In late September we bought 50 chickens. 25 were brown egg layers. 25 were billed as the 'frying pan specials' - roosters which within 8-12 weeks are ready for the fryer. All these chickens were mailed via USPS when they were one day old.
You are supposed to keep them at 90 degrees F for the first week or so and then slowly let them acclimate to the temperature - certainly not exposing them to cold until they are fully feathered.
We don't have an incubator, nor do we have electricity out at the chicken coop. So, it being late September (80's during the day - 60's at night) decided to bring the chickens into our bathroom at night so they wouldn't be exposed to the cooler air. Number one son became their surrogate mother, gathering them each afternoon and bringing them upstairs to the master bath. We did this for a week and then set them on their own in our coop.
We only lost two to sickness (the cold weather), and those we lost the first two nights before we decided to bring them in every night.
Of course we lost over half the chicks early on by massacre - the details of which you can read of here.
The brown egg-layers will start laying sometime in the Spring. (We have 8 or 9 left). We will keep a rooster or two to fertilize so we can perpetuate the flock. The remaining 8 roosters are ready for the pot.
There was a small chicken coop which came with the house. It has a perch and 9 laying 'bins'. It also had a small fenced yard. We doubled the size of the yard especially since we expected to have 50 chickens.
So today I butchered our first home-grown chicken, and we ate him tonight. Yesterday we isolated the rooster and only gave him water for the last 24 hours. (Supposedly I figured this would make the job cleaner.) Number one son went into the isolation chamber and brought him out to me. I tried to follow the instructions given in John Seymour's (may his soul rest in peace) "The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It". I tied the feet together and laid his head on a board. I laid a dowel across his neck, (I held one end, son held other) and I broke his neck. It was not as easy as all the literature claimed. After he finished twitching, we dipped in scalding water. I plucked him. (By the way, my dog Challenger of the massacre fame was going nuts the whole time.) I sawed off his head on the neck with a cheese knife (next time I should do it farther down). Then I brought him into the kitchen and finished the drawing etc. It took me an hour and 10 minutes. Next time I think it will take half the time. Two things I learned. 1. Our knives are not nearly sharp enough; 2. I should do the whole procedure outside. Once I got to cutting around the vent and drawing out the guts, it was a little smelly.
When finished I realized that one of these "frying pan specials" would not feed our family.
Dinner: The chicken was a little tougher than we are used to but had a better (stronger) flavor, but not so much as to be gamey. Next time we will probably put him in the crockpot.
From the small holding in Bethune ...
Oremus pro invicem!
3 comments:
Jeff, After breaking the neck, I hung the chicken by its legs and did not scald it until it stopped twitching. Then I generally plucked the feathers with the bird hanging. So while this is all going on, the blood all drains towards the head and neck. It will start to clot. So you take the head off after plucking letting - letting the blood have this time. If you take the head off towards the base of the neck, you avoid alot of blood. I took it off too high for my taste.
I did read an article on www.backwoodshome.com where the author does not even pluck the chicken - he skins the chicken and takes the meat off while it is hanging. He does kill the chicken by decapitation and simply lets the blood drain directly onto the ground or into a garbage bag.
Besides either breaking the neck, or decapitation with axe I don't really know another way. (I suppose you could drown the bird, but it would fight you a bit.)
The secret of breaking neck quickly is to really pull the neck into a sharp angle with respect to the head as you pull. A few books cautioned that if you pull too hard the head will simply come off when or just after you break the neck - thus I was cautious in my pulling - unfortunately causing the bird's demise to be prolonged unnecessarily.
For me the only hard part (sensitivity-wise) was taking the head off - even though at this point the bird was long dead. The correct tools would have helped.
Hopefully next time will be much quicker as I will have to do two.
Thanks for reading.
Jim
Roosters are tough meat. It you want tender, you need to castrate them (create a capon), or eat the hens young (not at the 'stewing hen' point).
Tough meat is best dealt with by braising - brown the outsides in hot oil, then put into a pot (or crockpot) and cover with boiling water and seasonings. Cook at barely a simmer for several hours. Poultry variants on this theme include chicken cacciatore, chicken and dumplings, and several soups and stews.
If you want to fry tough rooster, the technique is actually more of a braise than a fry. The chicken is cut into parts, the parts are dipped first in beaten eggs or is milk, then shaken in a paper bag with seasoned flour, then if desired dipped and floured a second time. use about an inch of fat (I mix butter and oil half and half, my mom used the bacon grease left over from Sunday Brunch) in a deep 10 inch skillet (preferably with a lid, often sold in the south as chicken fryers!), Heat the fat almost to smoking, put the chicken pieces in and brown on both sides, then put the lid on the pan and turn the heat to very low and cook the chicken for 45-60 minutes. Take out of the pan when fully cooked, drain on paper towels and make a milk gravy from the drippings, serve with cornbread, green beans, and mashed potatoes. YUM.
Alicia - Thanks for the cooking tips. I shared them with Mrs. Curley, and she is looking forward to trying your suggestions.
Jeff - Discussing over lunch? Strong stomaches have ye!
Jim
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