Yes that's right. Makes a world of difference for tenderness.
To Rosiekitty,
Brining did not make my DP roosters tender enough to cook quickly. Again for my own tastes. I like chicken tender. Others may prefer it more stringy.
How to cook the roosters I've culled?
- Thread starter eve789
- Start date
Yes that's right. Makes a world of difference for tenderness.
To Rosiekitty,
Brining did not make my DP roosters tender enough to cook quickly. Again for my own tastes. I like chicken tender. Others may prefer it more stringy.
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- Jan 28, 2013
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I am ready to take the plunge, but my husband is getting a little freaked out by all of this. I think we might go to a farm that processes birds the first time around, so we can watch and ask questions before we attempt to do it on our own. Whether or not we become meat bird raisers, we will have to cull chickens from time to time. I realize that now. So, best to get used to the idea and hopefully gain some new skills in the process!
Many people would be willing to show you. I know I would if you were in my area. I just showed three people how to process this weekend in fact. It is a lot better after the first time.
Check out this thread: https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...ort-group-help-us-through-the-emotions-please
I strongly recommend you get experienced help for your first time! Do not attempt to harvest your own birds just from watching videos and reading threads. This is not because you will ruin your bird, but because when a kill goes bad, it is truly horrific. I am still a beginner, and I can tell you that the killing cone is the way to go for beginners. Much, much better than chopping off the head with a hatchet! Killing cones are easily procured by either making your own out of flashing (tutorials are online), or I just picked up a plastic traffic cone from the local safety supply store. $8.
I had the exact same experience! It was horrible the first time. We had to kill a suffering bird and had no time to think. We used an axe and chopping block and did not get her properly. I'm not coordinated.. Neither is my wife. So we bleed them out in a cone. It is all over within 30 seconds and they are in a trance as they die. They don't see the axe coming for them....
If I had to do it any other way it would be a pellet gun point blank to the head.
Quote:
@chooks4life: Your post made me wonder, well, if that's really what it's like, maybe we should get more roosters and start raising our own meat & egg birds! Very interesting about genetics. We know now that stressful experiences our grandparents may have suffered (war, famine, natural disaster) affect our health, even if our parents and us ourselves were raised in very different environments. I see no reason why the same shouldn't be true for chickens. It makes me want to raise our own chickens ourselves since the ones we have now do free range, eat pristine, organic food, whole grains (did a bit of fermenting, now experimenting with sprouting), lots of fresh stuff, worms, mealworms, bsf's, etc. (It all sounds crazy, but it's really not that much work since most of it (except for the grain inputs) are integrated with our garden and our waste disposal.) They are very happy chickens!
Sadly, improving the genetic or epigenetic fortunes of our flock is out of reach for us right now. We have 2+ acres, but are in the suburbs, and while our neighbors aren't super close, the rooster sound is so iconic, that I am afraid someone down the street might start complaining. There's no chicken ordinance here, and I don't want to give the town a reason to write one (it won't end up being in our favor.) Every time a truck goes by on the main road or the neighbor's dog barks or a flock of migrating starlings flies overhead, they drown out our birds, so I don't think objections to backyard birds some folks might have are always rational. Roosters at 6am are a little much, though, granted.
If you weren't in Australia, I might ask if you'd be willing to sell me some of your hatching eggs
You have got me thinking about forgoing the internet/mail order hatcheries and seeing if I can't find someone local who uses similar practices as I do to raise their birds, and buying direct from them.
If you were buying a breed (as opposed to eating your own mixed breeds), what would be your favorite(s) for meat? For dual purpose?
Well, I don't intend to buy any cross breeds nor purebreds, but I have heard a lot of good things about Cornish Rocks and the likes. Anything related to Barred Rock seems to be widely praised especially when it comes to meat tenderness and flavor, so if I decided to get a purebred or crossbred I'd get something along the lines of that. But I am quite fond of the contributions of bantam genetics, particularly Silkies, to flavor and grain and juiciness, and the tenderness; I don't like white meat overly much. But the closer we got to purebred birds, the worse the flesh was.
As for a dual purpose purebred or crossbred, well, I haven’t considered that in depth, but Barred Rocks are again one of the breeds people seem to mention a lot for that purpose as well, without hearing as many negatives as I do for many other breeds. Light Sussex is a good dual purpose breed too, but when people are just breeding for show they ruin functional characteristics and so it depends on the breeder you buy from. A lot of dual purpose birds being sold as such are no longer dual purpose due to being from show stock that was not monitored for egg or flesh production. Australorps were touted as great dual purpose birds but I found strong predispositions to leucosis in the ones I bought so culled them out.
