I mentioned in my last post that my groceries were delivered 30 minutes late. I was also informed that my Saturday company was arriving early…though that changed too. After groceries arrived, I prioritized deboning chicken before my guests arrive.
Meats to prepare:
- 2 full rotisserie chickens
- 1 filet magnon steak
- 1.5 lb stew beef
The plan:
Typically I would have prepped all of this to the freezer immediately after receiving it, but this time I had company coming just after lunch. So I put both the steak and stew beef in the fridge to deal with on Sunday. I spent roughly 1.5 hours putting the other groceries away, taking photos, and deboning the chicken. I’ve done that before so you can see the pictures for that process here.
This time I ordered 2 chickens so the meat could be used for more than just chicken lasagna. The chickens yielded 7cups that I diced up into roughly 1/2″ pieces. I then proportioned out 3 cups for the lasagna and used my vacuum sealer. Then made two 2 cup portions for other chicken dishes.
I will make the chicken lasagna later in the week so the spinach doesn’t spoil on me, but the chicken will be frozen until then.
Deboned Rotisserie Chicken 
Chopped Rotisserie Chicken 
Portioned and Sealed in Servings
Sunday:
On Sunday, I started the stew beef in the slow cooker. Mistakenly I started it at 11 a.m. on high. In the future, if I put it in that early (which I probably will) I will put it on Low. It was really done about 2 p.m.
Then I prepped the steak to freeze as I’ve done in the past. I’ll pull this out for a quick supper on a weekday.
Review:
This process of prepping meats is definitely getting easier. It was less overwhelming to only deal with one of the meats each day, but sadly this still might backfire. All the beef was already grey when I received it and delaying another day may have increased the risk.
I do wish I’d gone ahead and dealt with the steak as well. The vacuum sealer was already out. I only didn’t proceed because I was receiving text messages from my visitors while my hands were covered in chicken guts. Then I discovered that a toddler was coming along and I need to baby-proof the main spaces. However, they stopped for lunch which would have given me enough time and I still think I could have finished my lunch first. If the delivery had been on time, I would have been okay as well.
There was no harm in dealing with the stew beef the next day, as far as I can tell. Altogether, this meat will make 13 servings of 3-5 different dishes.