Coops Dad
Crowing
My wife is a city girl, raised in Southern California within sight of Disneyland. We moved to central Texas four years ago and soon had a small coop full of mixed eggers; wifey was deeply suspicious of "dirty" eggs and it took several months before she was comfortable eating fresh eggs. She swore she'd never eat one of our chickens, though. Eventually, we incubated some chicks and a renegade hen brought her little brood out of the bushes and we soon had an overabundance of roosters. No one wanted them so I decided to eat a few.
My wife was mortified and didn't want so much as a nugget to be cooked in her kitchen or using her pans, so I put the first rooster into the smoker. He was 8 months old so he got brined overnight, rubbed with S&P and gently smoked over a cool bed of pecan coals to an internal temp of 160*.
I was busy devouring him when my wife came out to the picnic table and asked for a bit so she could satisfy her curiosity. She thought he was delicious.
Fast forward a couple of years and we routinely grow out and process two dozen Cornish Xs at least twice a year, process all extra roosters and grow out three or four Broad Breasted White turkeys. DW looks forward to two special Cornish X days- the day we bring home the chicks and the day I turn them into freezer residents.
This last weekend, I put our last 6 CXs into the freezer along with one overgrown BBW turkey. The turkey went in as two individually wrapped huge breasts and 10 lbs of ground meat.
She doesn't want to help process the birds... yet. She's happy to feed them, care for them, then receive them as pretty carcasses to stuff into vacuum freezer bags.
This is
one of the CXs along with yellow crookneck squash from HER garden (and store bought rice). Chicken teriyaki.
My wife was mortified and didn't want so much as a nugget to be cooked in her kitchen or using her pans, so I put the first rooster into the smoker. He was 8 months old so he got brined overnight, rubbed with S&P and gently smoked over a cool bed of pecan coals to an internal temp of 160*.
I was busy devouring him when my wife came out to the picnic table and asked for a bit so she could satisfy her curiosity. She thought he was delicious.
Fast forward a couple of years and we routinely grow out and process two dozen Cornish Xs at least twice a year, process all extra roosters and grow out three or four Broad Breasted White turkeys. DW looks forward to two special Cornish X days- the day we bring home the chicks and the day I turn them into freezer residents.
This last weekend, I put our last 6 CXs into the freezer along with one overgrown BBW turkey. The turkey went in as two individually wrapped huge breasts and 10 lbs of ground meat.
She doesn't want to help process the birds... yet. She's happy to feed them, care for them, then receive them as pretty carcasses to stuff into vacuum freezer bags.
This is
