Warning–really long post!
Whenever boneless, skinless chicken breasts are on sale for $1.99/lb or less, I stock up and do a big cooking session. When I did this with ground beef, I went over why I cook ahead and how it saves me time and money. Just to review, here are a couple of points:
- Original once-a-month cooking calls for a month’s worth of groceries, recipes, and cooking. I’ve made this manageable for myself by focusing on one type of meat (chicken, ground beef, etc.) at a time.
- By sticking with one type of meat, I’m saving money because I’m doing the cooking when the meat is on sale instead of purchasing a month’s worth of food no matter what it costs.
- If 10 lbs. seems like too much to you, just buy one “big pack” and start with that.
Where do I Start?
Boneless, skinless chicken breasts were on sale last week for $1.99/lb. Usually, I would wait until they go down to $1.69-1.79/lb, but my freezer was empty so I needed them now. I bought a little over 10 lbs. Again, I stick with that amount because I find it’s the “right” amount for me; I get tired after working with raw chicken for an hour, and it’s plenty to fill up the freezer and last me a month till the next sale.
With the chicken, I sat down with my recipe book and figured out which meals I wanted to have; that told me how much chicken I needed pre-cooked, cut into certain sizes, or to leave whole. My plan was for 10-12 meals’ worth (I list the recipes below): 2 1/2 cups of pre-cooked chicken, 3 bags of uncooked fillets, 2 bags of diced uncooked chicken, a bag of uncooked bits for soup, and the rest for the crockpot meals.
What do I need?
Besides the chicken breasts, you’ll also need:
Garlic, I use the diced kind in a jar, but you could use fresh
Gallon-size zipper bags, Quart-size zipper bags
Sauce pot (to boil water and chicken)
Can of diced tomatoes, Crockpot (if you’re making shredded chicken)
2 cutting boards (one for raw, one for cooked chicken), sharp knife
Paper towels and soap for LOTS of hand washing
Here we go:
- I opened the first package of chicken and took out 2 of the breasts, cutting them up a bit to fit better in the pot. I put them in a medium pot and added enough water to cover them, plus a big spoonful of garlic. I set it to boil for 10 minutes. While you’re waiting…
- Add two of the chicken breasts to the Crockpot. Dump a can of diced tomatoes on top (with green chiles for mild, jalapenos for spicy).
This should cook on low for 5-8 hours, high for 3-4 hours for shredded chicken. This will make shredded chicken tacos for tonight, then you can use the leftovers for another meal. - Once the chicken breasts have boiled, drain them and let them cool on another (clean!) cutting board. Once they’ve cooled, you can dice them, then put them in a freezer bag. It’s so handy to have cooked chicken on hand when to save you time cooking during the dinner hour. I list a few recipes below (Chicken & Broccoli Pie and the Chicken Vegetable Chowder), but you probably have a few recipes of your own that call for cooked chicken.
- Start slicing the other chicken breasts from the package(s). I try to slice them to make uniform breast pieces so that when I grill or saute them, they’ll cook evenly. I put these pieces in individual zipper bags (one meal’s worth in each bag), then I chop some of the chicken into smaller pieces for recipes like Stroganoff and Chicken, Pepper, and Potatoes (recipes below). These go into their own freezer bags as well.
- I collect all the little leftover bits in a bag for chicken soup. It’s okay not to measure this, since I can stretch the chicken soup with veggies, or if I have a lot of chicken leftover, I’ll make a double batch of soup. Soups are a great way to stretch meat of any kind, but especially expensive chicken. By adding bulk with vegetables, it’s both healthier AND less expensive.
Notes:
- Don’t forget to label your bags with the date and what’s in them.
- Freeze these bags flat, then you can stack them or store them upright like books and they’ll take up very little space. You can store these in a side-by-side freezer that way.
- It took me exactly an hour to process (cut and cook) 10 lbs of raw chicken, but that was with many kid interruptions.
- If I’d had more time, I would have cooked the chicken soup while I was doing the other tasks and just frozen it for later meals.
Let’s eat!
Since I do my meal planning each Monday, I know what days I need to take something out of the freezer to defrost. Make sure you defrost in the fridge for at least 24 hours (safety guidelines here).
- Chicken Breasts—I pull them out one day ahead to defrost, and often I’ll add some Italian dressing or Balsamic Viniagrette to marinate the chicken before I grill or saute it.
- Crockpot Shredded Chicken—After slow-cooking the chicken with a can of diced tomatoes with green chiles (you can also use jalapeno if you like it spicier), I shred the chicken with two forks. This makes a meal of chicken tacos, then I use the leftovers for Chicken & Spinach Quesadillas or Chicken Enchiladas.
- Crockpot Chicken Cacciatore—I’ll take 1-2 of the chicken breasts, lay them in the crockpot with chopped onion, mushrooms, and green peppers, then top it with a jar of spaghetti sauce. Served with pasta, it’s a very fast meal.
- Easy Cheesy Vegetable-Chicken Chowder—With the cooler weather, I’m excited to have soups again. This is one of my family’s favorites. Using the pre-cooked chicken, it’s a very fast, savory meal.
- Chicken and Broccoli Pie—With the chicken pre-cooked, I just need to defrost it the night before and it makes prepping this meal even easier.
