How Do You Cook Chickens And Turkeys With NO Skin?

[DesertChick324]

I am raising chickens and turkeys for a taxidermist. They will be butchered when full size but the taxidermist needs to skin them to keep the feathers in order and easier to mount. I get to have all the meat. I have never butchered my own birds before. How in the world am I going to be able to cook 30 chickens and 25 turkeys with no skin and the meat be good? I am not up to making jerkey.

 

[Smoky73]

I dunno, one year we butchered 10 meat birds and we skinned them, just keeping the legs thighs and breasts. we oven baked them, or fried whatever and they were fine.

Seeing you are talking about a whole birds, I would recommend cooking them in one of the even bags to make sure they do not get too dried out.

 

[malignstar]

Make LOTS of chicken soup and turkey chili?

 

[Winsor Woods]

I agree with making soup/chili etc. You want to cook that skinless meat in a very moist environment. You can also cut up the meat into little cubes and stir fry it with veggies and serve over a base of rice.

Dan

 

[dancingbear]

You can pressure cook it, pressure can it, cook in a crock pot. Beast and thigh meat usually stays pretty tender even in a 4-5 month old DP, (how old are the birds, typically?) you can fillet the meat, bread and fry, use the rest, (drumsticks, backs, wings) for the crock pot or other methods. The boneless breasts and thighs can be sprinkled with tenderizer, then pounded with a tenderizing hammer, before you roll them in flour for frying. I have some older birds I cut up when I processed, and separated into frying packages, and crock-pot packages.

With the crock pot, let them cook until the meat starts coming off the bones easily. By easily, I mean almost falling off if you shake the pot even a little. If it's rubbery, it's not done! Be patient, depending on the bird, it may take as long as 12 hours or so. This is on "low", BTW. Use the meat in whatever, casseroles, enchiladas, tacos, sandwiches, shredded chicken meat for BBQ sandwiches on buns, pot pie, tamales, stir-fry, burritos, omelets, pasta dishes, chicken salad, chicken and dumplings, whatever. Leftover broth from cooking can be frozen or pressure canned for later use, in any recipe that calls for broth or stock.

 

[pcmarion]

We often skin our chicken pieces and bake them with shake-n-bake...our favorite is the BBQ kind. It always comes out great and this way we cut out a bunch of the fat and calories assoicated with the skin. We have also had good luck baking in the Pampered Chef clay baker (it's a covered clay baker). Just a dash of spices a little water and into the oven for an hour or so...yummy!

 

[dancingbear]

If these are not the fast growing broiler-type birds, butchered at a comparatively young age, (6-12 weeks) then baking for an hour probably won't cut it. There's a link for cooking heritage birds, that explains the whole thing pretty well.

I have a Litton Simmerpot, it's a clay cooker with a lid, that I often roast whole birds in. Older ones, I slow-roast, 275F-325F, for anywhere from 3 to 5 hours, depending on the age and breed. But mine have skin, so that makes a difference. The dual-purpose, heritage types, don't have much fat at all, (at least the roos don't) roasting a skinless bird like that, I'm not sure how it would turn out. You could try it and see, and let us know.

 

[Cason]

You can also wrap a couple of pieces of bacon around them before baking.

 

[DesertChick324]

Thank you everyone. I'd like to be able to sell most of the birds as I do not have room for all of them. How much should I sell them for and how should I market them?

 

[annageckos]

Just make sure the taxi doesn't use anything while skinning. Most use either dry perserves or borax while skinning to help keep a better grip on the skin. Some will also spray chemicals. I would make sure that they use a clean area to skin your birds, and that they do not skin other animals in that area or clean it well and that they use new, clean blades to do your birds. As for cooking there are tons of ways to cook skinless chicken, almost any way that you cook one with the skin on.