I tell you how I save on buying chicken, while choosing the best quality

Some housewives purchase individual parts of chicken, while others buy whole carcasses for subsequent cutting and storage. Thighs, drumsticks, backs and breasts - having such chicken preparations in the freezer will not only allow you to prepare a wide variety of dishes at any time, but also significantly save your family budget.

Thus, the price of 1 kg of chicken breast is almost twice the cost of an uncut carcass. Drumsticks, thighs and wings are also more expensive. If you take a calculator and calculate how much packaged meat and the same number of whole chickens will cost, you will find that the cost of the latter is 1.5-2 times lower.
In addition, when choosing packaged refrigerated drinks in a store, there is a risk of buying a product that is not entirely fresh. The fact is that some supermarkets sell defrosted meat under the guise of refrigerated meat. It is placed in beautiful substrates and tightly sealed with film, which does not allow you to clearly examine the product being purchased and evaluate how fresh and high-quality it is.
If you plan to prepare meat for a month or the entire winter, it is very important to use fresh, chilled chicken, since repeated freezing will negatively affect their quality.

How to distinguish between chilled and defrosted meat

During the defrosting process, the chicken loses a lot of moisture, so in appearance it will not look as juicy and fresh compared to chilled chicken.
To understand that the seller is deceiving you and, under the guise of chilled meat, is selling frozen meat, just lightly press the flesh with your finger. If a hole forms at the point of pressure and the surface does not return to its original shape for a long time, it means that you have a defrosted product.

Chilled meat has a denser and more elastic structure, so when pressed, the pit immediately levels out.

Most likely, no seller will allow you to poke your finger into each drumstick or brisket, but you can check 2-3 carcasses in this way without any problems. Thus, buying whole carcasses will help reduce the risk that a low-quality, not fresh product will end up on your table.
You also need to sniff the bird’s peritoneum and under the wings - it is in these places that the bird begins to deteriorate with an unpleasant odor.
The best option is to use domestic chickens, purchased at the market or raised in your own backyard.

Cutting and preparing chilled chickens

So, you have purchased several fresh carcasses and want to store meat for future use.

Of course, you can place each chicken in a plastic bag and put it in the freezer, but in this case you will encounter several problems:

1. Whole carcasses take up too much space in the freezer.
2. If you need to cut breasts or thighs from several chickens at once, they will have to be thawed and then re-frozen.
3. If the family is small, then it is not advisable to cook a large chicken at one time. To cook half a carcass, you will need to defrost the whole thing, and then put the remaining meat back into the freezer.

Thus, it is more convenient and economical to immediately cut all the carcasses into pieces, sort them into portions and hide them in the freezer.

How to properly cut a bird?

You must use a separate board for cutting meat and fish.
When properly cutting a chicken, all its parts will be used to prepare different dishes.

To disassemble a carcass without waste, you will need to perform the following steps:

1. First, the chicken is washed under the tap and dried using a paper towel.
2. Then the carcass is placed on a cutting board and the legs are cut off at the joints.
3. The cut legs are divided into thighs and legs - the knife must pass precisely through the cartilage of the joints.
4. Next, the wings are separated from the carcass. To do this, we feel the shoulder joint, pull the wing in the opposite direction and cut the meat to the bone. Then we cut the joint under the bone. If you need to separate the tips from the wings, then this is also done at the joints.
5. Now you need to separate the breast loin from the back. We probe with our fingers to determine where the bone is and begin to separate the pulp from it.
6. We cut the remaining skeleton, consisting of the breast bones and back, with kitchen scissors or a knife into the required number of pieces - we will use them for the broth.

If you cut with a good, sharp knife and follow the rules listed above, then the process of cutting chickens will take no more than 15 minutes, and you will not need to make any effort.

Important: You should not cut bones with a knife - this will lead to the formation of bone fragments, which can subsequently get on the tooth or injure the mucous membranes of the mouth.

You can freeze meat in regular transparent plastic bags or special food trays from the supermarket.
Before freezing semi-finished products, it is recommended to prepare small notes with the names of the parts of the bird. Subsequently, this will make it easier to find the right type of meat in the freezer.

As a rule, two medium-sized chickens last for 1-2 weeks. It depends on the number of people in the family and the frequency of using chicken for cooking.
Neatly folded bags will save useful space in the freezer. If you often prepare meat for future use, for several months, then for such purposes it is better to purchase a separate freezer.