The chicken's breast

For starters, I want to say I had my way with a chicken breast this week.  It sounds sick and wrong, but the truth is I have been wanting to try out deboning a chicken breast for some time.  About 9 years ago I worked with a woman who constantly talked about doing crazy things to these poor breasts, this was back when my idea of dinner was dine in or carry out, so the thought of playing around with the chicken was not thrilling.  Since then I have gotten my feet wet in many chicken experiences such as cooking whole chicken (I have a fab crockpot recipe I should post soon) and making stock from the bones, deboning is not something I have done until this particular day.  It's easy.  Why did I wait so long?  Since I have more time in the summer, I thought I'd have my go at a little couponing, not EXTREME COUPONING, just normal, mother of 2 crying and screaming frolicking through the store couponing.  Chicken was not part of my original plan but since it was on sale for $.99 a pound, I picked up 2 packages of about 2.5 pounds each...I would have bought more but the limit was 1 per transaction. I'm not going to go into detail since Krista has given you the information. 

This is if you really want to get intimately involved in a chicken...how to cut a whole chicken.  I'm going to keep that on my list of things to consider but I am not running out to buy a whole chicken anytime soon.

My kitchen scale was very helpful with the task of packaging the breasts.  I used my scale to measure out 1 pound packages of the chicken.  I ended up with about 3 pounds of chicken breasts from the 5 pounds of boned chicken. 

After I deboned, I boiled the breasts with onions and carrots to make some broth, about 12 cups. 

Once the broth was done, I picked the rib meat off.   I ended up with about 3/4 pound of this type of meat.  My plan is to make BBQ chicken sandwiches.  Overall, I ended up with  3 3/4 pounds of actual meat from the $5.00 worth of chicken, if I was a math teacher I would calculate my actual pound cost but since I'm not, I won't. All that matters is that it was cheaper than I would pay for the boneless skinless breast processed at the store.  Oh and I am sure you want to know about the skin...well, I put it in the garbage but Vinnie didn't think that was a good idea and he stole it when I wasn't looking.  Guess how I know he stole it?  Nope.  Nope.  OK I'll spill the beans, he vomited it up in the living room and then vomited more skin up in Camden's room.  Thank goodness his stomach didn't process it, it came out in one big chunk.  It was pretty easy clean up, yet quite disgusting. 

So aside from that if you have an opportunity to have your way with a boned chicken breast, I say "Go for it!  It's as easy as it looks."