8 Pounds of Chicken, 5 Freezer Meals

With antibiotics, GMO’s and unhealthy living conditions common in today’s grocery store meats, we really want to keep our meat as grass fed and/or organic as possible. On a $400 monthly grocery budget this means we really can’t afford $5-$7 pound boneless skinless breast and honestly, I ate more than enough chicken drumsticks growing up. How do you feed 7 kids? Drumsticks and thighs of course – cheaper and it stretches farther.

I priced organic chicken and you know the best deal is organic chicken drumsticks for $1.99 pound (Trader Joe’s and Wegman’s). I resigned myself and decided to give myself a challenge. How many meals could I get out of those 8 pounds of chicken? I wish I had counted the “after de-boning weight”. I have to say I did pretty good. 5 meals for 5 people plus several days of leftovers for my husband and a few days of soup in the freezer for my lunches is pretty good. It would also make 5 great chicken freezer meals.

So incredibly easy – just wait and see. Grab a 6-7 quart slow cooker and let’s go. If you don’t have a slow cooker you need one. I am rather partial to the 7 qt. slow cooker Calphalon sent me. Empty the chicken into the slow cooker and cover with water. I went about 1/2 inch over the chicken. Set on high for 1 hour and switch to low. I prefer to slow cook overnight and due to church in the AM it ended up slow cooking for over 12 hours. It was a beautiful thing. All moist, tender and falling off the bone. This made it easier to de-bone. I stripped all the meat off the bones, broke the bones and tossed them into a stock pot. Then I poured 6 cups of water over them, brought it to a boil then simmered for 2 hours. This guaranteed every last bit of flavor was pulled from them.

I ended up with around 12 cups of stock and 6 cups of chicken bone water – I didn’t add any other amazing things to make it a broth since I wanted to keep it as versatile as possible. The best part is that since we made the meals with different flavors no one even complained “Chicken AGAIN?!”