This was last year’s picture, but it pretty much looked exactly the same this year too 🙂 I just didn’t get the pictures in this time, it was already enough to cook this much!
Earlier this month, we mentioned a company called Zaycon foods that was offering their chicken sale. We shared why were were excited to try out this chicken and this company. Well, yesterday we picked up our two 40lb boxes of chicken. Now as we mentioned, this chicken was hormone free, antibiotic free natural chicken. It is not certified organic, but a good step towards a better chicken option without the high price tag. It was only $1.69 each lb. for plump natural chicken breasts.
We decided to get 80 lbs of chicken. So this meant that we spent about $135 for 80 lbs of chicken. But the better news is that we have a more natural chicken option to eat from for the next 6-8 months and no need to buy anymore chicken for a while. We have purchased chicken breasts in cases before from our local grocery stores, but they were not a good quality chicken.
So we were really excited to have this option before us! Pick-up of the chicken was so super easy! It literally took 1 min and 30 seconds to pick up our two 40lb. boxes.
But then the fun just began….. that part may have been super simple. But when we came home, we had to rebag as it comes in a box with a sealed thick bag and then inside of this is four 10 lb bags of chicken breasts. We cleaned, trimmed (with very little trimming needed compared to the other places we have been getting it), cut and even cooked 40 lbs.
We froze 40lbs. cooked and 40 lbs raw. The reason we cooked half was that this is something we have done each year for a while. In fact, we shared about it one of the times we did this. I love to have cooked chicken on hand for dinner/lunch emergencies. With the chicken already cooked, I can make thousands of things in just a few minutes. So when I didn’t hit my “dinner by 10” plan, I have cooked chicken, which is my personal biggest stumbling block in making dinner/lunch/breakfast.
We are not a freezer meal family. I have tried it before and my family was not a fan of reheated anything – no matter how well you try, cook or plan, a previously frozen meal never tastes the same. So I thought, sure it helps me to have freezer meals, but if my family doesn’t like it, then I am sure I can come up with another way. So I have cooked chicken, cooked beef and cooked breakfast meats that I just have to heat up in any dish and it is very quick. It makes meal prep very easy for me. So that is how I came to that compromise. My family cannot tell or have every complained about “re-heated” meats 🙂
So I also froze the other 40 lbs raw for the days that I actually do have a plan and stick to it 🙂
We were very impressed with this chicken! They were plump and looked like great quality chicken. And ultimately a great deal.
So the process of cooking and freezing 40 lbs. of chicken was an all day job. I am not going to lie – it is one of the worst days of the year when I have to cook and prepare chicken like this. It is hard work, your house smells terribly of chicken, and you will probably not want chicken for at least a week after that – but once you get through all of that, you will love having it already cooked for you. It is totally worth it, it just doesn’t feel like it at the time!
Half-way done!
We didn’t take pictures this time as it was already everything I had in me to cook this much, but it looked exactly like the last time we shared (even the same bowls – LOL). This time we ended up with 35 1-lb bags. We probably trimmed 2-3 lbs in total and then we reserved a couple of pounds for dinner (YES, I did make a chicken casserole for dinner and although the chicken was amazing, fresh, plump and good I have to be honest and say I did not enjoy it after being elbow deep in it all day – it should have been pizza night last night 🙂
After it was all said and done, we had a successful chicken day and my kitchen got a super scrub down (I do not like the thought of raw chicken juices anywhere!) and so all of the tough day’s work will be enjoyed for many days and months to come!
What this will do is save us time and money! Why not save ourselves a little time alongside these great savings? We’ll be able to use this over the next four months easily taking out what we need, defrosting and then either using the cooked chicken directly in salads, in casseroles, or on pasta dishes as the most popular and common uses for pre-cooked chicken! For these dishes, we have no need to defrost, rinse, cook, and chop because it has already been done.
