Question:
Hello, I just bought your book and have been enjoying stocking my freezer! Do you have any ideas for freezing chicken? In the past I have just seasoned it then froze it, but your marinades are so wonderful that I thought I would see what you do for chicken. Thanks, the book is great!
Summer Carter
Answer:
Thank you for your purchase. I am glad you have been enjoying the recipes.
Basically for all my Chicken recipes except for two, you need cubed chicken. I haven't done this yet, but I think I will next time I go to the grocery store, see if the butcher will cube my chicken breasts for me. I have had them cube a ham before, slice chicken breasts in half, fajita strip a beef roast, it seems like they would cube chicken. They do this all free of charge and it saves me tons of time!
When you get home, place 4 cups of cubed chicken into each zip top bag, after chicken is all bagged pour in a marinade, label and freeze.
I have been using a marinade made from scratch, (the recipe is in the emergency substitutions, let me know if you don't see it.) Any marinade will work (I'm a big fan of Lowry's 30 minute marinades), even Italian salad dressing makes a great marinade.
Another option for chicken would be to after marinating, lay out 10 chicken breasts on foil lined baking sheets. Bake them in the oven at 350 for 25 minutes. Check to make sure meat has been cooked through, cool the meat, cube it and then bag up chicken cubes in zip top bags. The pre-cooked cubed chicken will be a little more dry then raw, marinated frozen chicken cubes.
I just discovered a precooked turkey breast that you can buy at Costco ( found in the Deli section) and it costs around $4.95 a pound. It costs more then chicken breasts, but saves a lot of work and clean up to buy it this way. It tastes like it's been smoked and has some seasoning around the outside of the meat (it is the size of a football). I think I may switch to using the Turkey breast instead of chicken for cubing because it is so much easier. It is precooked, easy to cube and has very little fat.
-Jenny Stanger
