Split Chicken Tutorial

I hate those commercials that say "these days, you're all trying to stretch your dollar" or "we cannot afford to waste money right now." Are there people out there who can afford to waste money at any time?? Or people who don't always try to stretch the dollar as far as they can? Obviously, they're not Mennonites!

Yes, the economy is rough these days, and people are doing what they can to cut back. We've tried to as well. But we've always been pretty frugal people -- especially when it comes to our food. We buy mostly generic, cut coupons for those few brands we are loyal to, look for sales, stock up, store & freeze, when possible. (Unfortunately, that means we don't often buy organic or locally grown. Its simply not available, or way out of our price range, especially when we aren't in farmer's market season. If this is absolutely essential to your cooking -- this blog may not affect you much. Sorry.)

I almost always buy split chicken breasts (with the ribs still on), and de-bone them myself, because they're about half the price of raw fresh boneless, skinless breasts. (If you are well versed in this process, skip this blog. But if you've always picked up the boneless, skinless because its just easier... keep reading, the process really is not that hard!)

This week, split chicken breasts were on sale for $1/pound. I remember that it used to be my rule that I wouldn't pay more than that -- I'd just do without until the sale came around. But in recent years, the price has never gotten that low. So this week I stocked up. I think I bought about 12 pounds.


(Not my photo -- but this is what the chicken will look like, when you buy it.)

So I had a lot of chicken to deal with. I de-boned. Basically, that just means cutting/ripping off the skin, and cutting out the obvious breast portion of the meat. Then I try to cut the tenderloins, or other pieces off of the bone -- as much as I can. Its okay to leave some meat on the bone.

In this installment, I think I was working with about 6-7 pounds of meat. I got probably 9 large pieces of breast meat, 9 tenderloin pieces, and a chunk of small pieces.

I packaged them up for the freezer in small plastic bags I could use. Some were individual breasts, pieces soaked in soy sauce for stir fry, some in jerk chicken marinade, and another couple of freezer-friendly meals. (Check out "Don't Panic! Dinner's in the Freezer" for all sorts of freezer friendly meals. Many include putting all of the raw ingredients together, freezing, then you just pop out the bag and put the ingredients in the crockpot, the day of. Its a well-used gift from my sister.)

You're left with all those rib pieces/bones with bits of raw chicken stuck to them. Get a big stockpot boiling with water, and throw in all of those bones. I throw in some seasonings -- garlic, onion, a few celery stalks if you have them, salt, pepper, basil, bay leaf, etc. Then, let it simmer. (I actually got my stock pot simmering, then I assembled all my chicken for recipes/freezer, while I waited for the chicken to cook down.)

Let your chicken simmer a long time. Mine went about 90 minutes. Keep the lid on, stirring occasionally. (I left my lid off too much, and my stock simmered down too much.) You can also do this in a big crockpot, turn it on low and let it simmer all day.

You're left with a big pot of chicken broth and a pile of chicken and bones. (Again, you should probably have more broth than this photo shows.) Let it sit until its cool enough for you to work with it.

Your breast pieces will look like this: chicken half-way hanging on to the pieces of bone.

Then you just separate. The stuff that looks like yummy chicken, you keep. The stuff that looks like bone, gristle, skin, you toss. Here was the final product:

I got about 3 cups worth of cooked, seasoned chicken. I put them in plastic bags, a cup at a time, and then I can quickly get them out when a recipe asks for cooked chicken.

Remember, you've also got several cups worth of good broth too. I pour mine (straining, to make sure little pieces of gunk aren't getting in the broth) into empty cottage cheese containers, or peanut butter jars, and freeze.

When your next recipe calls for broth or cooked chicken -- just thaw it in the microwave and go!

So want to talk about frugal? Out of my 7 pounds of chicken (for $7) I had 9 breasts, 2 bags of tenderloins, 2 bags of cut up chicken pieces, and 3 cups of cooked chicken. In my family of four -- we could stretch that into probably 12-15 meals, provided the meat is not a full entree (i.e. casseroles, stir fry, etc.) It will probably be closer to 8-10 meals, when we choose to grill the breasts, or make some variance of baked chicken. Even if your household is more meat-eating than ours... its still a great deal compared to $4.99 a pound for boneless, skinless chicken breasts!

Enjoy!

(Great chicken noodle casserole recipe -- to use that cooked chicken and broth -- coming in the next blog! Stay tuned!)