The Frozen Free Range Chicken Dilemma

My husband and I can't eat a whole chicken, either, but what I do is similar to Milehimama...roast the bird whole or cut it up and use the part we can eat for the meal, and then either bake or stew the rest. Pick the meat off the bones to use in other recipes, throw the bones and skin into a pot with water and a little apple cider vinegar and cook on low until the carcass falls apart, and voila, chicken stock for yet another recipe. Both cooked chicken and stock can safely go back into the freezer because you've killed the germs. One chicken = 3 meals.

Thanks for the chicken "breakdown," Heather. I'm a resident of VA too and am lucky enough to be able to purchase organic, free range chicken in pieces at a local market. They have whole frozen roasters that I've been eyeballing, but until reading this, I was too intimidated to tackle the entire chicken. Now I can't wait!

Now this cracks me UP because I cook two chickens for a regular old meal!

I'd cook up all the extra parts and have roast chicken for dinner. Cut the meat off/pick the chick, then have chicken salad for lunch the next day (add grapes and chopped pecans - delish!).

Other second day chicken dishes my family loves - these all use chopped/shredded cooked chicken. You can't refreeze RAW chicken, but if you cook it you CAN freeze it even if the original chicken was also frozen.

So cook the extra, pick the chick, then freeze the meat in Ziplocs. Later, use it for:

Chicken spaghetti (make a white sauce, add garlic and parmesan)
Chicken rice casserole (a classic. Make your own cream of mushroom soup.)
Chicken pot pie
Enchiladas Totally freezable (just sub chicken for the lentils and rice)
Pasta Salad
Make rice a roni - get vermicelli and break into small pieces, and rice. Sautee in oil with some onion, add chicken stock (twice as much stock and vermicelli/rice), chopped chicken, misc. chopped veggies.
Make chicken fried rice.

OR

Make some chicken soup, and freeze it so you have healthy, homemade, MSG free soup when you are sick.
Make chicken stock, freeze. I freeze it in my muffin tin because each muffin cup holds 1/2 c. of liquid, so measuring stock out later for recipes is easy.

I'd ask your local farmer what day they are processing the chickens. If you can pick them up that day, you likely can pick them up fresh instead of frozen.