cutting up meat birds-what to use???

[juice]

Thank you,Thank you, Thank you

:
You all have been soooooo helpful.
juice

 

[daleeper]

Our first chickens we froze whole, and my wife just baked them, instead of cutting them up, real good, but I wanted more variety too. So the last batch, we cut most of them up, and packaged them in like pieces, and have really liked it. We use a boning knife and pretty much follow the procedure they use at polyface, with the exception of the cleaver on the carcass. I just us a boning knife to slice through the ribs on both sides, could use a kitchen scissor, and break the backbone in half with my hand. This allows you to get the carcass in a bag without it taking much space. We use a foodsaver style vacuum packaging system for these. It really works better for the parts than the whole bird, as it vacuums quickly and the packages freeze fast, and so far less freezer burn than the whole chicken.

The link below is a youtube video of how they do it, watch particularly if you like boneless breast, which my wife does.

We are a family of 4, kids are both teenage girls with good appitites. We package them this way:

4 legs/thighs per package
4 boneless/skinless breasts per package
8 breast tenders per package
8 wings per package
2-4 carcasses per package to be used for stock/soup/enchilada/noodle meat.

We halved a few of those packages for my mother, and she likes those packages.
It has worked out real well for us. In the future we will probably cut up about half and keep the other half whole.

 

[juice]

Thank you so much. I will bookmark these pages and try it again. I was starting to think I was only going to be able to bake the whole ones,as we really botched up our first couple of attempts.
Thanks again...juice