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

[K0k0shka]

If you're quick, you can clean and get them cooking before rigor mortis sets in.

I'm not that quick, unfortunately. Plucking all the little pin feathers on growing chickens takes forever! If I skinned them I could probably beat rigor mortis, but the skin is the best part so I have to pluck it clean.

 

[Sally PB]

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.

@U_Stormcrow, check this out.

 

[VeganSandy]

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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How could you eat a pet?

 

[K0k0shka]

How could you eat a pet?

I didn't say he was a pet.

 

[Molpet]

How could you eat a pet?

What makes you think it was a pet?
This is the meat bird forum and we eat our extra birds

 

[FunClucks]

I think the trick is to leave the bird in the fridge for three days after processing.
I've found age doesn't really matter if the rooster has been hung, then processed, then left for three days.

So you're saying I could cook my one year old rooster slowly in the oven (~275F/135C oven temp) after hanging, processing, and 3 days in the fridge (or until rigor passes)?

I recently processed a year old rooster and rested him in the fridge for 7 days (rigor took about 5 days to pass), and then put him in the pressure cooker with a bunch of chicken soup veggies and some liquid. Turned out super tender and tasted good, but had a bit of the pressure cooker texture. We ate it straight out the pressure cooker and with barbeque sauce later. I didn't want to slow roast it in the oven and have it turn out stringy and tough and not be able to eat it. Kids despise chicken soup (I don't know what's wrong with them!), so I'm looking for other options. I regularly cook tough roasts of beef that way, and they turn out tender if cooked for about 1.5-2 hrs at 275F (135C), I just wasn't sure if I could do the same to chicken.

 

[K0k0shka]

I recently processed a year old rooster and rested him in the fridge for 7 days (rigor took about 5 days to pass)

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...

 

[FunClucks]

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...

It's different for home processed chickens, is my understanding. When you process yourself, you control the cleanliness of your setup, the processing area, how cleanly you gut, how many rinses you give the carcass during processing and afterwards, how quickly you chill after finished processing, etc. I checked him each day, and he smelled perfectly fine. I wouldn't push it past 7 days just because I don't think it's a good idea, but I know 5 days is common from what I've read on this forum. Took that chicken a while to not have rigor going on, and I had to find a minute to cook it, which is not easy around my house. Meant to cook it at 5 days, but 7 days is when I had a minute. Tasted fine, and we're all well. Smelled great in the bag prior to cooking.

This was an unplanned processing, so I had to fit it in the schedule instead of planning ahead. I didn't plan to let it go past 5 days, but it ended up fine.

Grocery store meat, yeah, use or freeze in 3 days tops - I've had too much chicken go bad on me. It always seems somewhat slimy when I open the package - I'm much happier with chickens processed myself, for all that it's a boatload of work.

 

[K0k0shka]

It's different for home processed chickens, is my understanding. When you process yourself, you control the cleanliness of your setup, the processing area, how cleanly you gut, how many rinses you give the carcass during processing and afterwards, how quickly you chill after finished processing, etc. I checked him each day, and he smelled perfectly fine. I wouldn't push it past 7 days just because I don't think it's a good idea, but I know 5 days is common from what I've read on this forum. Took that chicken a while to not have rigor going on, and I had to find a minute to cook it, which is not easy around my house. Meant to cook it at 5 days, but 7 days is when I had a minute. Tasted fine, and we're all well. Smelled great in the bag prior to cooking.

Grocery store meat, yeah, use or freeze in 3 days tops - I've had too much chicken go bad on me. It always seems somewhat slimy when I open the package - I'm much happier with chickens processed myself, for all that it's a boatload of work.

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

 

[imacowgirl2]

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...

In my experience with home grown, home butchered meat, it usually doesn’t go bad as quickly as store bought meat. I’ve had grocery store chickens that have gone bad in two days in the fridge, but have had home grown meat (beef, pork, chicken) still be good at 7 days. I assume it’s probably because there is less time between butcher and final refrigerator — at home when we butcher something, it’s in our refrigerator or freezer within a couple hours at most. It also didn’t travel for days on refrigerated or freezer trucks where the temp can fluctuate both on the truck as well as during loading/unloading.

That being said, I don’t routinely leave meat in the fridge for 7+ days…but I think we do have to remember that most of the industry/government recommendations are with the average household in mind — basically all of which are dealing with store bought meat.