Meat for my Freezer

I lucked up again yesterday and found bone-in chicken breasts on sale at Kroger for 99 cents a pound. We got 12 pounds of chicken.
Kroger also sells a value pack of frozen ground turkey. It contains 4 one pound chubs and costs $6.99.

When we got home, I left two of the chubs of ground turkey as they were and put them in the freezer for a recipe I am doing next week. The remaining two chubs I thawed and then browned with some onion in it. I found that by following a suggestion I found over at Moneywise Mom's, preparing the meat this way saves so much time! Plus, it is ready for a quick meal when you need it. Just open a ziploc bag and dump the cooked meat into a pan with a jar of spaghetti sauce or season it up and use for tacos, or dump it in for Hamburger Helper. Half of the work is done ahead of time, so it is great for busy nights!

Then my husband and I tackled the chicken. First, we removed the skin from three chicken breasts and laid them in my crockpot. I dumped on a can of Rotel tomatoes with cilantro and lime juice and set it to cook on low for 6 hours. (Money wise Mom used regular Rotel, but that is too spicy for us so we use this milder version which is FABULOUS!) Next, we pulled off the big part of each remaining breast and put the bones and tiny scrap pieces of chicken, along with the tender strip that remains attached to the bone, in a large pot with some onion and garlic. I cut up enough of the chicken breasts for chicken soft tacos last night, then put the remaining (now boneless and skinless) chicken breasts into 2 ziploc bags.

After the chicken was done boiling, I drained off the broth and put it into 3 plastic freezer containers. When the meat was cool enough to handle, I picked it from the bones. There was enough to make one recipe's worth of diced cooked chicken, while I use in my chicken casserole, and then what was left I divided among my three freezer cups for chicken and noodles or chicken and dumplings or chicken soup.


Once the crockpot chicken was done, I removed and shredded the meat with two forks and placed it into two ziploc bags for chicken tacos or enchiladas.

All together, I spent about $15.50 on the meat that I used. What I got out of that was:
1 meal of chicken tacos last night
2 meals of chicken tacos or enchiladas in freezer
3 meals of chicken with broth for soup, dumplings, etc.
2 bags of thick chicken breasts for grilling
1 bag of diced cooked chicken for chicken and rice
3 bags of cooked ground turkey for spaghetti or whatever
That is 12 meals worth, at roughly $1.29 per meal, not including any leftovers we may have :)
I found the ideas to prepare the chicken and ground meat over at Money wise Moms, along with many links to great recipes. Click here to check it out! Just look under her blog archives under "cooking ahead".