Freezing chopped chicken

corblimey

I find I use chopped chicken in most of my chicken dishes, so I'm wondering if I buy a gross of chicken breasts and chop them all up then divide them into portions, can I safely freeze them? Will chopped chicken freeze (and more importantly thaw) in the same way as whole chicken breasts (which I suppose are already sort of chopped)?

dee_mc

Yep chopped chicken will freeze perfectly, safe for 6 months, make sure to use the fast freeze button on the freezer so it freezes quickly. You can also put the chopped chicken in a marinade before you freeze it, it begins to marinade before freezing and continues during thawing for a lovely flavour.

rubadub

It will usually freeze and thaw quicker, as the centre is last to freeze and is closer to the edges.

I get sandwich plastic bags and fill them with chicken laid out flat, usually cut the fillet in 2, to make 2 flat fillets. I then layer the bags on top of each other in the freezer, otherwise you would end up with one gigantic frozen lump.

Once frozen properly you could safely gather all the chunks into one bag or container, they might stick together a little but not nearly as much as when fresh, when they would mould around each other.

corblimey

rubadub wrote: »

It will usually freeze and thaw quicker, as the centre is last to freeze and is closer to the edges.

I get sandwich plastic bags and fill them with chicken laid out flat, usually cut the fillet in 2, to make 2 flat fillets. I then layer the bags on top of each other in the freezer, otherwise you would end up with one gigantic frozen lump.

Once frozen properly you could safely gather all the chunks into one bag or container, they might stick together a little but not nearly as much as when fresh, when they would mould around each other.

That's the part I was concerned about. If I throw all the pieces into a freezer bag, it's going to become a frozen lump, as you say. But I guess the lump will thaw out as normal anyway. Your way sounds like a bit of micromanagement

rubadub

Depends how much room you have, I have little room in mine to do things. If you have a chest freezer then you could get a bigger bag, or even a baking tray, then stick them all out on top of it, they can touch off each other a little as you can peel them off once frozen. So you are doing just 1 layer rather than my multiple ones. Then once frozen gather them all into one bag.

A giant lump can take ages to thaw as it has to get to the middle.

sungear

I freeze it in portion sizes.
I use a bigger freezer bag, do one portion, leave a space, next portion, seal. When its frozen you can fold it up. If you need one portion you can use what you need rather than having to defrost the lot.
I just take the frozen portion I need out of the bag and let it defrost in a seperate covered container. I leave the rest or even the empty frozen bag in the freezer to re use.
Id say its good for what your freezer recommends though, should be a number of stars on the freezer and a poultry picture with the number of months.

Mellor

I buy a few large breasts dice them up and freeze them in sandwich bags.
I spread them out flat and stack them on top of each other so that they don't form a lump but almost remain in individual pieces.