preping

[jsawler]

i look on here and see almost everyone plucks their birds. is that because it is ''traditional?or you like the skin and fat?or do you find it easier than skinning your birds out?

if this has been beat to death on here....forgive me , i'm new on here!

thanks, jonathan

 

[Ridgerunner]

It’s mainly personal preference. Some people like the skin on, some don’t. Some people want their birds whole, some of us cut them into pieces. Some of us have learned one way and it works. Why change, especially if you have special equipment?

Personally I skin them except for old roosters. Those older roosters have so much connective tissue that I find it a lot easier to scald and pluck.

 

[daleeper]

If we have one or two that need butchered, then it is not worth the time to get out the plucking equipment, I have skinned them. But even though my wife doesn't like to eat the skin, she does like to roast them whole with the skin on. I like the skin, so we pluck them. We will freeze some whole. We cut up some, the breast meat is always boneless and skinless, while all the rest of the parts have skin on, breast skin goes in the pot with backs, keel, and necks to cook down for loose meat and chicken broth.

This time we even cut the wings off our roasting chickens, so we would have more buffalo wings, now that we know how to prepare them in a way we like them, and can see no difference in the way the whole chicken roasts without its wings.

 

[jsawler]

well, my wife and I skin ours. I never even seen a pluker work till on this site last night. pretty cool I will say. but I will say, I don't miss the skin , or the blobs of fat we pull out.

we find it easier; I was just wondering who else does as well.

later,jonathan

 

[donrae]

I like the skin, but it's easier to skin them so we do. Skin, quarter and bag up, into the freezer.

 

[jsawler]

I like the skin, but it's easier to skin them so we do. Skin, quarter and bag up, into the freezer.

makes for a lot less room taken up in the freezer that way! I like my biggest ones whole. but will do the smaller ones as boneless/skinless breasts, leg/ thigh, and do the wings separate for chicken wings. we also keep the backs/necks for making soups.

 

[aoxa]

I've done both. I find them both equally time consuming, unless you have a plucker - which we tried out and will definitely buy one. So I vote plucked.

It's also harder to sell whole birds skinned. They don't look like people are used to in the store, so they are put off.

Unless of course you cut them up. When we cut them up we remove skin from breasts and leave it on the wings and legs (but remove them from the thighs). It's all personal preference.

 

[jsawler]

I've done both. I find them both equally time consuming, unless you have a plucker - which we tried out and will definitely buy one. So I vote plucked.

It's also harder to sell whole birds skinned. They don't look like people are used to in the store, so they are put off.

Unless of course you cut them up. When we cut them up we remove skin from breasts and leave it on the wings and legs (but remove them from the thighs). It's all personal preference.

I remember you said you were doing a trade off to borrow a plucker........I presume all went extremely well?i've never even seen one except for video on here.

I agree that it baffles people a lot to buy a bird with no skin.once they try it, they usually don't miss it.

my wife and I ''harvested'' our last 5 Saturday evening. so we're done for this year. our last bird was our largest. it skun out to 13 pounds

. it was harder to ''harvest'', but our personal best yet! I would like to actually see a plucker tho. looks SO EASY!!!

 

[jsawler]

would a large bird or a turkey fit in the plucker?do they come in different sizes?

 

[PotterWatch]

Pluckers do come in different sizes. Ours would do small turkeys, but the big ones, we had to hand pluck. Even with the small turkeys, we took off the primary wing feathers and large tail feathers before they went in the plucker simply because the gap the feathers went through was too small to accommodate the large shafts on those feathers. We had the EZ plucker 151.