Thursday, February 27, 2014

Zaycon Chicken

Last week we got two 40 pound boxes of chicken breasts from Zaycon Foods.

This was our second time ordering from Zaycon and we were once again very pleased! We got one 40 pound box last fall when Zaycon came to our area and just finished using the chicken from that order last week.

Eighty pounds of chicken is a LOT. But considering we went through 40 pounds in 4 months, we got 80 pounds this time to last us until Zaycon has another chicken event in the fall.

The chicken is a really good price- $1.89 a pound and the breasts are huge! This is not certified organic chicken but from what I understand, the chickens are cage-free and are not given antibiotics. So it is a good price for what I feel is a bit better than regular grocery store chicken.

Erin from The Humbled Homemaker wrote a very informative post about Zaycon chicken that you can read here.


So do you want to know what I did with 80 pounds of chicken breasts? 

 Box #1: Trimmed and frozen in 1-2 breast packages.

Box #2: 20 pounds of the chicken were cooked in the crock pots. I then shredded the chicken and froze it in 2-4 cup portions to use later. Shredded chicken is so very versatile and will be a great base for many easy meals later.

Tip: Use your mixer to quickly shred all that chicken! I have a Bosch mixer and the batter hook worked well. I have heard that a Kitchen Aid mixer's dough hook shreds chicken really nicely too. I've used my food processor too with the dough blade but I prefer the mixer since I can do more at once.

I ended up with 21 containers of cooked shredded chicken.

The other 20 pounds of chicken from Box #2 were used for some crockpot freezer meals and one dinner that week.

I made 8 easy freezer meals. I chose 4 recipes we really liked from the last chicken extravaganza and made 2 of each.

 Zaycon delivers all over the country. You can check their website to see if there are any upcoming events in your area. They sell not only chicken but also ground beef, bacon, sausage or ham. They usually sell only 1-2 items per event. For example: Chicken was the only item offered at last week's event.

I know a 40 pound box of chicken (or two 40 pound boxes) sounds overwhelming to some of you. If you don't have the space to store that much or just simply cannot eat it all in a reasonable amount of time, consider splitting a box with a friend or two.

And as a disclaimer: The links to Zaycon Foods in this post are referral links. That means that if you go to the Zaycon website and place an order through my referral link, I will get some credit towards my next Zaycon purchase. Thank you!

Zaycon did not pay me in any way to write this post. We're just very satisfied customers and want to pass this info along to you!

2 comments:

Monica Wilkinson said...

I've never heard of this, thanks for sharing. The closest one to us is as far as Sam's so I'll probably stick with that. Thanks for the chicken shredding trick - I've never heard of that either but sounds quick!

~katie~ said...

I'll have to look into this Mary Ann ~ thanks for sharing!

And, WOW, to all that prep work you did with 80 pounds of chicken!!! Awesome job! How much time that will cut when making meals.

We have venison and grass fed beef, but I was just asking a friend of mine where she gets chicken. She mentioned a local store, but their prices are a bit out of our budget. $1.89 is pretty reasonable, I think!

Do you have a generator? We are looking into that. We've had our freezer for several years now, and we got it used. We're thinking it would be a shame to lose all of our meat if it failed.

I'm off to check out Zaycon.

Thanks,
Katie