Meat Chickens 101 - Part 3 - In the Kitchen

Fresh From the Farm

September 5, 2025

Meat Chickens 101 – Part 3 – In the Kitchen

We are still in the meat chicken crash course. It’s an easy way to put up a freezer full of meat and I hope that some of you are considering raising them. Now that the growing and killing parts are done, it’s time to turn those chickens into food. This is probably the most important part as far as making the actual cooking process easier. A little more work now, goes a long way later.

Most of the processing and cutting up happens in the few days following Chicken Killin’ Day. Except for the cleaning of the gizzards, that needs to happen as soon as the last bird is out of the sink. The gizzard is a dense, muscular organ located at the end of the esophagus and before the intestines.

After all of the chickens are cleaned we switch to gizzards. Alex and Max are doing the tedious job of opening them up and peeling out the lining before fileting them off of the silver skin.

Chickens don’t have teeth and they just swallow food as they pick it up. The food stays in the craw or crop for a while before moving down the esophagus to the gizzard. There is another pouch, very similar to the crop, just before the gizzard, but I don’t think it does anything but hold food. Any grit or small rocks that the chickens eat stay in the gizzard and are used to grind up the food before it moves into the intestines.

Because these hold feed and essentially dirt, it’s pretty important to clean them soon. It’s a tedious task and they are a pain in the neck, but are so, so good and are worth the effort. If you like gas station fried chicken gizzards, then you will love home-grown ones. Maybe it’s how the chickens are grown, or it could be how we slice the gizzards, or it might have something to do with the marinade, but they are far superior to the ones at the gas station.

But we have to get them to that point first. Using a sharp filet knife hold the gizzard in one hand and carefully slice into it, but stop at the yellow inner membrane. This is a pouch inside that muscle that holds all of the food and grit. It can be peeled out if done right. It’s tricky and takes time, so don’t get too frustrated if it takes a while to get the hang of it. I have to re-learn every time. You will end up with 4 quarters. Now cut the muscle away from the shiny tendon area on each quarter, then cut a slice into each piece so that there is more surface area for the breading to stick to.

If you raised 50 birds, you will have a lot of gizzards, hearts and livers. I like to package them all in smaller portions in quart sized freezer baggies. They will be easy to thaw when you are ready to cook up a batch. Plus, they stack nicely in the freezer. Just be sure to label them because you may not recognize exactly what it is later.

We threw the hearts away for years until one year, my son Caleb fried up some elk heart for us. I had no idea that heart would be so good. It’s really just another muscle after all. Cleaning it and preparing it for the soak is pretty easy. I like to cut it each heart in half. Once it is cut up, we “marinate” them overnight in milk with a generous helping of seasoning salt. Then drain them and toss in some seasoned flour and then deep fry them in hot grease in a cast iron pan. We do the gizzard the same way. Good eatin’ right there!

Livers are delicious…if you like livers. I am still on the fence about them. I know that I should like them just because they are very nutritious, and I can make myself kind of enjoy if they are cooked with peppers and onions. But after a few bites I have to talk myself into keeping on eating them. There’s something about the texture and rich minerally flavor that is just hard to get past.

Whether you love them or not, they are a good thing to save. Surely someone you know loves liver and if you can’t find anyone, your dogs will love the treat. I have heard of people grinding it with their burger to make a “primal blend”. This seems like a good way to use it up. A little could also be added to meatloaf…plenty of flavors there to hide the liver taste.

Now for the parts that everyone loves…the actual meat. How you process the whole chickens will really depend on how you normally cook chicken. I have a friend that regularly cooks a whole chicken, so she packages them whole. I rarely cook a whole chicken, so I break all of mine down and package them according to what we cook. I will leave a couple whole for the rare chance that I want to roast one.

A whole chicken...in proper pieces. There is still a lot of meat and goodness left on that carcass so it will be used for stock. The skin is left on all of the cuts for flavor and to hold in moisture when cooking. Crispy chicken "bacon" is what I call this delicious treat.

Setting up your work station will let this part go by much easier. You will need some form of packaging. I like to use a vacuum sealer for everything except the whole chickens. Be sure to get a big roll of the full-size width, you will go through a lot on 50 birds.

Your birds will still be on ice, hopefully on the back porch or somewhere within a short walk to the kitchen. You will need a work space for cutting up the chickens and another for vacuum sealing everything. I like to use the kitchen table for the cutting because it’s close to the sink. Several large pans or cookie sheets laid out will hold the different cuts.

Here’s how it goes: I take a cookie sheet out to the cooler full of chicken and get two of them. I bring them in the kitchen and put them in the clean sink where they will be fully rinsed and any remaining feathers or yellow skin will be cleaned off. Then they are moved to the cutting area. I place a large cutting board down inside a full sheet pan. This helps to catch the water as it drains.

The chicken is cut up into the normal pieces. Wings come off first, then the breasts, and then chicken tender is removed from the back of the breast. Wings go in one container, breasts go in another and tenders in yet another. Then I take off the leg quarters and they will go in a big pan. Now I have a carcass and that can go back in the cooler so we can do something with it later.

This is all repeated over and over and it moves along pretty good once you get the hang of it. When a pan is full, I switch from cutting to packaging. If you have a helper, they can just package as you break down the whole chickens. The size of your package will depend on how many people you are feeding. Label and stack all of the packaged chicken in a clothes basket until it’s at a comfortable weight to transfer to a freezer.           

Slowly your freezer will fill up with beautiful chicken ready to pull out when you need some. If you don’t have a ton of freezer space, you can always pressure can the chicken. It is a pretty convenient way to have cooked chicken ready for a last minute meal. I’ll tell you about my three favorite ways to use it up another time. Until next time, get outside!