Processed meat birds - going out for pizza!!

[FarmerChick]

I dont' know if you make chicken and dumplings...the but the legs and thighs are great for that.

Also, I bake the thighs and legs in either bbq sauce, or on the grill, or ANYTHING I do with the breasts and tenders.

You need to find a way to incorporate the legs and thighs into meals because just to make "that stock" would be a big waste for you. That is good eatin' meat!! Use it in any bake/broil/bbq situation.

Or you could save the thighs and legs for July 4th or something and do them all on the grill to treat everyone to your delish birds!!!

 

[big bertha]

FC - maybe you can answer this for me. I've canned a lot of stuff, but not meat.

If I cook down those legs/thighs, can I can the meat that comes off, and can the broth for stock?

Maybe it's just a dumb question, but I'll admit my ignorance on this. I just want to use my birds to their fullest. I'd like to have some of it canned and not depend on the freezer so much for all the obvious reasons we all have discussed on here.

 

[dacjohns]

There are a number of muscles in the breast. I guess tenders is good enough. I would have to do some more research to find the name of all the muscles.

 

[dacjohns]

It is the supracoracoideus muscle. It raises the wing while the big muscle, pectoralis, lowers the wing on the down stroke.

http://www.paulnoll.com/Oregon/Birds/Avian-Muscle.html




Good old government messing things up.

Copyright 2009. All rights reserved and enforced.

Chicken Tenders
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) defines, for its own internal use, a poultry Tender as any strip of breast meat from the bird indicated (e.g. a Chicken Tender). This makes it the same as a Chicken Breast Strip.

The USDA defines a poultry Tenderloin as "the inner pectoral muscle which lies alongside the sternum of the kind of poultry indicated." Which is to say, a strip of muscle that runs along the inside of the breast, the part of the breast closest to the bone. It separates easily from the rest of the breast. It has a tendon running through it. The tendon is basically gristle that needs to be removed and discarded.

Neither "Chicken Tender" nor "Chicken Tenderloin", however, are official, enforced terms so there is much confusion. The USDA says "The terms tender and tenderloin have been used for a number of years for muscles from the breast without a clear-cut definition to distinguish between the two. The policy stated above appears to be what is being done in general practice."

A Chicken Tender can even be ground chicken that is formed into a strip and breaded and cooked. Such "Chicken Tenders" are often sold at restaurants these days. This is very far from the USDA's attempted definition, but again, the USDA definition isn't enforced.

Sometimes you will see Chicken Tenderloins being sold off cheaply, just to get rid of them, as the butcher doesn't want the fiddly work of removing the tendon. In other places, you will see them quite expensive, as the marketing cachet attached to the wording "tenderloin" starts to catch on so that a higher price can be charged for them. That is intended to be the trend.

http://www.practicallyedible.com/ed.../edible.nsf/pages/chickentenders!opendocument

Inner pectoral sounds like the supracoracoideus muscle.


But ostrich is different for how tenderloin is defined.

http://www.bigbirdusa.com/ostmeat.php3



Way too much detail. Enjoy your chicken tender(loin)s.

 

[jackiedon]

Congrats on processing your own chickens. We processed 34 in December. They are so good. My kids love the thighs and legs baked with bbq sauce.

I was very sqimish at first but toward the end it was no as bad. Of course DH did a LOT of the work.

I slow cooked the chicken and took the broth and cooked rice with onion, garlic, brown sugar, balsamic vinegar and salt then added chicken after deboning. It's like sweet and sour chicken and rice. My kids loved it. Don't ask me measurements I just threw it all in.

jackie

 

[FarmerChick]

I don't can chicken. never tried it actually. I use the freezer and yes, like you, I have thought more about canning chicken cause of power outages and such. Would be the smarter thing to do of course and with canning, you don't need power to store....so saves money there also.

you can make broth (stock broth) out of anything cooked down from the chicken. If you cook the legs, thighs, etc. and then you can definitely set up that broth as stock.

the meat, I don't know how to can that? Somewhere on this thread is all about it. I searched but couldn't find the post that mentions how to do it.

so maybe start a new post in the food section asking how to can chicken. I need the info too.....

I never canned meat so I need new info also.

 

[Beekissed]

You can can up chicken just like you do venison. Saves a lot of time precooking to get the stock, etc. I just put my cut up chicken in wide mouth jars, add some water, I throw in a bullioun cube for flavor, some folks add a tsp. of salt.

I don't use a pressure canner for my meats so I don't know what the normal processing time for meat is~but I think its the same as mine~90 min. Your Ball canning books would tell you exactly how to do it in the pressure canner.

When its done, you have tender chicken on the bone, suspended in a gel stock with a little fat on top, but not much. To use this, you just empty it out in a pan, debone your chicken and make soup like you normally would. No precooking those legs and wings down, picking them off, then cooking them again to can them~just simple!

BTW, if you want really good chicken stock you have to cook the feet!