Cutting Up The Chicken

In yesterday's post we showed you how we butcher the chickens.  We left you when the birds were butchered with the birds chilling on ice.  Our goal is to let them chill and have them in the freezer in 8 hours after butchering. 

We had a late start in butchering.  Although we set up the chicken butchering stations the night before, when we got everything ready to go, I realized the regulator on my propane burner was faulty, not allowing a blue, pressured flame, but a weak flame.  I would never be able to get scalding water like that.  I made a quick dash to the hardware store and purchased a new one.  We started butchering at 9:55 am and finished at 12:15pm.  We ate lunch and had an afternoon cup of coffee and then at 6 pm, began cutting the chickens up.  Prior to putting them in the freezer, we like to cut them up in the classic 8 piece cut-up - 9 pieces, if you count the neck/backbone portion we use for making chicken broth.

In THIS POST FROM A LIFETIME AGO IN 2014 we go into detail about how we cut them up.  Since then, we have changed a few things, but it is essentially the same.  We do cut the breast in half now.  One of the most important things about the cut-up is this: HAVE A SHARP KNIFE!

"Give me six hours to cut down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." - Abraham Lincoln

This is no less true with chicken butchering.  We use Chicago Cutlery knives and I use whetstones, honing oil, and a sharpening steel repeatedly before and during the process.  It is SO much easier with a sharp knife.

So here is our bird ready to be cut up.  Tricia weighs each bird prior to cutting, writing the weight on the outside of a zip loc bag as well as in a notebook for our records.  We'll share that in a few minutes.  For now, let's cut to the chase...

We were rushing so as not to run out of sunlight.  We started at 6 pm and finished at 7:45 pm.  It was a long day, and we're not getting any younger!  While rushing, we were very careful so as not to cut ourselves.  No sense in bagging up my thumb in a ziploc bag.  In about a minute and a half we can transition a whole bird into this nice arrangement you see below:

All bagged up and on ice, we put the bags in the freezer 15 at a time at 1 hour intervals to allow the freezer to work at a good pace instead of overwhelming it with 47 birds to freeze at one time.

We keep them bagged and on ice and then bring the next 15 bags inside to be frozen.

We stack them in the freezer with rags between each layer of four.  We learned the hard way that if you stack them one on top of the other, they'll freeze into one block of chicken/ice.  I had to use a crowbar and hammer to separate them each time we wanted chicken for supper.  Not fun!  We try to learn from our mistakes though.

We have one final installment on chickens on Thursday Night.  We'll break down the costs and look at the economics of raising your own chickens for slaughter, comparing the numbers with prior years.  I always find it informative.  See ya Thursday!