Whatcha Gonna Do with All That Canned Chicken?

So I went back to the store and hit a major sale on chicken leg quarters. We actually drove across town to a store we no longer frequent to catch this sale. It was even my off week for shopping. This store had leg quarters, in 10lb bags, for $4.  I snatched up the 4 bags, all that was in the case. Yep! This is one of the few times I'll do this. If you just browse the news, all they talk about is future shortages and how we are headed for the hyperinflation scenarios. Well, I've got a family to feed and care for. So 40lbs of meat will go a long way to stop hunger pains from happening. 

Instead of deboning all forty pounds, I canned about half in whole pieces. Four chicken legs, or thighs, or a combination of both fitted nicely in my pint and a half jars. These I raw packed with poultry seasoning, salt and pepper. I know the astringent qualities in sage will turn canned foods bitter so I make my blend without it for canning. I can add sage later when I cook it up. I did skin the pieces and pulled off the larger pieces of fat before putting the pieces in the jars.

The fat and skins will be rend/rendered in the crockpot later. I can can it later for Schmaltz to spread on crackers, used for frying of candles. The crackling makes a tasty, crunchy snack. You can used the rendered chicken fat in place of bacon fat or oil in cooking. So it's worth the effort to save this resource.

I got 8 jars of pint and a half jars of bone in chicken pieces from the ten pound bag of leg quarters. Another 10 pints of boneless chicken from the second bag of leg quarters and 15 pint jars of mineral rich enhanced bone broth, 4 pints of chicken fat, and about a pint's worth of crackling.  The crackling was a rough guess-ta-mate because they are so tasty after draining away the hot fat, it was hard to resist grabbing a handful as my granddaughter and I worked om filling the jars for the canners. Yes, we we ended up using my two canners to make quicker work of it. The meat pressure canned for 75 to 90 minutes and the broth for only 25 minutes. While cooking off the chicken only took 25 minutes under pressure. Plus the additional bone broth for two hours. At one point, we even enlisted our Instapot's help. We were moving fast and furious between chopping vegetables, filling jars with raw meat, taking meat off the bone, and canning the jars. Making bone broth, straining the mixture into gallon pitchers to refrigerate the broth overnight to solidify the fat so it could be skimmed off later and put in the crockpot to render, straining it, and canning it for long term storage.

In my dinky, 8x10 kitchen, it took a dew minutes to get the stations just positioned right so both of us could working smart instead of dancing around each other to get our respective jobs done in an orderly fashion. It would have made more sense to do this in the larger kitchen except only two of six of the burners worked and we needed at least three working burners. So, the big household kitchen wouldn't work. Splitting the work between the two kitchen would double our workload instead of making it easier. Instead I made dinner in the big kitchen. By that time, my granddaughter could work unsupervised for a time.

By the end of dinner, the jars of chicken meat was canned and two gallons of chicken bone broth were in the refrigerator. All that was left to do was the clean up. My granddaughter scrubbed down the two pressure canners and put them in the drainer to dry. We were finally done for the night.

I'd use the 16qt  stock pot to heat the broth up, after I skimmed the fat off. The fat I'd put into the crockpot  to start rendering. I'd pour the warmed broth through a coffee filter lined strainer the bone broth so I'd be left with a clear broth before putting it into jars. By then, my granddaughter would be up and helping me can it all up. There are advantages to being an extra early riser. Today was a much easier day than the day before. I could have strained, jarred, and put the four pints of chicken fat in the refrigerator for short term storage, but I decided to can them for longer term storage to teach my granddaughter how to do it. Waste not, want not when times get tougher than they are right now.

For now after this last canning session, we've put away a year's worth of chicken for our family of four. That's not to say that if there's another sale like this on chicken that I won't take advantage of it. I definitely will, but I fee; better about where we stand in food security now. Now, I'll be turning my focus on beef and pork. I might be coming late to the party, but I'm not staying empty handed. 

That makes sense and cents.