Chicken quarters

I got a 40 pound package of chicken quarters from Pine Ridge Grocery in Bainbridge, NY. $0.70/pound, $28.00 for the whole box!

I should point out that this is a very large amount of chicken, and quarters require a lot of processing. But I prefer leg and thigh dark meat chicken over breast, so this works out well for me. It tooks about 3 hours to break down and package the chicken, and another 3 hours to process the stock, soup, and finish cleaning up and decontaminating my kitchen.

Seriously, it's 30 quarters. That is so much chicken!

Trimmed out 25.0 oz. of leg and thigh meat, a little less than 5 quarters. Vacuum marinated in spiedie marinade. The package will be refrigerated overnight, cooked in the sous vide, then grilled.

Processed two quarters into drumstick and thigh parts, bone-in, skin-on. Covered in jerk seasoning and vacuum sealed. The package will be refrigerated overnight, cooked in the sous vide, then grilled.

Trimmed out 12.0 oz. of leg and thigh meat, boneless, skinless, and diced; I'll use this to make Japanese-style chicken curry.

Trimmed out 6 packages (one is missing from the picture), of 4.2 oz. to 4.8 oz. for meals for one. Vacuum sealed and frozen raw.

Processed quarters into boneless, skinless parts in larger packages, vacuum sealed, and frozen raw.

Processed 2 quarters into bone-in, skinless leg and thigh.

Processed 6 quarters into bone-in, skin-on leg and thigh.

Vacuum sealed and froze two full quarters.

There are a lot of trimmings and bones! There are 2 extra-large zip-lock bags each containing 2 vacuum sealed bags of at least 3 pounds of bones, trimmings, and skin. Each 6 pound bag should be enough to make 4 servings of 12 oz. chicken soup and soup meat. I froze these to make soup later as I only have one instant pot, and each package will fill a 6-quart instant pot for making stock. Each chicken quarter makes about a pound of skin, bones, and trimmings. Less if making bone-in, skin-on cuts, of course.

The third 6 pound serving went right into the instant pot to make stock. There should be 12 servings of 12 oz. of soup total. You could easily use 3 pounds of scraps to make 48 oz. of soup, but I have so much of it, and this makes a better amount of chicken scraps to add meat to the soup when serving.

Chilling in a sink full of cold water.

Picking out the good bits of meat. There was 7.1 oz. of meat, so about 1.7 oz. of meat per soup serving.

Stock strained through a mesh strainer. As there was a lot of skin in the stock, there was a lot of fat which was easy to skim off. There was so much of it I could have saved it as schmaltz, but I didn't do it this time.

Vacuum sealed and froze 4 servings of soup with meat, and 1 serving of plain stock.

Grilled spiedie marinated chicken leg and thigh. It's already cooked through from the sous vide, so this is just for flavor.

And the jerk chicken leg and thigh (bone-in, skin-on). This is also already cooked through in the sous vide.