You’ve spent four weeks drawing inspiration from your family’s home-cooked meals, and now you’re got a replenished GWorld account. The Hatchet spoke with renowned chef Bobby Flay of the Food Network and Bobby’s Burger Palace for advice on how students can keep a tight budget without sacrificing delicious meals.

TIP #1: Buy the whole chicken

¨Once you cut, it will be a lot more expensive,” Flay said, adding that you should use every piece of the bird. ¨You can use a wing for one dish. And you can use the cartridge itself out of one chicken [for another meal]. Then you can braise the legs for tacos.¨

Then, Flay says, use chicken breasts for a simple dish like chicken milanese, a popular Italian dish. Bread chicken breasts by covering them in flour, then dipping in egg and coating in bread crumbs. Sauté until golden brown on each side, roughly four minutes. The lemon vinaigrette dressing is as simple as whisking dijon mustard and lemon juice together in a bowl, then slowly adding in olive oil. Drizzle dressing over chicken, season with salt and pepper to taste and serve it along with an arugula salad for a quick-and-easy meal.

Roasted dark meat can be used in dishes like chicken tacos, while adding a little spice to chicken wings makes a tasty, hands-on dish. Once you are done with all the meat, he suggests using the bones to make chicken soup.

TIP #2: Spice it up

To flavor your chicken or any dish, it’s critical to have the right spices. Flay says everyone should have the basics: kosher salt, black pepper, cumin, chili powder, garlic powder and onion powder.

“You can use garlic, onion powder and chili powder to use it as dredge for fried chicken. You can use chili powder for the chicken thighs for the chicken tacos,” he said. “Making a really good vegetable curry or chicken curry is really good and feeds a lot of people and is pretty economical.”

TIP #3: Look for restaurants with great deals and lots of flavor.

“Pick and choose carefully. You want to eat at restaurants with a lot of flavor. I always try to stay healthy and I don’t try to eat a lot of food either,” he said.

As for ordering dishes, Flay suggests sharing family style dishes.

“I think eating [at] family style restaurants is better than ordering an appetizer or an entrée for each person. You can order a bunch of dishes … which is a really fun way [to eat],” he said.