The Chicken Skin Murder

If you have an older rooster, these can get big, over an inch long. One last step is to remove the kidneys. I find the easiest is to "scramble" them with my finger, they are buried almost in the back bone.

When I wash the bird, I'll flush the bits out with water. Washing the bird I use this time to really clean up any stray feathers. I like to use the back skin to hold the legs together to keep it easy to pack him up. Just cut a hole in the skin, about 1" up from the edge. It only has to be about 2" wide. Tuck the legs into the skin hole to truss them up. For extra fancy, flip the wings back to tuck them. Trussed up and ready to pack! You can use freezer bags. I love my Foodsaver, and these guys fit perfectly into the large rolls. I think they store better as well. At this point, the bird should rest in the fridge.

You don't want to cook them right away, you need to let nature do it's thing and let rigor pass. If you grab a leg and it's not moving easily, it's not ready to cook. I let them rest in the fridge for days, and then put them in the freezer until I'm ready to cook them. When doing this the first time, expect about an hour of work. You'll get faster over time, some folks can do everything in about 15 minutes or less per bird, and there are many tools such as pluckers that can really speed things up.

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However, this is just to show that you can process a chicken with no more than a pot and a sharp knife. This is a really good article. Detailed explanations with pictures as well as helpful tips along the way. Good article, nice clear step by step directions for beginners and not too long for someone who just wants to take a quick read to refresh the old memory. Little Jerry Seinfeld , May 26, Comments To make a comment simply sign up and become a member! Sort Comments Sort Comments By.

I just finished the 5 roosters from yesterday. They all smelled like gas and now that I washed them, I can still smell that gut gas. I have washed several times and that farty smell is not going away. I am doing 5 roosters today. I was always wondering why tge meat was so tough and it would take so many hours to cook. I didn't know the meat had to rest. My family always cooked it for dinner when a hen was dispatched.

I will keep it in the fridge for sure now. I will be doing this to my girls in the fall this years as they will be well into their 2 years. Just finished processing my first bird thanks so much. This is the best tutorial I've come across on the entire Web. Thanks so much for posting such detailed descriptions and photos, they will help a lot- I have four young cockerels that need to be done this weekend and I've been putting it off.

Your post has made me feel a lot better about the whole thing! CanadianBuckeye , Jun 24, Little Jerry Seinfeld likes this. This was better instructions than my first deer cleaning. BGee , Nov 29, The process of rigor takes about hours from the time it begins starting about an hour after death and if you are putting them into ice water or a fridge that's set very cold, it can slow the process down tremendously. If you freeze, it will halt the process and once thawed, it will resume so after thawing it will go through hours of rigor in your fridge, etc.

Need some advice on chicken processing. We just completed our second round and seem to be doing something wrong. It is my understanding from reading that rigor should eventually relax. Ours remain stiff in a full upright pose making them difficult to fit in a roaster. This article was a godsend! We had already done 3 of our meat roos and, despite watching every Youtube video on butchering we could find, all three times were smelly and we felt like we were fumbling through it. We used several tips that we learned from this article when we processed a bird today and it was night and day from the last times, and the best looking finished bird we've had yet.

Great pics and info!!!! I am not a first timer, but am processing 6 this weekend! Beckaberry , May 28, Thank you for the great tutorial. Sunflower , Apr 26, Thanks for this post. I have been looking for some good pictures for gutting the bird and this definately helped.

That was a really impressive article. You did an outstanding job of both explaining the process and supplying good photos. I still have a few months before I'll have to consider doing any of this, but I greatly appreciate the info to help me prepare for that fateful day. DesertChic , Nov 18, I bookmarked this, and also took and saved pix of when I butchered, so I have something to look back on for my next time butchering.

Thank you so much for posting this information. We just processed our flock of 9 hens.

It was our first time processing a bird and this article helped more than I can say. BrewedInNh , Oct 11, Oh wow- you did a beautiful job. I will definitely reference this when we process our first chickens. JenBoughtHens , Jul 9, Thanks so much for the information. Very well detailed with great pictures. It was very easy to follow. We are going to try to process ours using this info. Already tried this with a friend. Missed a few steps! The initial step helped a LOT as I have not been able to do the killing on my own.

This will make it easier, along with the rest. Thanks for sharing this article it was really helpful. Used what I learned to butcher a couple of my roosters today. Thanks for taking the time to put this together. Thank you for the great instructions! Just processed one of my boys. He had a great life and I think he had a respectful processing.

