Chicken Compactor

Chickens take up a lot of room. Even after you cut off the head and feet, take off the feathers and relieve them of most of their internal organs, they have a certain mass.

I took all the chickens out of the freezer and spent Sunday morning with bowls, cutting boards and poultry shears, removing the meat from the chickens. Then we put it through the grinder and reduced it to ground chickens. In half the ground meat, we put apples, cranberries and onions; in the other half, we put apricots, ginger and garlic. We piped them into sausage casings. The bones were put into the stockpot and rendered into five quarts of very nice-smelling stock. The sausages were steamed so that when we're ready to eat them, they'll be pre-cooked. So, what was taking up fully a quarter of my chest freezer downstairs is now taking up two-thirds of a shelf in the fridge.

And, in time, will take up considerably less!