Sunday, September 07, 2014

Chickens

A couple of cyber friends keep back-yard chickens.  They seem to enjoy the birds, and enjoy the fresh eggs.  But they don’t seem interested in moving from “farm to fork” with the chickens.  There is a farm near here that teaches a Saturday course in poultry processing, I think it starts something like take one chicken, remove head, set aside head.  I know my grandmothers knew how to kill and clean chickens, but modernity had settled in by the time I came along and they no longer processed their own.  I am not sure I ever saw my mother start with a whole chicken.  I can only remember her buying them cut up and them mostly just parts.  Parts is parts.  My grandmother, taught me to cut up a whole chicken.  Fewer and fewer people seem to know what to do with a whole chicken. It really is basics of good cooking and good value. When cutting up chickens, among other things you rapidly realize that a chicken does not have nuggets, nuggets don’t correspond to any part of the anatomy of that bird. I don’t think you should be able to graduate from high school without knowing how to cut up a chicken.  

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous9/07/2014

    I buy my chickens cut up, thank you. I can gut a deer, skin a squirrel, but if I didn't shoot it, I ain't cuttin' it up! HAHAHAHA

    Peace <3
    Jay

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  2. I agree. It strikes me as culinary 101 is the task of knowing how to pick out a good chicken and take it apart.
    Brother #3 has chickens and these are 'eggs only' poulets.

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  3. Add in sew on a button, iron a shirt, change a tire, pound a nail, check your car's fluid levels, balance a checkbook and can some veggies.

    I am sure most high schools still offer classes with this stuff(since most parents nowadays aren't equipped to teach their youngins this stuff anymore, but kids don't seem to want to learn it.
    Sad really....

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  4. I was taught to butcher my chickens my an old poultry farmer a few years back
    I remember thinking tutting the carcass up was easy , but I was thrown when I found the cockerels " balls" INSIDE the abdomen
    Freaked me out

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