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AKA- What to do with a 10# bag of chicken leg quarters.
I am a member of the excellent Ketogenic Forums. I originally posted this information here. When the site when down for more than a week, I decided I would like to make this available elsewhere.
There are widely-available recipes for every step of this process around the internet. Broth, chicken chips, shredded chicken, roasted chicken, and schmaltz. Most of those go into more detail. Here, I have written this up as the process of putting it all together at once. Doing it this way will stretch your grocery money and save you time.
Per 10# bag of chicken quarters, this process yields approximately:
2-3# of shredded chicken meat, depending on if you pull any aside to roast.
About 1 half of a gallon-sized bag of chicken chips
8 cups (1/2 gallon) strong chicken meat broth
3/4-1 cup of rendered chicken fat
3 roasted chicken legs for a meal. Of course you can choose to do more or less depending on how many you need.
Chicken: all but the cluck
Gather your equipment and ingredients:
1 or 2 (10 pound) bags of chicken quarters. You could use any cheap bone-in poultry.
Two to four baking sheets. I have restaurant half sheets, but use what you have.
Parchment paper
Stock pot
Tongs to remove chicken from stock pot
Strainer
Large metal or glass bowl to refrigerate chicken broth overnight
3 or 4 gallon-sized freezer bags
Small jars with a lid. I used (2) 1/2 pint jars for the rendered fat.
Silicon molds/ ice cube trays or medium plastic containers or freezer bags for broth. I was using containers 2 cup-sized from the Dollar Tree, but have switched to silicon "baby food" trays. Don't us glass. It will break when the broth expands.
Turn your oven on to 350 (F). Make room in your freezer for one or two of the baking sheets.
These 10# bags of chicken are seconds from a local poultry producer that does small flock, sustainable farming. Since about half their products are organic, I’m guessing some of these are too. The price is up a bit right now, so $1.30 / pound (American). You can see the bottom package in the background of the picture below. I had (2) 10 pound bags like that.
Put aside whatever you want to roast for a meal (optional). Pull the skin off of the remaining leg quarters. The skinless ones go in a stockpot with just a bay leaf. You can add other aromatics, but I don't. Celery, onions, and peppercorns can be problems for some people.
Cook the chicken at a simmer until it is tender and then, after cooling slightly, pull the meat off the bone. I put it loosely on a parchment-lined baking sheet that fits in my freezer. Put the bones back in the pot and return to the broth to a slow simmer.
I freeze the chicken chunks, break them up and bag them for quick meals. My college kiddo and one of her roommates have restricted diets. This is quick protein for them since they need to scratch cook almost everything.
In the meantime, I roast the 6 quarters I set aside as well as the chicken skin chips for snacks and meals later in the week. (The picture below on the right is two-three baking sheets worth of chicken chips with the fat already removed. It’s an older picture from a larger batch). I freeze them on sheet trays and bag them to heat and eat later.
Some people prefer to do chicken chip skins in their air-fryer. I just have too much skin when I'm batch cooking.
When things from the oven are cool, pour off the rendered fat to use in cooking. We use it as something of a butter substitute. Store in the fridge.
You can store the chips in the fridge or freezer if there’s any left to store. (There won’t be if you have college kids around). The chips are better reheated if you don't eat them right away.
If they are “crispy dry” I will toss a bag of the chips in my purse like if we’re on the road or a train and I know we’ll eat them in a few hours.
After about 6 hours I strain, cool, and refrigerate the broth overnight in a large metal bowl. In the morning I skim the fat and added it to the rendered fat from the chicken chips. I got about three half-pint containers of fat (below on the left) from my 20# of leg quarters.
Then I packed and froze the broth. I cook it down like a “glacé”, so a little goes a long way.
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