The best way to cook an older chicken! (not stew)

[FunClucks]

Yeah, with the store bought you don't know how long it's been in the fridge at the store, so the counting doesn't really start once you bring it home... there's no good way to know when it starts. I'd so much rather only use homegrown, but I don't have the capacity or the time for that. Just an occasional treat from a small yearly batch. Though I did find a way to get free homegrown meat without putting in any effort to raise it - I offer my services in my area to rid people of unwanted roosters... So they bring them to me and I keep the meat

As long as you have a good method of biosecurity to protect any flock you have on the property and know what you're looking at as far as disease goes when you butcher, that sounds like an awesome way to get homegrown meat!

 

[Ridgerunner]

Yeah, with the store bought you don't know how long it's been in the fridge at the store,

I think that is a great point. Meat from the store has gone through aging to get past rigor mortis. To compare when you butchered it to when you brought it home from the store is about as apples to oranges as you can get.

 

[BarnyardChaos]

Wow, 7 days! Wouldn't he start going bad at that point? I don't like leaving meat in the fridge that long... The safety guidelines are around 2-5 days at most for raw meat, 5 would be pushing it and 7 would definitely be too long...

Do you think it makes a difference if you brine the chicken? I mean both in terms of how long it can rest in the fridge, and whether it makes an old bird tender and flavorful?

 

[K0k0shka]

As long as you have a good method of biosecurity to protect any flock you have on the property and know what you're looking at as far as disease goes when you butcher, that sounds like an awesome way to get homegrown meat!

I do my best. I use separate clothes and shoes and do the butchering and processing in an area of the property that my chickens have no access to. I wash things as much as I can. I find this to be less of a risk than chicken-sitting for friends... I'd really rather not, as there's no good way to prevent transmission if you have to enter another coop (I have brought home mites that way) but it's so hard to find help when one has to travel, that I can't bring myself to say no.

Do you think it makes a difference if you brine the chicken? I mean both in terms of how long it can rest in the fridge, and whether it makes an old bird tender and flavorful?

I don't think it would make a difference in terms of how long it keeps, but, depending on the brine, it absolutely can help tenderize the meat. Especially if you use acid (like a vinegar-based brine) and brine it for a long time. Pineapple in particular is known for its meat tenderizing properties.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Aging - When you keep it until rigor mortis has passed. Needs to be kept cool.

Brining - Adding salt to the water as you age it or beyond. The main purpose of that is to get the meat to retain liquid. If you are going to use a dry method to cook the meat it can be helpful. If you use a wet method it is not so important. There has been debate on this forum as to whether brining (salt) helps tenderize the meat. Some people think so, some don't. I'm not convinced it does. If you just want the salt flavor you can add that later.

Marinade - Using acid to tenderize the meat. Pineapple would provide acid. Wine and vinegar are very often used. The acid breaks down the connective tissue and is an important part of recipes for older meat. Coq au Vin is an excellent example, the wine makes an old rooster tender when done properly. You can add a lot of flavors with marinades. You can also add salt and brine it at the same time.

 

[Molpet]

A few years ago I looked up how long USDA recommend poultry from slaughter to use by date. It was 10 days.

Also people used to hang unplucked or gutted for a couple weeks below 50f to tenderize.

Age determines how to cook. Over a year doesn't roast well to me. Low temp and moist or pressure cooker works for me.

https://bramblewoodhill.com/breeding-chickens-meat-production/

 

[GreenAcres Homestead]

Wow

We just ate our oldest chicken yet - a rooster over a year old, that I culled for a friend. He was HUGE and built like a tank. My husband is a big sous vide fan and we've done that with chickens before with amazing results, but never one this old. So he decided to leave the chicken in the sous vide a lot longer - usually it's a couple of hours, but he left this guy in there (cut in half and each half bagged separately) for 36 hours! Then put him in the oven at 450 for 15 minutes to crisp up. Maaaan, that was the most tender, most flavorful chicken I've had in a very long time!!! The tenderness of store-bought, but the meat was a rich brown color and with such deep, amazing flavor! 1+ year's worth of flavor. Better flavor than the younger backyard chickens we usually eat. Now I'm a big fan of older chickens, if they can be tenderized so effectively without having to resort to stew! We cooked this rooster together with a 3-month-old backyard cockerel in the sous vide and while both were extremely tender, the older rooster was a lot more flavorful and delicious. Now I'm thinking I need to let my food chickens get older before processing.

I recommend this method wholeheartedly. The sous vide set up is worth every cent. We use it for all kinds of meat (best steaks ever!!!!) and other things, like eggs that you want to use for hollandaise or mayo without worrying about using raw.

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Thank you for sharing we had never tried this way of cooking before and have cooked a few roosters before that came out tough so we gave up on roosters other then boiling for a broth. We differently are going to try this out for we are hatching alot of eggs right now and we are sure we will have a few roosters in them. Plus we plan on thinning out our egg layers and replace them with new chicks. Anyway thanks for the idea.

 

[GCrumb]

Kids despise chicken soup (I don't know what's wrong with them!), so I'm looking for other options.

Drop chicken in slow cooker and pour half or more of a bottle of Caesar dressing over it. Leave it on low and go off to do something more interesting for a few hours. When you can shred it with a couple of forks and pick out the bones, do that. Add some more stuff to it: Fresh herbs, finely chopped not-too-tender greens, little bits of Italian sausage or pepperoni, olives or artichoke hearts or whatever, more Caesar if it’s too dry. Let it stew some more.

Serve the resulting glop on buns like a ‘Sloppy Joe’, possibly with cheese/tomato/onion/lettuce toppings. Higher end rolls and cheeses can make it grow up some.

I really like the slow cooker, because I’m lazy and distractible. I also like it because it doesn’t heat up the kitchen, and this dish actually feels kind of summery in spite of being stewed a long time.

I think if I was doing it with a pressure cooker rather than a slow cooker I’d just cook the chicken by itself to shreddable first.