It is a bit unfair in suburbia that you can live within earshot of many barking dogs and other noisemakers like folks who play their music too loud, but chickens are not allowed due to noise. I'd understand if it were about the stink of an unhealthy coop or other health concerns like that, and if there were undue levels of noise, or noise at inappropriate hours... But a lot of folks seem to feel poultry degrade a neighbourhood so they object on those grounds. In my experience some folks have a pathological hatred of chicken noises. I hope you're able to pursue your own breeding experiments in future. I enjoy watching genetics mix and working towards my goals with the stock I have rather than working towards someone else's goals in the breed/s they established. Each to their own though. Many are dedicated to purebreds but mongrels have always been my personal favorites.
I do agree that you should watch someone else do a cull before you attempt it if you are able. Whether pets or livestock there will always be that case, sooner or later, where you must do a mercy cull.
Quote:
I'm pretty relatively new to processing extra roosters myself - I'm 23 weeks pregnant - so squeamish about eating what I've killed is pretty much the name of the game for me right now. :/
We've now tried three different methods to getting our birds as tender as people say you can get them, all to no avail. I keep wondering what I'm doing wrong...so I'm open to any help from other experienced home processors on the subject. Keep in mind, these roosters were purchased as chicks in March of this year, so they're only 6 months old at most - and all are either Australorp, Black Giant, EE, or Buff Orp.
I'll list here, step by step, how I've been processing the birds so someone can point out where I might be going wrong.
1. Coop all birds the night before slaughter (not unlike any other night)
2. Get set up, scald water at 147-148 degrees in the turkey fryer
3. Go into coop and select the rooster of the day, carry him out upside down (naturally calming from what I've read) and speaking softly
4. Place him into kill cone over clean tub and secure him quickly with bungee cord
5. Slit throat to spine in one swift, quick motion - allow bleed-out until all motion has ceased and blood has ceased flowing (4 min max)
6. Remove bird from cone and place in scald water, using feet to "swish" him until wing feathers release easily (3-4 min max)
7. Hang bird upside down from looped rope by feet and pluck cleanly (5 min max)
8. Place on table and begin butcher process (eviscerate/removal of entire neck and feet for whole bird; quartering/removal of breast meat for pieces)
9. Place processed meat into cool water container during cleanup
10. Place meat into brine/herb mixture in refrigerator to "rest" prior to cooking
I have tried the 6-hour rest, the 3-day rest, and the 7-day rest - all to no avail. They've all been equally tough as rocks.
I've marinated them, slow-cooked them in an oven, slow-roasted on a grill, and even made a soup - the flavor has been wonderful, but the texture is very tough. It's like they go into rigor during scalding and plucking and never come out of it.
Where am I going wrong? I can understand some toughness - they are free-ranged egg-laying types. The toughness is like rubber and it takes forever to chew one bite (more than 2 minutes per bite, and no I'm not exaggerating).
Firstly, congrats on the pregnancy!
Secondly: you're doing pretty much the same thing as we do with processing, though there are a few trifling differences.
We bleed them out for up to half an hour, not being particular about it, and we don't put the meat into anything except the cooking tool of choice after it's processed. We don't marinate though we add some oil and herbs when basting it just prior to cooking and as we cook.
We don't cool the processed birds, and don't let them sit. Very rarely we put them straight into the freezer for cooking later. Another different thing, (which I can't figure would be significant), is that we don't swish them around in the pot while scalding and don't have an exact temperature for it, we just boil some kettles, put them in the pot, put the chicken in, and let it sit for a while.
We don't remove the breast pieces, we cook them whole, and the more damage to the skin, the more body fluids escape. We try not to puncture the skin particularly if spit roasting so I think removing the breast pieces would make your birds dry out a lot more than if you left the skin as intact as possible.
Your biggest issue I think is that you're cooking layer breeds. Since I don't keep purebreds this is not an issue for me but when I did have some purebreds in the beginning, the flesh was one of those disappointing things. Female layer breeds don't take a break from laying at the normal time of a non layer breed, so they don't replenish their flesh after burning some off during brooding like a normal non layer does, and due to the high demand for constant egg production on their systems, their bodies don't dedicate enough protein to their repairing and feathering processes; this is why most layer breeds have rooster-tough flesh and terrible moults. But my bantam mix mongrel roosters have hen-like flesh too so there must be more at work than just the laying break for brooding. Either way I've never liked the layer breeds' flesh, and haven't liked meat breeds' flesh either, though it was better than layer breeds. Dual purpose mongrels are best in my experience. I did originally have a couple of barred rock type birds and their flesh was second best to the mongrels, but not something I'd continue with. Too plain and not as juicy, and not as tender.