I especially appreciated the info about using the contractor bag and about the last spasm. Helped to know what to expect. And the temperature for the water to scald with was also really helpful. Those are things that I would never have guessed or expected to find elsewhere. Awesome, you showed me the part that was missing. In all the videos and books no one has clearly shown how to cut open the cavity. Its always with their hand in the way of the actual cut and you can't see what someone is doing. I think I can do it now. Darklingstorm , Sep 16, I only have layers but this is a good resource for the future.

JohnBerry , Aug 18, I used this for my first time SarniaTricia , Aug 9, Wonderfully well written, and the pictures are amazing.

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I picked up some good tips from this. Very well done, thank you! Being a bird hunter, I am familiar with processing birds, but there were some things I learned here specific to chickens, thanks for the post. I will add my cudo's to the other's for a job well done. I appreciate this as I will no doubt be doing this some time in the future.

You instill a no nonsense confidence with the step by step pictorial and description. ELauraD , Jun 27, This is better than any description I've ever read in a book. Starting my first flock, and I culled six roosters out of our first batch of ten straight-run spring chicks. It was my first time killing and butchering chickens, though I'd dispatched many, many upland game birds and waterfowl, those were always already crippled or dying. I appreciate your terrific instructions and pictures. It made things go smoothly and humanely. Seslar , Jun 5, Very informative, thanks for writing it and including all the pics.

As a kid I helped my parents butcher some chickens, and am planning to do this later in the summer, but wasn't sure of all the steps. I just got our first chicken 6 one- day olds for eggs but would like to raise meat birds sometime in future. EggTooth , May 26, Thank you so much for the descriptive and very educational guide.

I am about to process for the first time, and the only part that I balk at is the actual killing, and your method is very quiet and kind. Thanks for taking the time to photograph and write up all the steps, it helps so much! Yukonchick , May 15, I used to work for Lilydale. Hope I can remember. About 25 to 30 of us would do around 8 to 10 thousand a day. Super high speed poultry processing. There are probably more ways to process a chicken than to "skin a cat", this is only a guide for folks who want a complete step by step of how I do it, but alterations to the process to fit the needs of the processor are always available!

I'm no where near ready to process my own meat. I've only bought our very first set of three chicks a couple weeks ago. But I'm not overly squeemish and have bagged many rabbits we've killed on our property. I just have never cooked them. My husband wondered why the process is so detailed. Why should you slit the throat and that entire process over cutting the entire head off completely? Just processed our first broiler!! Used this article for step by step directions and thank you so much for making it almost easier than expected!!

Excellent article and thank you! In my newbie squeamishness, I really appreciate what seems like a quick, clean kill method into the contractor bag ; my inner 7 year old I remember having to pluck one of my grandmother's chickens once , appreciates the "prewash" and the addition of dishsoap to the scald water. It makes the thought of processing my own a lot easier! I just butchered 14 cornish X about an hour ago and followed this article step by step.

Everything turned out great! Thanks for the great info. I agree, great article. One downside to our level of intellect is that no other creature has the capacity to mentally suffer like humans can. Mental illness, depression, anxiety are all suffered on a uniquely human scale. You will note that the recent discussions of animal rights here on Gristmill immediately spilled over into discussions of veganism.

Veganism and animal rights are much more closely related than animal rights and environmentalism. I would describe the relationship like this: Veganism is the direct link to animal rights. Veganism is a step beyond vegetarianism. As such, you could call it a more extreme version of it. We know the family well and like them a great deal. They are not vegan to save the planet. They are vegan out of respect for animals, to enhance their own personal health, and to be a part of the vegan community it is their thing; that is their monkey troop.

The preservation of nature has nothing or at least very little to do with their decision to live this lifestyle. That is not to be generalized to all who have decided to go vegan. It just demonstrates that veganism is not necessarily strongly connected to environmentalism. You will also note that words like belief, conversion, convert, and morality have started to fly.

Veganism has too many of the trappings of religion for my tastes. It is also hierarchical. Oh, the earth is the best! Uh, well, I was thinking of going vegan. My family eats very little meat. Another way to put meat eating into perspective is to realize that one beef cow supplies enough beef annually for seven average beef-eating Americans. From a hunter-gatherer perspective, the idea that just one animal that size supplies seven pound, upright-walking omnivores for a year is extremely efficient. Once again, it comes down to the huge numbers of human beings this planet is groaning to support.

My drinking of a few cups of brown tainted liquid in the morning is destroying jungles and bird migrations.

We have just found ways to decouple it from baby making in most instances. We need to find ways to decouple meat consumption from ecological destruction.

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And of course moderation in meat eating is a good thing, for lots of reasons, and convincing others of that is already a big part of the solution. The average American eats about twenty pounds less beef than they did a decade of so ago. The Beacon The Weekly.