This week, I batch-cooked 20 pounds of chicken quarters I got for free as a Christmas gift. What do you do with 20 pounds of chicken quarters?
First, you bake them. Then you pull the skin off and give it to the cats. My furry assistants needed treats after all. You can take these extra undesired portions and set them aside for further processing, but I use them for the cats. Let’s assume that you take all the skin and bones and set them aside.
Then I took the chicken off in pieces and froze them in meal-sized portions, along with one small amount to make chicken salad to put in the fridge for sandwiches. I got 5 quarts of freezer bags and about 4 quarts of chicken parts for making broth, along with a fair bit of juice which will be added to the chicken soup I plan to can later.
After freezing the 5 quarts of chicken and making the chicken salad for sandwiches, take the odd bits and bobs and place them in a large stock pot with water. Boil them for about an hour with a tbsp of vinegar. Once strained through a cheese cloth, this will make great broth that you can put in the fridge overnight, skim the fat off the top, and can using a pressure canner the next day either as whole broth or a chicken soup if you throw some carrots, onions, and little bits of chicken in them. If you don’t have a pressure canner, it’s great to use for cooking rice to make a pilaf or white chicken chili.
Now, if you want to get super creative, you take those bits and bobs and just barely cover them with water again after you strain the broth out. You add 2 Tablespoons of vinegar, and you boil them for about three hours. Then you strain this through a cheesecloth and get rid of the bits and bobs. Take the liquid you strained out of this second boiling and cook it down until it is less than half. Cook it down until it is a thicker consistency. Then set it in a shallow pan and let it cool overnight. When you wake, you should have gelatin. This isn’t the “jello” you remember; this is meat jello. You can take this and dehydrate it and crush it, and then mix it with salt to have a powdered soup mix. Just store it in the freezer as a precaution, although I have used it just dried. To reconstitute, add to boiling water until it tastes right. Season as you see fit. I’ve added vegetables and greens before to make a light soup with it in the past.
I really did give my cats the best parts this time. With my 5 quarts of chicken, I will make chicken tacos, curry chicken, chicken noodle soup, white chicken chili, and chicken fettuccini (with tofu noodles). Plus, I have chicken salad for lunch for part of the week. The meat for the week was free to me, but if you bought this much in chicken quarters at your local Walmart, it’s less than $20 for the week, and it is plenty of meat.
I will likely have leftovers on all of these dishes, so they will last far longer than a week. I know the chicken noodle soup, if I can it without the noodles, will be 7 quarts ready to heat and add noodles before we eat. The curry chicken will likely be stretched into at least two meals because of the spinach and onions I put in it. The white chicken chili can be stretched into 2-5 meals by itself, depending on how many beans, onions, and garlic I put in it. Oh, and the white chicken chili is a really great place to use your broth if you make it. You could stretch this to be 2 weeks of dinners for a family of four with the ideas above.
As a bonus, you only have to cook once, pretty much all day on the weekend, to make enough food for the entire week at a minimum and up to two weeks if you make enough chili, chicken noodle soup, and chicken curry to put some away in cans or the freezer.