Chicken: Chicken "Plan"
Source of Recipe
Friendly Freezer
List of Ingredients
Out of 18 whole chickens, I used:
6 whole, roasted chickens: Roast Sticky Chicken, 2 Rosemary Lemon
Chicken
with the 12 other chickens: cut breasts for Chicken Strips, Fajitas,
and Forbidden City Chicken cut legs and thighs for Simmering Chinese
Chicken cut wings for Teriyaki Chicken wings and Hot wings save backs
for All Purpose Chicken save breastbones (after deboning breasts) for
chicken soup save giblets for who knows what!
My Strategy
When dealing with meats that have different parts, you need to think
about how you will use each to get the maximum amount of food for your
dollar. Here is how I handled chicken (the same approach can be used
for turkey and many of these recipes will work for turkey)
1.First, I marinated 4 Roast Sticky chickens and put them back in the
fridge, stuck two Rosemary Lemon Chickens with potatoes and green
beans in the oven for three hours. Then I prepared all of the other
marinades and mixes in advance (the recipes follow) before cutting up
chicken. My five year old enjoyed helping with this part. I saved
the messy stuff- the cutting until after my kids were asleep and dh
was home and could answer the phone. I prepared the work space the
best I could, making sure all of the knives were really sharp, had
lots of ziplocs and bowls on hand, and my "chicken plan" in front of
meand turned up the rock n roll! Yeah!
2.I put 6 chickens at a time in my sink, then opened all the wrappers
and used an "assembly-line approach". I washed the first one, scooped
out the giblets into a nearby bowl, cut the wings off and put in a
wing bowl, cut the whole legs off (easier that way) and put in the leg
bowl, and then cut off the back. I put the backs in a bowl, and the
breasts in another. With 12 chickens, this didn't take but a half
hour. On my second "cutting" I took all of the legs and cut between
the drum and thigh and put them back in packages of 8 to a ziploc,
counted wings and put them in two ziplocs, and put the chicken backs
in ziplocs. I also put giblets in ziplocs. The giblets and backs
went right to the freezer. At this point I felt like falling over,
but the smell of a bargain (and all of those chickens!) kept me going.
3.I poured the marinades for "Simmering Chinese Chicken", "Teriyaki
Wings" and "Hot Wings", then froze all of them. By this time, I was
late for chat! Oh no! So I cleaned eveything up, reserving the chicken
breasts for the next night. I disinfected everything too, which took
a while!
4.The next night, I suited up to do battle again! Donning my rubber
gloves and sharpening my knives, I prepared for the biggest pain,
deboning all of the chicken breasts! I cut them from the bone on the
first pass then cut them all into strips. I put the breast bones into
a soup pot with water, some garlic powder, onion powder and seasoning
salt. The broth was excellent and I got about two cups of additional
white meat! I prepared the Oven Fried Chicken Strips and Fajitas,
saving the rest of the strips for the next night.
5.The next night was pretty easy. I prepared all of the Deep Fried
Chicken Strips and some Chicken noodle soup which I need today because
we are all sick! It took three or four days, but I found that if you
do one motion repeatedly, you get really good at it and kick some
serious chicken butt! I felt like "Jackie Chan" in the kitchen! I just
followed the butcher cuts I see in the store. By mass producing, I
saved money and time (I used rubber gloves to save my hands too!)
Here are the meals I got out of my 18 chickens:
4 Roasted Sticky Chickens with potatoes
2 Rosemary Lemon Chickens with potatoes and green beans
2 Simmering Chinese Chicken
4 bags of chicken legs/thighs for Shake and Bake chicken
1 Teriyaki Wings
1 Hot Wings
2 Forbidden City Chicken
2 Fajitas
1 gallon bag of Oven Fried Chicken strips (cooked)
2 gallon bags of Deep Fried Chicken Strips (raw)
2 gallon bags of chicken backs for All purpose Chicken
1 gallon bag of Giblets ( ideas wanted!)
1 big pot of Chicken Noodle Soup (from breast bones)
more stock and soup from leftover whole roasted chickens after they
are eaten
I only spent about 36 bucks! This is a really economical way to do
chicken, and I think with practice, it won't be so daunting (remember,
we all had a first oamc! THAT seemed daunting too!) Do you think I am
crazy yet? I am just preparing for gardening season, when I will want
to be outdoors rather than cooking.
Here's how I would've handled 18 more if I had the room:
1.freeze 6 whole
2.cut up 6 and freeze by type of piece: breasts, legs/thighs, wings,
etc
3.cut up the rest and freeze each as cut up chicken packs (each having
two wings, drums, thighs and breasts)
The only reason I did them in sixes was because that was the store
limit and a good size to work with. Nothing strange going on here,
folks! No satanic chickens here! I kept going back for the chicken and
people started to recognize me. They kept saying "Back again?" I
thought about going undercover but the baby and the five year old
would give me away. Oh well, I guess I'll have to save the "Mission
Impossible" theme for the next adventure!
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