I have been ordering roasting chickens from a local farm for about a year. They are a great value for pastured chickens. The family is great to work with and the chickens are well Delicious!
All that being said I'm glad it will be a few months (probably 6) before I will be able to get more. I still have 6 whole in the freezer from the batch I got in August and yesterday I picked up 8 from the last batch for the year. This batch I decided to cut up before freezing (I need the room in the freezer but more on that in a bit). I am getting much more proficient at cutting the chickens apart but it is still a bit of work. I finally finished cutting about 8:30 PM last night (picked them up at 4 and ate dinner somewhere in there too). Today I portioned all the pieces out and vacuum sealed them. I also de-boned the breasts and cut 4 into thinner fillets and coated them with crushed corn flakes and some seasonings and froze them so they will be already for a quick dinner.I thought about adding marinade to some of the chicken but could not make up my mind so I just went with plain for now.
I saved all the bones and Carcases and boiled them for broth / stock. I now have 5-6 quarts to freeze in smaller serving sizes. I will be working on that tomorrow.
I still need to do a bit more freezer organizing as I will have another beef Quarter coming in a week or so. Last year meat from the same farm took up a good 2 shelves in my 13 Cu/ Ft stand up freezer. Oh I forgot to mention I just got a beef 1/4 from the farm that I get my chickens from. At least theirs is a smaller breed (Scottish Highland) so it barely took up one shelf. Yummy steaks by the way!
Now what's for dinner tomorrow? No idea... LOL... but at least I have options again :)
We always can our stock in quarts and pints. It is much more convenient to use this way (and saves a lot of freezer space)
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