It’s Zaycon Fresh time for me again. I’ve got FRESH, hormone and anti-biotic meat coming to me over the next 3 months. I’ve canned plenty of their chicken breasts, bacon, sausage and ground beef, so nowadays I like to put some up in my freezer—especially the ground beef. However, I was getting pretty darn frustrated by all of the wasted space I was creating the way that I used to do it, so I figured out a better way to break down those 40 pound boxes of ground beef that come in these large chubs. Now I simply put about 3 pounds of ground beef in the Foodsaver packing, seal it, and then I take my French style rolling pin and roll the packaging and its contents out to form a nice, uniform flat package. This way the ground beef stacks up SO much easier in the freezer and has very little wasted space. See the pictures!
Step 1: Fill bags with meat
Step 2: Seal bags and then label (date and type) 
Step 3: Flatten bags with a rolling pin. (I prefer the French rolling pin for this task)
Step 4: Freeze. It lays nice and flat now!
If you haven’t heard of Zaycon Fresh yet, let me tell you!! (Otherwise, enjoy the little tip, and go on with your happy day.) I LOVE their products because I LOVE purchasing my meat products that are SUPER fresh (the meat was likely walking 2 weeks prior to it going into my freezer), void of the anti-biotics and hormones, and best of all—I love the wholesale pricing. Yes, REAL wholesale pricing. I can’t purchase meat of this quality at Costco and besides, Costco doesn’t thank me with a product credit any time I refer someone to their business. (More on that later.) Zaycon Fresh is where I purchase ALL of my ground beef, boneless skinless chicken breast, sausage links, ham, smoked pulled pork, chicken legs and wings, and my absolute favorite—bacon! In fact, I don’t call it “bacon” in my house anymore. I call it “Bay-Kon” cause nothing compares to the quality and the price. In fact, I tried to find a quality of bacon at the store that matched the quality of the Zaycon Bay-Kon, and the closest comparable I could find was more than $10 a pound!!!
The Zaycon Fresh system is simple. All you have to do is enroll for their e-mails. Each month, they will send you information on their upcoming monthly sales events. You decide if/when you want to order, pay for it, and then when that specific date and time arrives for your area, you just pull up to the central location, show the nice Zaycon Fresh driver your receipt, and he/she will then load your order in your car—with a smile and maybe even with some new recipe ideas that he’s just discovered with their product. *grin* (My driver and I are always exchanging cooking notes) You can order in advance for your area so long as the product amount hasn’t sold out yet. (By the way, the sold the smoked pulled pork on a temporary basis last spring. I got some and it was DEEEEE-VINE!! I just cut up some cabbage, quartered some limes, grabbed the salsa, warmed up some corn tortillas and then warmed up the smoked pork with one of my girlfriends and her whole family and we pigged out. (pun intended) Even her “picky eater” kids were having seconds and thirds. It was YUMMY! But wait…I have something awesome to share with you too—in a minute.
The Zaycon company started out just with their amazing boneless, skinless chicken breasts. These chicken breasts are HUGE! In fact, the first thing I thought was “how in the world did they get these breasts so big without hormones?!” The answer is so simple, I felt kind of stupid asking it. Chickens don’t grow all the same size. Some chickens have big breasts. But the restaurant and mainstream food industry doesn’t usually purchase those sizes. But Zaycon Fresh sure does and I’m SO glad they do. Just one of these chicken breasts is easily enough meat to feed 4 people! Here’s a quick list of the products that they’ve sold and what I thought about them. (Oh yeah, and when you’re done checking out the list, I have something really awesome to share with you!)
Zaycon 93/7 Ground Beef—LOVE It! When I took some to my sister in law’s last summer, while she cooked it she kept commenting that she had never seen more beautiful ground beef before! (and she’s from TEXAS, folks!) Their ground beef is grass fed up until it goes in for butchering at which time they are fed grain while they wait around. Hormone and anti-biotic free. Usually comes around 3 times a year. Cans beautifully!
Zaycon 80/20 Ground Beef—Loved it for the dishes in which I wanted more fat content. This is a newer product of theirs, so I don’t know how often it’s offered per year. Same processing and feeding as above. 
(I’ve never canned this ground beef before)
Zaycon Ground Turkey—I’ve ordered it for this Summer but I haven’t tried it yet. I’ve been begging them to add it to their product line though for years! So I’m excited!