It was due to comparing purebreds' and crossbreds' flesh with bantam mixes' flesh that we stopped using anything else. No contest. But from what I hear, the bantams in the USA sound fleshless and stringy for the most part. So I'm not sure how easily you could remedy that; it’d probably take a lot of outcrossing. I think I've had it easy in Australia with so many people keeping mongrel flocks for generations as dual purpose birds, which is where a lot of my stock's come from.
One thing I have read (but not tried since I’m happy with the meat we get) is that you can use the juices of any one of several fruits, or pieces of them, to effectively tenderize meat. Paw paw, pineapple, passionfruit, apple, and other acidic fruits are supposed to be very effective. Many people would let them marinate overnight in these juices. That reminds me… When we first did home grown turkeys, we stuffed them with green apples since we’d been told they would be very tough and stringy as compared to storebought. It was nice, not really noticeable since the homegrown was so different to storebought that we couldn’t tell what impact the fruit had; but later on we didn’t bother with any tenderizing ingredients because all the turkeys and chickens seemed to not need them. They weren’t stringy like storebought or purebred, they were juicy and tender and beautifully flavored, with a clean aftertaste unlike the rankness of storebought flesh.
Best wishes.
@chooks4life: Your post made me wonder, well, if that's really what it's like, maybe we should get more roosters and start raising our own meat & egg birds! Very interesting about genetics. We know now that stressful experiences our grandparents may have suffered (war, famine, natural disaster) affect our health, even if our parents and us ourselves were raised in very different environments. I see no reason why the same shouldn't be true for chickens. It makes me want to raise our own chickens ourselves since the ones we have now do free range, eat pristine, organic food, whole grains (did a bit of fermenting, now experimenting with sprouting), lots of fresh stuff, worms, mealworms, bsf's, etc. (It all sounds crazy, but it's really not that much work since most of it (except for the grain inputs) are integrated with our garden and our waste disposal.) They are very happy chickens!
Sadly, improving the genetic or epigenetic fortunes of our flock is out of reach for us right now. We have 2+ acres, but are in the suburbs, and while our neighbors aren't super close, the rooster sound is so iconic, that I am afraid someone down the street might start complaining. There's no chicken ordinance here, and I don't want to give the town a reason to write one (it won't end up being in our favor.) Every time a truck goes by on the main road or the neighbor's dog barks or a flock of migrating starlings flies overhead, they drown out our birds, so I don't think objections to backyard birds some folks might have are always rational. Roosters at 6am are a little much, though, granted.
If you weren't in Australia, I might ask if you'd be willing to sell me some of your hatching eggs
You have got me thinking about forgoing the internet/mail order hatcheries and seeing if I can't find someone local who uses similar practices as I do to raise their birds, and buying direct from them.If you were buying a breed (as opposed to eating your own mixed breeds), what would be your favorite(s) for meat? For dual purpose?
Well, I don't intend to buy any cross breeds nor purebreds, but I have heard a lot of good things about Cornish Rocks and the likes. Anything related to Barred Rock seems to be widely praised especially when it comes to meat tenderness and flavor, so if I decided to get a purebred or crossbred I'd get something along the lines of that. But I am quite fond of the contributions of bantam genetics, particularly Silkies, to flavor and grain and juiciness, and the tenderness; I don't like white meat overly much. But the closer we got to purebred birds, the worse the flesh was.
As for a dual purpose purebred or crossbred, well, I haven’t considered that in depth, but Barred Rocks are again one of the breeds people seem to mention a lot for that purpose as well, without hearing as many negatives as I do for many other breeds. Light Sussex is a good dual purpose breed too, but when people are just breeding for show they ruin functional characteristics and so it depends on the breeder you buy from. A lot of dual purpose birds being sold as such are no longer dual purpose due to being from show stock that was not monitored for egg or flesh production. Australorps were touted as great dual purpose birds but I found strong predispositions to leucosis in the ones I bought so culled them out.
