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!
*. My baby scale is fine for weighing babies, and many of you have seen your nekkid, cute little babies on my scale. Still, it is not ideal when you want to continue adding before it flashes a total.
*
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that I purchased from Cash-n-Carry. The cost was less than $2.00 per meal. Our family is now at a size when I have to use several pans to feed us all at once. I don't have enough glass pans to use for freezing and the since I need 2 half size pans, I find this solution almost as economical as buying pans Dollar Tree and certainly easier. Since I bulk cook for convenience as well as frugality, this works for me.