Do you remember when we got blessed by the chicken fairy last year? We liked that Zaycon chicken a whole lot more than the frozen stuff we'd been buying at WinCo and it was less expensive than the fresh or previously frozen stuff at Costco or Safeway. Needless to say, we decided a while back that we'd start buying our chicken from Zaycon on a regular basis.
Zaycon sells fresh chicken breasts in 40 lb. cases for $1.89 a pound. It just needs to have the breasts split and a smidge of fat trimmed off. We eat chicken once a week, use three pounds per meal, and the chicken events happen about every six months, so we bought two cases this time around. The plan was to freeze much of it plain, which will allow us to use it in a variety of ways over the coming months, then freeze some of it in marinades. I like doing that because it allows the meat to marinate as it thaws and I can easily toss it in the crockpot for a super easy meal.
I did all the cutting last night, but Tim helped with two of the marinades while I cut, which made the whole process more efficient. Here's what we ended up with.
Three bags with do-it-all marinade. With garlic, Worcestershire sauce, dijon mustard, balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, and more, I love this marinade on both chicken and salmon.
Three bags of Greek chicken. We have rosemary and thyme growing in our yard and I opted to use dried oregano we had in the house instead of buying fresh this time around.
Three bags of sesame honey chicken. I buy honey at Costco, but won't be there until Sunday, so these bags were all just a smidge short on honey because I ran out of what we already had. No biggie, as we can just squeeze some into the crockpot when we cook these. This stuff, which has yummy things like honey, sesame oil, and onion powder, is great with a bunch of toasted sesame seeds on top!
Three bags of teriyaki chicken. This was the easiest one to prep because we just dumped some Soy Vay's Veri Veri Teriyaki in the bag.
The final result? A bad picture of a lot of chicken before it got stacked up in the freezer.
I realize that not everyone has the cash sitting around to make a bulk purchase, but try and budget for it if you can. Tim had one really big payday over the summer, so we used some of that money for this purchase and are setting aside a little grocery money each month to pay for the next round of chicken. If money is tight, then maybe you could do something similar with a tax refund in a few months.
If you simply don't eat chicken, then you may want to check out the other products Zaycon sells. They sell beef, pork, poultry, fish, and some other non-meat products like berries, milk, waffles, and honey. While I've only had their chicken, I've heard nothing but good things from friends who buy their other products.
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3 comments:
2 things: 1. I really need to try more of your recipes, I'm impressed with this! Of course you always impress me. 2. Don't buy Zaycon's bacon! We bought bacon once, and it was bad. Might have been just bad timing for us. I've been afraid to buy anything else since. But I've heard nothing but great things about the chicken, so maybe I'll try that someday.
That's a bummer about your bacon! Chicken that isn't great isn't necessarily gross, but non-great bacon is a different story. Forking out money for a bulk purchase and then being stuck with a bunch of meat you don't like would be frustrating, for sure. I'm not a risk taker *and* I'm frugal, so I would have a hard time trying the bacon again.
Give the chicken a try, though!
Yes, you totally get what I was saying! Buying a big thing of bacon was a poor choice on our part, but I thought bacon is yummy and didn't realize there would be a bacon out there we didn't like. I will give the chicken a try because yes, chicken is usually still edible even if it isn't the best. Thanks for your thoughts!
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