It is a bit unfair in suburbia that you can live within earshot of many barking dogs and other noisemakers like folks who play their music too loud, but chickens are not allowed due to noise. I'd understand if it were about the stink of an unhealthy coop or other health concerns like that, and if there were undue levels of noise, or noise at inappropriate hours... But a lot of folks seem to feel poultry degrade a neighbourhood so they object on those grounds. In my experience some folks have a pathological hatred of chicken noises. I hope you're able to pursue your own breeding experiments in future. I enjoy watching genetics mix and working towards my goals with the stock I have rather than working towards someone else's goals in the breed/s they established. Each to their own though. Many are dedicated to purebreds but mongrels have always been my personal favorites.
I do agree that you should watch someone else do a cull before you attempt it if you are able. Whether pets or livestock there will always be that case, sooner or later, where you must do a mercy cull.
Quote:
I'm pretty relatively new to processing extra roosters myself - I'm 23 weeks pregnant - so squeamish about eating what I've killed is pretty much the name of the game for me right now. :/
We've now tried three different methods to getting our birds as tender as people say you can get them, all to no avail. I keep wondering what I'm doing wrong...so I'm open to any help from other experienced home processors on the subject. Keep in mind, these roosters were purchased as chicks in March of this year, so they're only 6 months old at most - and all are either Australorp, Black Giant, EE, or Buff Orp.
I'll list here, step by step, how I've been processing the birds so someone can point out where I might be going wrong.
1. Coop all birds the night before slaughter (not unlike any other night)
2. Get set up, scald water at 147-148 degrees in the turkey fryer
3. Go into coop and select the rooster of the day, carry him out upside down (naturally calming from what I've read) and speaking softly
4. Place him into kill cone over clean tub and secure him quickly with bungee cord
5. Slit throat to spine in one swift, quick motion - allow bleed-out until all motion has ceased and blood has ceased flowing (4 min max)
6. Remove bird from cone and place in scald water, using feet to "swish" him until wing feathers release easily (3-4 min max)
7. Hang bird upside down from looped rope by feet and pluck cleanly (5 min max)
8. Place on table and begin butcher process (eviscerate/removal of entire neck and feet for whole bird; quartering/removal of breast meat for pieces)
9. Place processed meat into cool water container during cleanup
10. Place meat into brine/herb mixture in refrigerator to "rest" prior to cooking
I have tried the 6-hour rest, the 3-day rest, and the 7-day rest - all to no avail. They've all been equally tough as rocks.
I've marinated them, slow-cooked them in an oven, slow-roasted on a grill, and even made a soup - the flavor has been wonderful, but the texture is very tough. It's like they go into rigor during scalding and plucking and never come out of it.
Where am I going wrong? I can understand some toughness - they are free-ranged egg-laying types. The toughness is like rubber and it takes forever to chew one bite (more than 2 minutes per bite, and no I'm not exaggerating).
Firstly, congrats on the pregnancy!
Secondly: you're doing pretty much the same thing as we do with processing, though there are a few trifling differences.
We bleed them out for up to half an hour, not being particular about it, and we don't put the meat into anything except the cooking tool of choice after it's processed. We don't marinate though we add some oil and herbs when basting it just prior to cooking and as we cook.
We don't cool the processed birds, and don't let them sit. Very rarely we put them straight into the freezer for cooking later. Another different thing, (which I can't figure would be significant), is that we don't swish them around in the pot while scalding and don't have an exact temperature for it, we just boil some kettles, put them in the pot, put the chicken in, and let it sit for a while.
We don't remove the breast pieces, we cook them whole, and the more damage to the skin, the more body fluids escape. We try not to puncture the skin particularly if spit roasting so I think removing the breast pieces would make your birds dry out a lot more than if you left the skin as intact as possible.
Your biggest issue I think is that you're cooking layer breeds. Since I don't keep purebreds this is not an issue for me but when I did have some purebreds in the beginning, the flesh was one of those disappointing things. Female layer breeds don't take a break from laying at the normal time of a non layer breed, so they don't replenish their flesh after burning some off during brooding like a normal non layer does, and due to the high demand for constant egg production on their systems, their bodies don't dedicate enough protein to their repairing and feathering processes; this is why most layer breeds have rooster-tough flesh and terrible moults. But my bantam mix mongrel roosters have hen-like flesh too so there must be more at work than just the laying break for brooding. Either way I've never liked the layer breeds' flesh, and haven't liked meat breeds' flesh either, though it was better than layer breeds. Dual purpose mongrels are best in my experience. I did originally have a couple of barred rock type birds and their flesh was second best to the mongrels, but not something I'd continue with. Too plain and not as juicy, and not as tender.
