Sorry for the potato quality. Nicholas is trying to help me part up the chickens.
His paws are on the counter. He grabbed some chicken when I wasn't looking. I got it back.
After chilling in the fridge for a day or so I part up the chickens, put them in freezer bags, and then put them in one of three chest freezers. Hopefully our fancy new freezer alarm will keep us safe from disaster. We think the freezer alarm is probably our best spent $25. We keep the base on the side of the fridge upstairs so we can keep an eye on the temperatures. So far so good.
Parting up the chickens doesn't take long at all. Why don't we just freeze them whole? Because there is only two of us, we normally aren't interested in a roasted chicken, and we skin them anyway. Right sized portions are easy to defrost and perfect for making quick dinner. So it works for us.
I should note that our first round of meat chickens yielded about a 5 pound bird - but that is dressed and skinned. The benefit to a rolling harvest is that we can immediately have a nice sized bird...but then doing another round in a week will get us a larger bird, then a week later an even larger bird. It's kind of like dollar cost averaging in the stock market. Pound value averaging in the livestock market? Something like that.
Unlike store chickens our farm raised chickens are a terrific food value. Not only do we get the meat, but we can make stock, get "extra" meat from the carcasses, and then still end up with a huge bowl of leavin's for the cats. At this moment Little Mo is meat drunk from having chicken leavin's for breakfast. He is so full he can't even get his little Mickey Mouse paws up on the computer to help me type.
I'm trying not to be a chicken elitist... but dang. I really hate store meat. Aside from our totally-gross-find in the pack of store meat I just don't think the quality is any good. The other nite I defrosted the last pack of chicken from A House Warehouse Store... and it was just gross. It defrosted weird, it cooked weird.... I dunno. Plus when I've tried to make stock from store chickens I just end up with barely colored water - not the rich and delicious stock I get from our birds.
We tried to buy meat and ended up with bland tasting disappointment. So we are glad for our creepy meats and will just continue this course of action.
Happy Tuesday, everyone! Are you parting up your creepy meats? How is your harvest going?
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5 comments:
Hello, I love your blog, been lurking around here a couple weeks. I like your logic about "parting" up the chickens. I did that the last time I butchered and it was nice to pull out parts rather than the whole bird. My biggest problem is that for all the years I spent feeding my family grocery store meat, most of their favorite recipes involve chicken breast. That requires even more work to de-bone, and usually requires me to use the breast meat from two birds to get enough for one recipe. And those picky people complain about eating the dark meat!
Potato? Did you mean photo? Kitty helpers are worth every smile.
yay for homemade meat! I really got to get some of those freezer alarms...
About the meat though, do your creepy meats ever get outside on grass, or are they just grain fed inside? I'm wondering what the taste difference would be. I am a proud chicken elitist and cannot stand mushy pale store bought chicken. I have roast rooster for lunch today, its brown tasty leg meat from a free-ranging roo, yum!
No creepy meat harvest, but I am working on the harvest of Hens Who Didn't Make The Cut. I was parting up one little hennie last night and was astounded at the amount of fat on her. I mean, she was tiny and there must be a half cup of fat. I saved it. Meanwhile, the cats circled like vultures and tried to sneak the gross bits out of the trash can. Ugh.
Andria - THANKS so much for coming by!!! and yeah it's tough when you have more folks who are picky. we use the "dark" meat in stuff like tacos and chicken salad when no one really notices. it totally works. i cook that stuff in the crock pot with the rest of the carcass, then just put it into portioned sized freezer bags. need a superfast meal? tacos or nachos for all my friends!
Anon - ha! it's an internet joke... "potato quality" just means that it wasnt a very good picture. Nicholas was hopping around so it was blurry.
:-)
yay Liz! maybe being a chicken elitist should be a thing. yay us!
CTFarm... i laughed .... the vultures.... yep. ha! good on you for that fat. it's my favorite cooking fat. so delish and works really well. we need to do a Hen House Clean out of the slackers for sure.
:-) ps good to see you here!
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