Zaycon Whole Smoked Ham—LOVe, LOVE, LOVED it!! It’s smoked beautifully and it’s one whole muscle! There’s no spiral cutting or bone to worry about. I just warm it up and slice into this big beautiful ham. I’m always ordering a couple of cases of it because I never know when it’s going to come around again. It’s usually at least once a year, and sometimes twice. It cans beautifully too!
Zaycon Bacon (aka Bay-Kon!)—Love to the enth degree! It’s nice and thick with just the right amount of meat and fat. I fry it up sometimes, but usually I just bake a whole package of it on my stoneware cookie sheet. It turns out perfect and then I always have what I need for some yummy BLTs!! It’s usual available twice a year, but I think it’s been more often than that this past year. Regardless, I always order two cases because you’re not going to catch me without my Bay-Kon!
Zaycon Sausage Links—These are the perfect sausage links for me. They’re seasoned just right—not too spicy, not to wimpy. I’ve canned them three different ways—in the whole link, in the link but without the casing, and without the casing but ground up. All three ways worked just fine. They cook up beautifully!!
Zaycon Chicken Drumsticks—these were just fine. Nothing notably different visually though I felt like they had more meat on them than the ones I used to buy at the store. I have only frozen these, never canned them. At least they are hormone and anti-biotic free and the chickens are free-range—as free-range as one can go without leaving them subject to wolves and other predators, that is.
Zaycon Chicken Wings—same as above with the Chicken Drumsticks.
Zaycon Chicken Breasts—These are fabulous! I ALWAYS get compliments on how moist the chicken breast is when I serve it. Grant it, anyone can cook chicken until it’s dry like cardboard, but I haven’t had to work too hard at it with these and I’ll say again—they are HUGE! Every once in a while I get a case that’s got a lot of skin on them still. When that happens, I cut off the skin, take a picture of it all, weigh it, and then call the company and they will issue me a refund of that weight. (Their customer service is usually quite grand.)
Zaycon Patio Steaks—This Zaycon product was very disappointing indeed. There was a LOT of silver on mine and I ordered two cases. Both cases were consistently plagued by silver. So I’ll not be ordering them again. Besides…who’s ever heard of a patio steak? I couldn’t really tell why type of cut it was. Meh. Lackluster purchase but the others are so grand, I keep coming back!
Zaycon also tried out organic whole milk. It went over like a lead balloon. Oh well. Live and learn, right? You can’t hit them all out of the ballpark, right?? Oh yeah…ball park. I have tried their hot dogs and their
Zaycon Fresh also has fish products such as cod, shrimp, etc. but I’ve never ordered any of those because those products don’t can well in my opinion, but I have lots of readers who have enjoyed their fish proteins as well. Check out their website for a list of all of their products, descriptions, and their sales event dates held in your area. Be sure to enroll for their e-mails if you haven’t already and then be sure to SHARE—SHARE—SHARE your own referral code with everyone you know so that you can start earning a little cha-ching from your fellow carnivores.
Ok. Now to the really AWESOME part about doing business with Zaycon Fresh! Instead of wasting hordes of money on marketing and that overused term, “branding”, Zaycon rewards its customers for “word of mouth” advertising. And it couldn’t be simpler to spread via word of mouth because their products are awesome and their pricing is awesome! When you subscribe to the Zaycon e-mails (click here to do so), you’ll receive a “Referral Code”. You’ll want to share this referral code whenever you spread the good news about Zaycon Fresh because whenever someone you refer to Zaycon makes a purchase, YOU get a product credit. Your credits never expire. You can use them whenever you want and however many of them you want. 1 credit is equal to $1. You get a credit EVERY TIME your referrals make a purchase, not just for one purchase. And they’ve implemented an even better reward system recently. The FIRST time your referral makes a purchase with Zaycon Fresh, you get a $5 credit instead of just the $1. You’ll be surprised how awesome of an impact even a few credits have on your meat orders. You’re already starting with wholesale pricing, right, but when you add a few credits to your order, it makes your out-of-pocket cost per pound go way down—or perhaps I should say it makes your out-of-pocket cost per pound go WAY BACK—as in back to the days when meat wasn’t so expensive; you know, like 1980?? *grin* Those credits add up fast too—especially when their best, most favored products come out. And if you’re good at spreading the word, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how often you might just end up with a FREE case of excellent quality protein. Zaycon Fresh is all over the main cities and outskirts of America. So the likelihood of them being in your area is good. If they aren’t in your area yet, you still may want to spread the word in your area because once they have enough e-mail subscribers to that area, they’ll open it up. I lived out in the middle of nowhere Utah for a while and still managed to get them out to me. I’m sure you can too because EVERYONE loves a good deal on great quality protein!
