Zaycon Chicken & Ground Turkey

I don't have a recipe for you today but wanted to share my experience so far with getting meat through Zaycon Fresh. I recently started sourcing much of my meat through them and have fallen in love. I wanted better quality meat without trying to track down a butcher that had decent prices and deal with a whole cow or pig or what not.

My first order was 48 lbs of ground turkey. We LOVE ground beef but turkey? not so much! However, when I looked at what they were offering I noticed I  had just missed the cut off for the beef so on a whim (and with a coupon) we decided to try the ground turkey. Generally you order through their website by the case and then on the day it's available, you drive to the pick up location and they load it into your vehicle. Easy peasy. Our nearest location is only 10 minutes from the house which is fantastic. We tried the ground turkey and my hubby who is pretty particular about ground meat, thought it was REALLY good! I've been able to use it in almost all my ground beef dishes and they still taste great. And, at $2.08/lb thats a big discount from $6 beef prices at Meijer.

After having such good results with the ground turkey we decided to go ahead and buy a case of chicken breasts. Be forewarned, these are HUGE! You pick them up in a huge box (they load it into your car but you do have to bring it into your house.

For those a little nervous about processing all the chicken and freezing it, it went pretty easy and I was on my own with two littles running around. I set up my work space before hand with lots of wipes :) You never know when you have to run after a kiddo.

This is how they look pulled straight out of the box. I cut them in half and trimmed off a little of the fat. There are some recipes out there I guess using the trimmings to make gravy. I'm not that fancy and ended up throwing mine out before I had a chance to do anything with it. 

Once trimmed there are a few different things you can do with them.
#1 - you can make dump chicken bags. You put all the ingredients for a meal in a gallon freezer bag and throw the chicken in. This makes it super easy to have quick meals ready to throw in the oven or crock pot.
#2 - throw a few in the crockpot and shred the meat then store in gallon freezer bags. You can season it as well so you have chicken taco meat ready to go. 

#3 - Freeze them as is. This is the option I opted for because meal prep by myself while watching the kids was not going to happen. So, I wrapped each one individually and threw them all in gallon zip lock bags. This has made it easy to grab as many pieces as I need for a meal. Some of them must have sweat a little because they aren't the easiest to pull apart but freezing them individually before putting them in a ziplock bag together would fix that I would think. 

We've had quite a few meals using this chicken now and have really enjoyed the quality.We liked it so much, I just placed an order for another case that arrives in October. I think the prep of one case took me a few hours start to finish but it wasn't all that bad and now I have a ton of chicken ready to go. 

Zaycon has a lot of other meat options too. Right now (at least by me) they have steaks, chicken breasts, pork loin, salmon, hot dogs, chuck roasts, shrimp, ground turkey, kielbasa, lobster and turkey breast roast. The ones that I've read up on seem to be fairly natural without many additives and from what we've tasted, it's superior to what I've been getting in the grocery store. I encourage you to go on over and take a look at what they have and see if any of it works for your family. If you haven't signed up yet you can do so here. There is no cost to you unless you buy a case.

Feel free to comment with any questions you might have for me. Happy Cooking!