All About Food Preservation

With all this freezing, drying and canning, how much money does one really save? Excellent question. I just put up twenty ears of corn on the cob at $0.20 per ear, sixty pounds of green chile at $0.50 per pound and sixty pounds of chicken legs and thighs at $0.44 per pound. Because I knew you would ask (hee hee hee), I checked on the prices in the store of these foods already preserved. For example, three ears of corn on the cob already frozen and cut into half cob chunks was $2.67. My cost for this was $0.60. I saved $0.69 per ear of corn times twenty ears = a savings of $13.80. Yes, I did have to spend time husking, blanching and packaging the corn. To process twenty ears took me less than one hour. Not horrible wages.

I do several things with the chicken legs. They come in ten pound packages and it would take my husband and I two weeks of eating nothing but chicken to consume ten pounds. So here’s what I do: After defrosting the ten pound package, I cook up two or three legs and thigh combinations for dinner that night. Either it gets fried or put on the smoker for awhile. Sometime I make my famous/infamous garlic chicken which is simply basted with olive oil, worchester sauce and garlic. Then put under the broiler turning every fifteen minutes four times (one hour cooking time). The remaining chicken gets trimmed and cleaned and either

1. put into quart-sized freezer bags with a marinade and refrozen (see below for some suggestions); or,
2. boiled in a pot with many herbs and spices (see below for a list of herbs and spices); or,
3. put on the smoker with green mesquite, pecan or apple wood.

I really like boiled chicken. If done like I describe below, it is flavorful and useful for so many purposes. We use it for green chile chicken enchiladas, cold on salads, chopped for chicken salad sandwiches, to garnish fried rice, diced in soup – the list is limited only by your imagination. And after I have the meat off the bone, I re-cook the bones and skim off the fat for augmenting the dogs’ dinner. They just love that stuff.

Save Money

So for the savings computation, maybe canned chicken is the closest comparison. Amazon has twelve cans of Swanson chicken breast for $35.07 which breaks out to $2.92 per can or $0.30 per ounce. Personally, I don’t care for the white meat which I know is opposite of what most people like. I prefer the dark meat. But I’m going to use this for the comparison anyway.

From my ten pound bag of chicken legs and thighs, I get about eight pounds of meat after trimming off fat and taking out the bones. At $0.44 / lb. Initial cost, my cost now goes up to $0.55 / lb. There is a cost for the electricity to cook the meat but in truth, it only takes about an hour on low heat so the cost is pretty low. But just for giggles, let’s say the cost is now $0.60 / lb. after cooking. Cost per pound after cooking is $0.60 / 16 or $0.0375 / ounce. Compare to the $0.30 per ounce cost of the canned chicken breast – my savings is $0.26 an ounce or $4.16 per pound. That’s huge!!! My sixty pounds of chicken untrimmed was $0.44 per pound or a total of $26.49. After trimming and cooking the cost was $28.80. The same amount of Swanson’s canned chicken would be $230.40 (48 pounds of trimmed, cooked chicken at $0.60 / pound {$0.0375 / ounce}). So my savings is $201.60. I’ll take that any day.

If you want to compare chicken breast, use $0.99 / pound for boned chicken breast. There is no waste but you may want to add $0.05 per pound for cooking costs. That brings the total cost per pound up to $1.04 or $0.065 per ounce. This still compares extremely favorably with the $0.30 cost per ounce for the Swanson’s canned chicken. Presuming you bought raw chicken breast and froze it, your savings for ten pounds of chicken breast using home preserving techniques would be $3.76 per pound. That’s big time savings, folks. Imagine if you could save $3.76 off a rib eye steak which sells around here for $8.99/ lb. That would bring rib eye down to $5.23. Not bad.

But I gotta tell ya – We bought rib eye at the same store for $4.99 / lb. I only got two packages. Should have gotten more.

All in all, my food preservation spree required about three hours total to trim, husk, package and blanch twenty ears of corn, sixty pounds of chicken, ten pounds of 90/10 hamburger (at $2.68 / lb!!!), about ten pounds of pork chops, seven pounds of whole pork loin and seven pounds of pollock. I probably saved upwards of $300.00. For a morning of shopping and an afternoon of prepping and stuff, I think that’s a pretty substantial savings.

Add your comments below. I really want to hear your thoughts. Thanks.

Marinades for Chicken

Marinade #1

For two pounds of chicken, add ¼ cup of basalmic vinegar, 1 tablespoon dried onion (doesn’t have to be powdered), a pinch of sage and two tablespoons of minced canned or fresh garlic.

Marindate #2

For two pounds of chicken, add ¼ cup Worchester sauce, 2 tablespoons of minced canned or fresh garlic. When grilling or braising, baste with butter or olive oil.

Marindate #3

For two pounds of chicken, add ½ cup pineapple juice, 2 tablespoons of minced canned or fresh garlic, 1 tablespoon dried onion, 3 tablespoons of minced, fresh cilantro (if you don’t have fresh, use ½ teaspoon of corriander), a spritz of fresh, cracked black pepper.

Note: Avoid adding salt to your marinade. It toughens the meat. Add salt while cooking instead. Turns out much better. Marinades are easy to innovate – if you love the flavor of peaches, add peach juice. If you think that jalapenos bring it, roast jalapenos on your outdoor grill and add them to your marinade. The most wonderful thing about marinades is that they can be very planned or very spontaneous and still create a wonderful dining experience.

Herbs/Spices for Boiled Chicken

Oregano
Garlic
Salt (use kosher salt – it’s the purest, even purer than sea salt)
Cracked peppercorns or coarse ground pepper)
Sage – this is the “magic” ingredient and brings out a whole new level of flavor
Dried, ground onion (See Drying Herbs or Drying Vegetables for drying your own onion)
Parsley (fresh or dried) (See Drying Herbs for detailed instructions to drying your own)
Optional: Liquid Smoke, Flavored vinegars, beer, wine (white is better – try a Chardonnay or a Riesling

Note: In any marinade, garlic, lime juice, papaya, vinegars and other acidic things will help to tenderize.

Posted byJesse Deluca
Category:food preservation