If a farmer who raises chickens for a large processing
company (in this case, Tyson) offers to sell you chickens at what are obviously
a good deal, my advice is to ask how they’ll be packaged. We have a really nice
neighbor who does, in fact, raise chickens. And we did get some frozen chickens.
I shall refer to them from now on as The Body. They came in one large lump.
Large. Completely frozen together.
The Body got man-handled into one of our chest freezers,
after which I would occasionally mumble that we “needed to bust up that lump”
so that I could start cooking it, which would cause us to have room in the
freezer for upcoming meat (see So, there’s this pig….).
An ax will work if you want shredded chicken, but if you’re
looking to have actual chicken then something else must be done. For us, it was
taking The Body, laying the bag on towels on the basement floor (by the freezer
– that thing weighs a LOT) and letting it thaw. You would think that it would
thaw pretty well, but after about 12 hours there were maybe two wings thawed,
some of the edges were very well-chilled, and the rest was still frozen solid.
I have found that at that stage the best thing that works is
a chisel and nice little handheld maul hammer. (At that point I had Julia
Child’s voice in my head – it made the whole thing that much more surreal.) You can wedge that chisel in between the
various individual chickens and whack away until sections start popping off. As
of now, we have 7 chickens thawing in one of the fridges. The Body has been
successfully split into two sections, and as they are still frozen they went
back into the chest freezer from whence they came. Once I get the first 7
cooked and canned (remember, we need the freezer space for someone, er…thing
else) then it’s on to thawing, cooking and canning the sections.
Canned chicken is quite good! Makes great soup, chicken and
dumplings, chicken enchiladas – you name it. It’s great as the stuff is cooked
before it’s canned so hauling it out and using it is easy. Getting it to the
canning stage, well….I’m not sure we’re going to go with bulk chicken again.
Canned chicken is quite good! Makes great soup, chicken and
dumplings, chicken enchiladas – you name it. It’s great as the stuff is cooked while it’s canned so hauling it out and using it is easy. Getting it to the
canning stage, well….I’m not sure I'd vote to go with bulk chicken again.