As a side note: The USDA website states our cooked chicken will maintain its quality in the freezer for four months, whereas the frozen uncooked chicken will do so for nine months. What we were shocked by is the following statement: Note: Freezer storage is for quality only. Frozen foods remain safe indefinitely. That is when the item is stored at a consistent 0 degrees Fahrenheit! WOW! Good thing we’ll be eating this soon – I’m not sure if I could stomach 10 yr old chicken. 🙂
We want to hear from you! Did you order from Zaycon foods and if so, your thoughts on quality? What recipes would you use this chicken for? We would love to hear and try your ideas!
Robin
We love Zaycon’s chicken and bacon. We have a box of bacon coming early November. They use our church parking lot for a distribution site. in turn, they give the church a box of what they are selling that day. We use it for potlucks at the church. They have good shrimp too!!! Actually, I’ve never been disappointed with their food!
Cassie
Ah – I wondered if there was some way that they were compensating the pick-up locations as I noticed that almost all of them was a church. That is great! So far we are very impressed. Thanks for sharing your experience too!
Carla F.
I wonder how you cook all that chicken at once? Do you bake it, boil it or something else?
Cassie
Hi Carla,
I actually use two big stock pots and boil it. It makes for a nice even cooking and I have found this method to be the best for freezing and defrosting. It can cook about 7-8 lbs. per pot and so it took several rounds – which is why it was a daunting all day job 🙂 Good question, so thanks for asking!
D
Have you every tried cooking it in the crockpot or just boiled? I’m thinking about giving that a try with 10lbs. of it or so and wondered if anyone else has had success with it
Cassie
Well, I actually cook chicken in the crock pot quite frequently for just our meal that day, but crockpot cooking has parts that are more cooked/browned than others and I am sure it will be fine for freezing too. I just prefer the nice soft even cooking all around. That way if I wanted browned chicken, I can still put it in the oven, crockpot, or stove top after when I am preparing a meal. However, I am sure any method will work just fine. 🙂 Let us know your thoughts on when you have completed it! Thanks D!
D
It worked! My husband said we should just make sure to put enough water in (I’m guessing he added enough to not quite cover the chicken? I was putting kids to bed :), and we cooked it on low overnight. This morning it was very tender, easy to shred or chop, and it was all cooked evenly. Thanks again for posting this deal. I feel we have been so blessed by it!
Lori Duncan
We got our chicken breast earlier this month and we got 120 pounds! We do have a couple of more kids than you, so we probably needed more. We were thigh deep in it all day 🙂 But we shoot our own Deer and process the meat for that several times a year so the chicken processing day didn’t really bother me too much. I had hubby grill some that day then we froze some grilled already for me to reheat and add to a healthy salad for lunch. We tried flattening them after hubby realized how hard it was grilling them because they are so thick. Flattening didn’t go so well so my brilliant husband decided to slice them down the middle length wise and that works really well. We boiled some, we marinated some in teriyaki sauce, we sliced some into strips for fajitas and froze them like that. We use food saver bags though since that is how we always store our deer meat as well. With the deer meat and the chicken in the freezer we won’t need to buy a lot of meat except for some pork maybe.
Laurie
This sounds like an awesome idea, but I’m curious of how you know that this chicken is certified organic? My boyfriend raises completely organic cattle for beef. He says the only sure way to determine if chicken is completely antibiotic free is to look at the bone for that black stuff on it. A pure organic chicken should have completely white bones, so he says. I haven’t researched it but I’d hope there’s some sort of guidelines or inspections that these companies have to comply with before that can call their product “organic”.
Cassie
Hi Laurie – we actually state above that it is “not certified organic, but a good step towards a better chicken option with out the high price tag.” It would be cool, but certified organic chicken automatically doubles the price for just the cost of the certification. I would love to afford certified organic, but since a lot of other food sacrifices would need to be made to do so, we have been thrilled with this option 🙂
That is very interesting about the bones. This doesn’t have any bones as it is just the breasts, but I have purchased organic drumsticks when they go on markdown from the grocery store and so I am going to keep my eye out on that now!
Thanks Laurie!