- Stroganoff-Style Chicken—this recipe is another family favorite. I prep the chicken by slicing up 3/4 lb. in its own bag. By thawing the night before, this is ready to go at dinnertime.
- Chicken, Peppers, and Potatoes—yet another easy recipe (now posted here). Again, I just cut up the 3/4 lb. that the recipe calls for and have it ready to defrost in its own bag.
- Chicken Soup—After slicing and dicing, I use all the little leftover bits of chicken to make chicken soup. We’ll eat it one night for dinner, then I freeze the leftovers for a lunch or dinner on another day.
What are your thoughts?
Do you find the Cook Once, Eat 10 Times posts helpful? I’m working on a ground beef winter edition to include casseroles and soups now that the weather is getting cooler.
Thank-you so much for posting this. It was very helpful. I can’t wait for the beef edition.
I did this with ground beef a few weeks ago. We buy our meat at an amish butcher and I trust his meat. Since my daughter and her other half moved back in I needed more then 1 lb packages. I got all my meat and took five lbs and cooked. One pound just a regular browning for when it is just my hubby and I. Two pounds I added some garlic/onion to use for spagetti meal. And the other two pounds just brown with a bit of spices for any meal. I can not tell you how well this worked. When I wanted make something I pulled it out and nuked it for a min. then added it to my cooking. Perfect. It only took me maybe 20 mins to brown, package and clean up. So I will be doing this again but with probably ten pounds.
Haven’t commented here before, but I have really been enjoyed and implementing your advice– Thanks for these OAMC posts; for us who haven’t done it before, it helps to see exactly what you do and what you use it for!
Great Job!
Thanks! I have been doing this with ground beef for years, but I have never tried it with chicken. I always thought that cooked, frozen chicken became rubbery, but have heard recently that it does not.
Please, keep these posts coming!
Thanks a bunch.
I love this kind of post Gina! Thanks so much. Looking forward to your ideas for ground beef. We use ground turkey but I bet a lot of the recipes can be interchanged.
Cool concept! I’d love to see ones for beef and pork too. Maybe even turkey!
I’m loving these posts. I’ve tried OAMC in the past without much luck, and had never thought of doing it this way. Thank you for sharing. I have cooked chicken or burger with spices before for quick meals, leg quarters also work great for that.
VERY helpful post! I do OAMC with a friend, and this will help a lot. I am always looking for ways to make our OAMC healthful. I think I will try each of these recipes.
Thanks for sharing this. It amazes me how efficient so many of you are! I'm expecting triplets in 2 wks, and I'm a little worried how I'm going to implement fast and easy dinners for my hubby & toddler once I'm back to doing the cooking. I won't have a lot of time on my hands! This will help tremondously. Thanks
I’m totally inspired to do this! I just read your post about stockpiling, and found my way back to this post. We don’t eat a lot of ground beef, but we could eat chicken every night so this will be really helpful. Sometimes I am wary of stockpiling because I’m too focused on each weeks’ total at the checkout, but I would save in later weeks if I just did it on a sale day!
thank you for helping a college student survive and save money. this is much appreciated.
I do a similar thing. I use about 4 pounds to make chicken nuggets, then flatten some breasts and coat them in the same bread crumb mixture to make chicken parmesan.
Food safety tip… if you cook your chicken then chop it you’ll be less likely to spread it around… also slightly frozen chicken is easier to cut if you really need to chop before cooking.
I love this idea!!!:)
Thanks so much for this info. I really would like to get into a OAMC routine, but it always seems overwhelming. You’ve done a great job of making it look practically effortless!
I just posted this week about how I don’t like to cook and several people suggested OAMC. The idea seemed overwhelming, but you make it look very doable. Thanks! I’ll come back and let you know how it goes.
(visiting from Tip Junkie)
This is such a great idea! A little bit of prep work goes a long way to make a hectic day smoother.
what a great idea! will definitely be trying this…
I usually cook my ground beef all at once and add diced bell peppers and onions along with garlic or seasoning salt. I know that almost any meal I cook with ground beef will be fine with onions & peppers in it. I put 2 cups in a freezer bag and off it goes into the freezer once it's cooled to room temp.
We are a family of 8 and I buy in bulk precook all of my ground beef in the oven with onion, salt and pepper. It is easy to tilt the big pan and all the grease drains away while it cools down before I package it for the freezer/fridge. I can’t wait to see your tips but I wanted to post this oven trick in case you hadn’t tried it. Doesn’t require constant monitoring and no greasy stove! I can do 20 lb in 40 min or so in the right pan.
Thank you so much for posting this. It’s getting me in a cooking mood!
I’ve tried the OAMC thing and it just didn’t work too well. 
I just saw this on Tip Junkie. Thank you for sharing this!! This is exactly what I need to help me feed my family better for less money!! Off to find the beef ones and will be checking back to see what else you have to share!
I use this same idea for Steak when it's on sale at Costco. I spend an hour cutting the steak into different meals…stew size, kabob size (with marinade) , strips for fajaita's, a few meals of just steak (different amounts for who is around for dinner). I've never thought to do the same thing for chicken…I may have to start doing that too, Thanks for the post
This is great!! This would be even cheaper if you used whole chicken. They are $.85 a pound normally in Ohio.