actual problem is that the pack was bought for one meal and nothing else in the week was planned around it.
That is what MealPlans4One does. It puts the rest of the pack into other dinners and says so on the ingredient itself. From a real plan:
2 Bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
Most packs contain 4–6 thighs. Use 2 now and freeze the remainder in pairs for later in the plan — use them in meal 7.
The pack is split at the moment you unpack the shopping, not at the moment it is about to go off. That is the whole trick, and it is not a clever one — it just has to be decided in advance.
14 dinners for £19. First one free, on screen, before you decide.