Is it supposed to look like this?? Chicken and dumplings

[hecatesmoon]

Lol When my sister was nine or ten, she just told me the other day about this, she went with our grandma to her chicken coop. Grandma told her to pick a chicken. My sister, who is very sensitive, had no idea what she was picking a chicken for! She said our grandma grabbed it, wrung its neck, and axed it right in front of her. She said she cried at dinner that night, didn't eat chicken for a month, and now she can't eat anything that she has previously seen alive. Lol. My eye, its ok. I could open it the split second I needed to be able to tell I could see out of it so I escaped a doctors visit. It is sensitive, vision is blurry, but otherwise good! I was hurting too much to take the time to explain to my chicken that the little black dot it was so curious about happened to be my pupil. Maybe I will explain to it later.

 

[Gryphon]

Ooh wait, did you say you used the water you used to dunk the roo in to loosen his feathers was the same you used to cook him in? Eeek, yeah that's no good! As for why canned/big business food looks that way, it's because that's what sells. Plenty of people impulse buy something that looks pretty, that's why so many stores sell horrible tasting and textured tomatoes that just look pretty.
Don't worry, you'll get better at cooking. If you want a super easy recipe to use in a crock pot, put one skinned bird, one sliced lemon, and a few sprigs of rosemary into the crock pot. Cook on low for 8 hours for falling off the bone meat. That's it, no liquids, no exact timing. If you want a firmer bird, take it out sooner. Tastes great on a bed of lemony rice or pasta.

 

[hecatesmoon]

Oh! No, no, no! Lol I didn't cook it in the same water I dipped him in for plucking. I just meant that maybe the water I dipped him in was hot enough to infuse that feather taste into the meat so when I cooked it, that's what I tasted, even though it wasn't the same water. I wonder too though, sincre the experience ended up being so unpleasant with his death and having never killed something before, if maybe it was my imagination and the whole feather taste was like, a mental block or something!

 

[Gryphon]

OOOOH ok! LOL ok see? You're not THAT hopeless at cooking! ;D From what I've read on here, you want the water below boiling and just dunk the bird a few times while giving the feathers a tug now and again to see if they've loosened.

You may be right though, your mental state can have a lot of bearing on how something tastes. Have someone close to you hurt, and a feast can taste like ashes. Working all day sweating at the barn and tepid water can taste like nectar.

 

[hecatesmoon]

Whether that was why I tasted feathers or not, I'm not sure, but I can tell you that since then, io can't eat chicken wings. They're my favorite part and now I have an aversion!

 

[Oregon Blues]

I can't cook until the smell of butchering is gone from under my fingernails. That takes a couple of days. I feel like the smell gets soaked into my sinuses and I can smell it for at least the next 24 hours, just by breathing.

When you butcher, and you are cleaning the bird up to bag it and rest it, it must be very carefully rinsed off, both inside and out to make sure every drop of anything associated with the butchering has been rinsed off.

Home raise chicken has a lot more flavor than store bought, but I certainly would not call the taste "wet feathers". But it does taste different.

 

[Mamabear66]

Hmm...I make mine like chicken soup w dumplings....NOT the way most people make it. My BF is the old fashion "Country boy" who does it like everyone else I know...chicken, "dumplings" in a white sauce of some sort...my dumplings are more like biscuits, I think the other kinds taste like big wet noodles. Good luck. I'm in MO and like learning new ways/things to cook...Im the "home cooking" kind of Mama,nothing fancy. Good Luck and I'm curious if the chicken you used really did matter.

 

[Mamabear66]

Lol When my sister was nine or ten, she just told me the other day about this, she went with our grandma to her chicken coop. Grandma told her to pick a chicken. My sister, who is very sensitive, had no idea what she was picking a chicken for! She said our grandma grabbed it, wrung its neck, and axed it right in front of her. She said she cried at dinner that night, didn't eat chicken for a month, and now she can't eat anything that she has previously seen alive. Lol. My eye, its ok. I could open it the split second I needed to be able to tell I could see out of it so I escaped a doctors visit. It is sensitive, vision is blurry, but otherwise good! I was hurting too much to take the time to explain to my chicken that the little black dot it was so curious about happened to be my pupil. Maybe I will explain to it later.

My younger kids have no problem w eating their chickens...lol, my OLDER kids, on the other hand, do NOT want to eat the thing they helped feed and the face they have seen. Our running joke at the house is: the chicken that is very friendly n walks right up, is the one to be first eaten....no chasing it. Sick, I know. In reality, it will be the most aggressive or "extra" roosters that will go first.

 

[hecatesmoon]

See there was another mistake I made. I cooked the chicken the next day, starting in the morning. After I handled the meat, I could smell feathers on my hands again even though I had washed it.

 

[hecatesmoon]

I would absolutely take out a mean or undesirable bird first, but otherwise, I agree! The bird I don't have to chase is the bird that's going on the table.