Instead of having one long, "Just do it" session, I broke it down. We did one box Friday and one box Saturday. With 3 people working, it took less than an hour per box.
Person 1 trims the fat and cut the breast in half, using kitchen shears. Person 2 slices off the tender then fillets the breast. Person 3 labels and fills freezer bags. Voila! Done.
I kept it simple this time, relying on prepared sauces instead of making everything from scratch. Here's the breakdown of meals:
- 20 lbs cooked, chopped chicken, for salad, pizza, tossing with pasta, etc., 7 bags total
- 4 trays, 10 fillets each, parmesan chicken
- 5 bags BBQ sauce chicken
- 4 bags Creamy cesar chicken
- 4 bags Honey Chipotle chicken (recipe below)
- 4 bags diced, raw chicken for soups and stir frys
28 meals for a family of 9 = ~2.86# per meal at $1.69 per lb. = an average meat cost of $4.82 per meal. ($0.54 per person) My goal for dinner is to keep the total cost under $15. ($1.67 per person). So this leaves plenty of room in the budget for side dishes and the sauces I used on the chicken.
(When I posted this to Facebook, I forgot to include the cooked chicken in my total.)
Honey Chipotle Chicken
3 cups prepared salsa
1 cup honey
1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce
Blend all ingredients together in the blender. This will make ~4 cups sauce. Add it to fresh chicken before freezing. I add 1/2 cup sauce for each pound of chicken. Label and freeze.
To prepare, thaw overnight in the refrigerator. Dump the chicken into a large casserole dish and cook for ~45 min at 350 F. OR using tongs, carefully retrieve the chicken from the bag and lay it flat on a rimmed cookie sheet. Discard remaining sauce. Cook for 45 min at 350. (The 2nd method results in a nicer presentation.)
Using a sharpie, I label my bags with the name of the recipe, the date and either the number of fillets (F) or the weight of the tenders (T).
For example:
Honey Chipotle chicken
1/29/12 10F
or
BBQ Chicken
1/29/12 3.5# T
The point of this post is to emphasize that putting up a batch of meals isn't all that time consuming or difficult.
Any questions about the process? or anything else? Do you have a go-to recipe for OAMC chicken? What about ground beef? (I pick up 40# this Saturday and need to get organized!)
*This post may contain affiliate links which support this blog. Thank you!
The point of this post is to emphasize that putting up a batch of meals isn't all that time consuming or difficult.
Any questions about the process? or anything else? Do you have a go-to recipe for OAMC chicken? What about ground beef? (I pick up 40# this Saturday and need to get organized!)
*This post may contain affiliate links which support this blog. Thank you!
