Investment Cooking - Boneless Skinless Chicken Packets

 

I still find investment cooking or preparations very helpful even in retirement.  I do most of my cooking for two these days, sometimes four, with the idea of having a leftover meal to enjoy a couple of days later or for a guest to join me.  As I meal prep or do any type of investment cooking I do so with that in mind as well.

 

A sale on boneless skinless chicken breasts for $1.99 a pound (haven’t seen that price in a good long time) offered me the opportunity to do some investment preparations for future cooking.  I picked up a 6 ½ pound package with six large chicken breast portions.  Each portion was huge so I ended up filleting them into cutlets for a more appropriate serving size, the size of my palm.  I then took two cutlets and placed them inside a vacuum seal bag ending up with ten individual packages of chicken.

 

I could have sealed them and been done with it, but I decided to go a step further and added Italian salad dressing to four of them, buffalo wing sauce to three and lemon pepper to the other three so they can marinade in the freezer and are ready to grill or pan fry once thawed.  Italian dressing makes a tasty marinade, buffalo sauce is a nice and spicy alternative as well as lemon pepper seasoning.

 

With buffalo wing sauce

Lemon pepper

I ended up with some pieces leftover after trimming and filleting so I sliced what remained and placed it into a vacuum seal bag and left it plain.  It is ready to go to make fajitas or a quick stir fry.  I also have individual bags of sliced onions and peppers ready to go in the freezer.

 

Italian salad dressing

Eleven meal packets - two servings each

I ended up with ten packets of chicken cutlets seasoned and ready to go plus the packet of strips each containing two servings each or enough pre-prepared chicken for twenty two meals.  I spent just under an hour from start to finish, used up some condiments and seasonings that had been hanging around in my kitchen for a while and saved myself a good chunk of change over purchasing overpriced prepackaged pre-prepared meat at the store.  Not to mention how easy this was and what a timesaver it will be for my future self to fix dinner.

 

Ready for the freezer 😊

If you come across a really good sale on meat consider doing something like this to invest in your future meals.  Your future self will thank you.