Prepping, Freezing, & Cooking Chicken in large batches for quick meals

 Freezing cooked chicken for future use. 2 hrs of prep, months of quick meals!

I used to cook chicken in the crock pot and shred it and freeze it, but I didn't love the texture of shredding it for everything. A few years ago I decided to try baking it (since I previously had not really ever put raw chicken in the oven) and WOW! It changed my life! 

I buy my chicken through a Food & Meat Co-op every few months. It comes in a 40 lb box and I generally find someone to split the order with. Once cooked, the original 20lbs becomes about 15 containers of 1lb each.

This Chicken is amazing quality, always juicy and mostly trimmed. I just separate the breasts,  remove the tendons, pound them flat so they will cook evenly (in a plastic bag to reduce the mess), sprinkle seasoning on them — Montreal Steak Seasoning, Tony's Creole are favorites — and cook on the air fryer setting in my oven (or regular bake setting works too). I use the internal temp thermometer and just watch the setting on my oven and stop when it reaches 165 Farenheit. This takes about 20 min at 375 setting for Air Fry.  You can just use a regular oven bake setting and check temp. It will probably take a little more than 20 min as the air fry is supposedly faster.

When using my air fry setting, I use the air fryer tray and place a regular cookie sheet underneath to catch juices. This cleans up easily afterwards with water while it's still warm if you let it sit for a few minutes before cleaning. No scraping required, it comes right off.

Once cooked, remove 1 batch of chicken to another tray or platter and let it rest for 10-15 min before cutting so the juices will stay in with the meat. If you cut right away, all the juices will spill out.

Cut to desired size and bag or put in Extreme Freeze Reditainers. Let cool a bit with lids off before freezing so it doesn't heat up your freezer sticking it in hot. (If you forget this step, you may be needing to see my post about thawing your freezer when it overheats or the door gets left open.)

When ready to use, thaw in fridge or run the bottom of the container under water till the contents loosen and put on a microwave safe plate to thaw quickly. Your chicken is ready for SO many dishes now!

40lb box of chicken. I poured off 4 lbs of water so around 36 lbs to work with

 To split a box, I pull 2 blue bags out and place in the sink. Leave the other 2 bags in the box and weight myself holding the box on a regular bathroom scale, changing amount of chicken in bags until I have 2 sets of bags weighing the same amount.

This is how the chicken comes.

I use kitchen sheers to cut apart the breasts, cut off fat chunks, and take out the yucky tendons/bloody parts.

The Breasts are not even thickness which is problematic for cooking, but this is easily remedied by placing in a plastic bag and pounding them with a rolling pin or mallet till you have a relatively even thickness.

Pound 1 large breast at a time in a plastic bag (reduces mess).

Chicken is relatively even thickness after pounding.

In this pic, I have 1 batch in the oven already, 2 more on this pan waiting and that's the bowl of what I trimmed off. About 2lbs. (we are down to 16lbs of chicken (I am doing 1/2 a box)

1 lb of raw chicken is about 12 oz cooked, which is basically 2 cups.

This is all the chicken I cooked up from my 1/2 of a 40lb box. It's around 14lbs once it is cooked.