Michelle
Hi, first I want to say I really like your blog, you give great advice! Second i’m going to have to criticize this just a bit, in this article you say the chicken is antibiotic free and you got me so excited. In the chicken world that means everything but this company does not sell antibiotic free chicken. They make no such claim on their website all they say is, “100 % natural chicken with no added hormones, additives or artificial ingredients”. Tyson can make that claim, and as big as those breasts are the chickens they came from were genetically modified, no hormones needed and just as terrible. I hate doing this, I was ready to order I really was. The only reason i’m even posting this is i’ve learned what they do to chickens and what wording can be legally used, most people don’t. I’m not trying to be a debbie downer, and i’m sure it’s better quality than what you get in the store but it’s no more natural or healthier in any way.
Cassie
HI Michelle,
You make a great point. This is an old post that I linked to today on our Facebook post to show “what I was in the process of doing” with cooking it. Tomorrow I hope to post my current pictures. So, as far as the claims go in this post, they can change at any time due to their own processes. We have been buying from them for a few years and I know that they have had some recent changes. I didn’t necessarily see the change about the anitbiotics claim this last time I ordered because I probably wasn’t paying that much attention. I actually copied and pasted the description they provided at the time, but I see that they are now saying “100 % natural chicken with no added hormones, additives or artificial ingredients.” I don’t know where “antibotic-free” would fit or if it fits in any of those categories or not so I can’t say either way. Outside of antibiotics, what additives or artificial ingredients would they mean?? I know that there can be a number of questions about fillers in meats and that is a major thing I am trying to avoid. Is GMO an antibiotic as you reference above? I thought they did get really big from hormones? I would love to figure these things out as I try to feed my family as healthy as possible on our budget. Thanks for bringing up these questions! Even if this ends up not including “antibiotic free,” I will still probably order from them as I have no other affordable option and diving fully into certified organic is very difficult for many families. I would love a local natural supplier that I can see the farm from and see their claims in action and is affordable. We do buy our beef this way, but no such luck for chicken yet.
Cassie
Hi Again Michelle,
I wanted to post a link to the current post relating to this where we talk about it. I did not put anything about antibiotic free as again I copied and pasted what was on their site at the time. So maybe they changed sources or overstated in previous years. Just wanted to clarify that 🙂
https://thethriftycouple.com/2013/12/30/nationwide-deal-for-100-natural-boneless-skinless-chicken-at-only-1-89-each-lb-no-added-hormones-additives-or-artificial-ingredients/
Laurie
It’s all very confusing- “antibiotic free, hormone free, cage free, organic”.
I do agree with some things the other posters have posted, about the size of the breasts. That has to lead you to believe that the chickens must be ingesting some type of hormones. I saw a documentary on this once. The chickens were out of their cages feeding, but had apparently gained so much weight so fast that their legs would hardly hold them up. I recently purchase a Tyson whole chicken at a local Kroger store. The packaging said “all natural, organic”, yet when it was cooked and we sat down to eat the bones did show the black marks that were (supposedly) indicative of hormone fed. Id venture to guess that unless you grew the chickens yourself and actually knew what they were fed and how they were raised you’d really not know for sure what you were eating.
There’s been research on hormone and antibiotic fed chickens and cows that have shown this can cause numerous health problems, and is speculated as being a reason why girls are developing at a much younger age than they were 50 years ago. What’s the solution, aside from growing everything ourselves?
Become vegetarians I suppose.
I’m just rambling : )
Cassie
LOL Laurie! It is all so confusing! I totally agree with you. I have thought about raising chickens before, but we don’t have the living space for it at the moment, but it has been in my future thrifty plans. I also agree with you about girls development as well (which is why we want hormone free – but this says no added hormones, whatever that means) and knew that milk has had a lot to do with that, which is why we spend more to get hormone free milk delivered from a local dairy instead of store bought…. but that’s probably another whole issue itself 🙂
Veronica
I know this is an old post, but I just stumbled on it today. My question is the best way to go about thawing the 40lbs of chicken. I’ve left the box out for 6+ hours before and it is still just a solid block of chicken! Please help so I don’t lose my mind (or my husband lol).