First Run of Cornish Cross Meat Birds and Super Excited!

[Morrigan]

Sorry I've been MIA, but I've been finishing up the processing on my bunch. Here are the results.

Last week, my brother and I processed my 24 Cornish Cross. They were exactly 7 weeks old. I didn't weigh them before dressing them, but after they were fully cleaned, they averaged 4 1/3 pounds each. For 24 birds, I got a total weight of 103.9 pounds. They were really the perfect size for me!

I left some of them whole and then cut up some. I also made a ton of chicken stock with the backbones and necks and canned some chicken breast for quick soups or tacos. I gave four of them away to my brother for helping me butcher and clean them. I ended up with 10 whole chickens, 3 packages of wings (6 per package), 8 packages of individual breasts, 9 packages of drumsticks (2 each) and 9 packages of thighs (2 each) in the freezer. I canned 12 half-pints of chicken breast and 28 pints of stock. I also have about 2 pounds of shredded, cooked chicken after picking the meat off the bones while making stock. Oh, and I ate one already. It was so good! I couldn't get a good pic of everything, but this is most of it.

What a good day's work! How do you can the meat? I have a pressure canner, but have always been too *ahem* chicken to use it, but this might give me some incentive.

 

[KCMOLisa]

Quote:
I was nervous the first time I used my pressure canner, too, but it's easy and fun! The best thing to do is do a dry run. Follow all of the instructions for your canner but without putting any jars in there. Just add water, bring it up to pressure, hold the pressure for a couple of minutes and then turn it off, let the pressure drop and then open it. You will feel a lot more confident once you've done it once. Then you're ready to really can!

Canning chicken (or any meat) is actually one of the easiest things to can. You just cut the raw chicken into strips, stick it in your clean, sterilized jars, remove any air bubbles, add 1/2 teaspoon of salt per pint to each jar (optional), wipe your jar rims, put on your lids and rings and can away. It makes its own liquid. Chicken has to be processed for 75 minutes at 11 pounds of pressure. It doesn't look the prettiest, but it tastes great in anything you would use shredded chicken in. Feel free to PM me if you have any pressure canning questions. I had mine for a good year before I used it, but now I use it all the time and couldn't live without it.

 

[duluthralphie]

Add me to the list of those chicken to use the pressure cooker...

Do you ever spice the chicken in the jars? My Grandma use to. I wish I had an inkling of how she did it......

I might try it too.

 

[KCMOLisa]

I usually just go with chicken and a little salt. I use it for tacos, nachos, chicken patties, etc., so I just spice it when I'm cooking if I need to. What spices did your grandma put in there? It sounds interesting.

 

[Morrigan]

Thanks! That sounds super easy. I think I will try some in a few weeks when I'm ready to process.

 

[duluthralphie]

I usually just go with chicken and a little salt. I use it for tacos, nachos, chicken patties, etc., so I just spice it when I'm cooking if I need to. What spices did your grandma put in there? It sounds interesting.

First remember this was a long time ago.

They had a tomato base but it was watery and not thick. I have no idea what spices at all. All I know is they tasted super. She had a very similar base if not the same she used on smelt. It was kind of a bar-b-que but not sweet like we think of bar b que today.

I wish I could figure it out.....

 

[KCMOLisa]

That does sound good, Ralphie. I haven't seen any recipe that sounds similar in any canning books. It's probably considered "unsafe" nowadays, like most things worth doing.

 

[Sabz]

Oh yes Morrigan, don't be afraid of your pressure cooker I love mine, but I am very careful.
Never force the air out, once it is sterilized.
If I need to change the temperature of the stove top, I always put my face away from the cooker lol.
I let it come back to normal temperature by itself, not trying the wet towel tricks or anything like that. I monitor the pressure constantly when it's boiling, never leave the house.

Good job on all the canning KCMOLisa! I didn't can my chicken yet, I would like to try that.

Do you need to wait the rigor morbid to can it? I wonder if the pressure cooking would make the meat tender even though it didn't past that stage yet.
I find that the hardest part about harvesting chicken is the 3 days they spend in my fridge. They take up lots of space. Also I am a little discussed since sometimes I have a little of uncooked chicken juice in my fridge even if I try to be careful.

On my last batch, one morning I opened the fridge to eat breakfast and a full chicken fell out LOL. That time I had tried to leave them in a pan, covered by foil, instead of bagging them. I find that if I bag them right away, during the time it spends in the fridge it accumulates water in the bag and doesn't look appetising when I unfreeze it. It also complicates freezing multiple chicken in one bag (or breast) because that water will make them stick to each other once frozen..

 

[duluthralphie]

Sabz I put mine in shrink wrap bags when I put them in the fridge. I do not shrink them until after the waiting period. Then I pour the liquid out and seal them.

If I am keeping them for myself, I then put them in the freezer for a day or two and then vacuum pack them. They vacuum pack better with ice instead of liquid.

I pay a huge price during processing time. I remove the beer from my beer fridge and replace it with chickens.

If I am going to sell the bird, I do not vacuum pack any longer as it is too expensive and time consuming. Plus a shrink wrap chicken looks better than a shrink wrapped one.

 

[KCMOLisa]

I let mine rest before I canned them. I don't know if it's necessary or not. I just haven't tried it the other way. I don't have the room in my refrigerator for resting, so I put mine in a cooler for 4 days with lots of ice and water. I bought a 120 quart Coleman Xtreme cooler just for this purpose, and all 24 of my chickens plus about 60 pounds of ice fit in there perfectly. On processing day, I put the cleaned chickens into a tub of cold water to cool down first. Once they were cool, then I layered them in the cooler with ice in between. They all stayed very cold the entire 4 days. I just patted them dry as I took them out of the cooler. I started shrink bagging them, but then I got tired of messing with that and started wrapping everything in freezer paper.