It was due to comparing purebreds' and crossbreds' flesh with bantam mixes' flesh that we stopped using anything else. No contest. But from what I hear, the bantams in the USA sound fleshless and stringy for the most part. So I'm not sure how easily you could remedy that; it’d probably take a lot of outcrossing. I think I've had it easy in Australia with so many people keeping mongrel flocks for generations as dual purpose birds, which is where a lot of my stock's come from.
One thing I have read (but not tried since I’m happy with the meat we get) is that you can use the juices of any one of several fruits, or pieces of them, to effectively tenderize meat. Paw paw, pineapple, passionfruit, apple, and other acidic fruits are supposed to be very effective. Many people would let them marinate overnight in these juices. That reminds me… When we first did home grown turkeys, we stuffed them with green apples since we’d been told they would be very tough and stringy as compared to storebought. It was nice, not really noticeable since the homegrown was so different to storebought that we couldn’t tell what impact the fruit had; but later on we didn’t bother with any tenderizing ingredients because all the turkeys and chickens seemed to not need them. They weren’t stringy like storebought or purebred, they were juicy and tender and beautifully flavored, with a clean aftertaste unlike the rankness of storebought flesh.
Best wishes.
Quote:
Thank you! The folks I've talked to around here have pretty much told me that with their age, activity, etc. - they're not going to tenderize unless I cook them low n' slow for about 12 hours in a crock pot or stock pot.
Our first processed bird went into the oven at 200 degrees after "resting" for 6 hours in brine, to cook for 4 hours until internal temp was over 165 but not by much. I left the skin intact on him, marinated him in the brine/herbs/oil mixture for the 6 hour rest period, and then popped him into the oven - frequently injecting him with a butter/herb concoction. He tasted great - just stiff as a board and very stringy. He was a purebred Australorp.
I've heard the same things mentioned about any of the Rocks as well about mixed-breed mongrels being a good mix of flavorful and tender. Thank you so much for your input and advice!
Thank you! The folks I've talked to around here have pretty much told me that with their age, activity, etc. - they're not going to tenderize unless I cook them low n' slow for about 12 hours in a crock pot or stock pot.
Our first processed bird went into the oven at 200 degrees after "resting" for 6 hours in brine, to cook for 4 hours until internal temp was over 165 but not by much. I left the skin intact on him, marinated him in the brine/herbs/oil mixture for the 6 hour rest period, and then popped him into the oven - frequently injecting him with a butter/herb concoction. He tasted great - just stiff as a board and very stringy. He was a purebred Australorp.
I've heard the same things mentioned about any of the Rocks as well about mixed-breed mongrels being a good mix of flavorful and tender. Thank you so much for your input and advice!
I heard that wyandottes have especially delicious meat. They certainly take longer to mature than broilers but has anybody else heard this?
Personally I don't think breed (excluding cornish cross) has anything to do with tenderness or flavor.
The age of the bird and the activity of the bird is the main factor in tenderness. I've butchered numerous breeds of cockerals. If I butchered them before 14 weeks and kept them confined so they couldn't run all day they were fine cooked using any method. For me much past that age they were too tough unless cooked slowly.
The Cornish cross I've butchered up to 20 weeks still made good fryers. Tenderness IMHO is more a result of the birds activity than age. Why are Cornish so "tender" (personally I find them watery) for so long? Watch them, they do nothing but sit in front of the feeder and eat. They move around very little. Therefore, the result of using their muscles less is a much more "tender" bird.
It's been a few years since I've raised birds a fryers but I do prefer the Freedom Rangers over the Cornish Crosses.
The age of the bird and the activity of the bird is the main factor in tenderness. I've butchered numerous breeds of cockerals. If I butchered them before 14 weeks and kept them confined so they couldn't run all day they were fine cooked using any method. For me much past that age they were too tough unless cooked slowly.
The Cornish cross I've butchered up to 20 weeks still made good fryers. Tenderness IMHO is more a result of the birds activity than age. Why are Cornish so "tender" (personally I find them watery) for so long? Watch them, they do nothing but sit in front of the feeder and eat. They move around very little. Therefore, the result of using their muscles less is a much more "tender" bird.
It's been a few years since I've raised birds a fryers but I do prefer the Freedom Rangers over the Cornish Crosses.
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