Woot! Woot! Go get 'em! "On sale" here is now $2.09 ??!! Good for you forgetting it canned so quickly!

 

How do you can chicken thigh meat? You use water or broth or what? I never canned meat before and want to try it out. You can it on the bone or remove the meat from the bone first?

 

Welcome Noob! See the how to can "sticky" in the food&water section. You can it like a boneless chicken if it's boneless like op has, but you can also can it w/the bone in.

 

1.59? We have economy packs ( 8-12 pounds) of fresh chicken thighs at a grocery chain in Missouri for 1.29 per week every week.

 

skinless/boneless chicken thighs for 1.29 per lb?

 

Ask yourself this, WTF are they feeding the chickens that they can get the price that low,

breed them, feed them, water them, clean them, slaughter them, ship them, package them, sell them

 

I just canned 10pts of thighs. They were .57 a pound. Had to skin and debone myself though. Time consuming but, tomorrow I will be doing my broth. At least 7qts and probably enough meat off the bones to make 1 or 2 casseroles of somekind. It took 1 1/2hr to debone. I'm debating buying more. Cost seems to be about the same with the exception of getting my chicken broth. Opinions?

 

If I can get the boneless for 2x the PX, that's my time v price tipping point. I usually use the leg quarters for stock, which I can get best PX on sale @ 75 c/# ... Can never get thighs (WITH bones for less than a $1).

Great job on all that work & canning!!

 

Meat prices must be higher up north.

$1.59 for boneless skinless thighs is about an every day price at the Foodarama near me. I just picked up a pack of boneless skinless breasts for $1.77 but that was a sale price. The boneless skinless thighs can sometime get down to a buck at my store. Rare though.

Though I don't buy boneless skinless often. I prefer meat on the bone so I can make stock. When I see whole chickens on sale for 59 cents a pound I load up the shopping cart, unless it is Tyson. I won't buy that bland injected stuff.

Anyone old enough to remember when wings were always sold a lot cheaper than any other chicken piece? Those were the days!

 

Wings are higher than boneless breast here(Bama)....Whole chicken has not been less that .99 for a few years. Chicken breast seems to be the best price of chicken sales anymore. Bone in breast sale is 1.99. Of course, ground round is 3.99,crazy!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Yep, wings are higher than other chicken now but it wasn't that way until the 90's.

Whole chickens here run around 99 cents a pound. 79 cents a pound happens often enough for a weekly sale. Someone will do a door buster on 59 cents at least once a year and that's when I strike. But you need a lot of grocery companies around and religiously watch all the sale ads. I suspect being in the big city helps me in this case because of all the competition.

I would consider bone-in breast to be overpriced at 1.99. I can buy boneless cheaper at least once a month. My idea of bone-in breasts on sale to be 99 cents.

Now your ground round for $3.99, yeah that's sounds about right. Ground beef is up everywhere. Ground meat is pricing as high as boneless roasts these days. I just ask the grocery butcher to grind up one of the roasts when they go on sale. It ends up as better meat and can even be cheaper.

 

Canning chicken

The first time I canned chicken I got one of those 10 pound bags of leg quarters and thought I would debone them first. What a mess! Drumsticks not only have the center bone, but about 5,000 tendons and itty-bitty bones that Will. Not. Budge.

So that lot I boiled until I could remove the meat. This process left plenty of broth to put in with the meat.

Now what I do is put the leg quarters into a big roaster and roast them with some salt and pepper until I can get the meat off of the bones. The meat goes into the fridge while I turn the bones into broth. I strain the broth off of the bones and put the broth into the fridge.

Next day I scrape about a half pint of fat off of the broth and save that. The meat goes into the broth and I bring it all to a boil. The meat goes into the canning jars and gets topped up with broth. When I am out of meat, I fill jars with straight broth. Usually I get 5 pints of meat and about the same of broth.

Go with the Ball Blue Book for processing times, and good luck! Really, it is easy. Some people can the meat raw and leave the bones in, but the bones get really soft and you have to pick them out. Me, I get squicky about bony bits in meat ::shiver:

 

Whenever chicken thighs are on big sale. I buy a few packages & steam bake them. Steam bake = stainless steel rack on a big baking pan, 1/2 inch water in the bottom of the pan, layer of seasoned thighs on the rack, cover loosely aluminum foil, into the oven, until done.

Then skin/bone them & pressure can with broth.

To make broth, I simply add some diced celery & a little onion to the water & fat remaining in the pan & bring it to a boil, then strain through a fine stainless steel strainer, then top off the jars of chicken meat, leaving 1/2 inch or so of head space.

Stream baked chicken thighs are good to eat right out of the oven, if you remove the aluminum foil & broil a little to brown & crisp them.

 

To make broth, I simply add some diced celery & a little onion to the water & fat remaining in the pan & bring it to a boil, then strain through a fine stainless steel strainer, then top off the jars of chicken meat, leaving 1/2 inch or so of head space.

Consider adding a bit of carrot to the broth as well.

Carrots, onions, and celery combined make the classic mirapoix combo that makes for perfect chicken stock.

 

Pricing is always something I've found odd. Let's take chicken breast for instance (I prefer thighs as well though). Everyone wants chicken breast these days it seems, so it tends to cost more than the rest of the bird, but I can still get boneless, skinless chicken breast for $1.69/lb. and I've bought it for as low as .99c/lb not that long ago. Bone in thighs or leg quarters are usually .69c/lb. Boneless chicken thighs .99c/lb. Pork is super cheap as well. Beef on the other hand is probably the most expensive I've even seen it. Hopefully the pricing on beef comes down soon, but from what I've read, it's just supposed to keep going up.

 

It appears Michigan has great sale prices on chicken. I pay 99 cents for thighs and drum. Pay 1.69 for skinless boneless chicken. Pay 1.99 lb for ground chuck which is on sale this week..

 

I wish it was the same here. Consider yourself fortunate.