Resting the meat?

[DairyQueenMS923]

I just had 30 cornish x butchered this morning. They are currently sitting in two coolers with cold circulating water.

How long are they supposed to chill before freezing? I absolutely do not have room in my frig to chill that many birds. I don't want tough meat though.

 

[Molpet]

Add ice as needed.
Rest Until the joints move freely
24 hrs or more. Some people have frozen and rested after thawing.

 

[DairyQueenMS923]

Add ice as needed.
Rest Until the joints move freely
24 hrs or more. Some people have frozen and rested after thawing.

Thank you, if I do it in and ice water bath, am I supposed to salt the water?

 

[Molpet]

Thank you, if I do it in and ice water bath, am I supposed to salt the water?

Some do and some don't. Salt gets the blood out and lowers the water temperature... Some will bag them and put ice on top of the closed bags

 

[Parront]

I just used a big cooler to chill them down until I put them in the big chest freezer. If you put them in the freezer without chilling them first they will not freeze right and will raise the temp of the freezer causing problems for other food that is already frozen. Some freezers have a special "quick freeze" shelf or area where you want to put things you are freezing. It is good to only put ~10% of the freezer capacity in it to freeze. If you have the booklet that came with your freezer you might check it to see if there is any mention of this. Things that you get from the store already frozen do not have this problem. I do not use any extra salt in my cooking and never have salted or brined any birds. They tasted great!

 

[doodledo]

Do they have to be in an ice bath for 24 hours or can I put them in a upright cooler? Not a cooler that you can carry beer in, lol. A cooler that stores have for pop and such.

 

[3KillerBs]

Do they have to be in an ice bath for 24 hours or can I put them in a upright cooler? Not a cooler that you can carry beer in, lol. A cooler that stores have for pop and such.

If you've cooled them down to fridge temperatures in the ice bath you can finish the resting period in a regular refrigerator. The thing is to get the meat down to fridge temperatures FAST.

Putting too much warm meat into a fridge doesn't work. The meat can spoil and the fridge motor can burn out trying to compensate for the warmth.

 

[doodledo]

Thanks Killer! The lady that butchers ours uses fresh cold water in to stainless steel basins until you pick them up. So as long as the joints move freely and they are chilled will they be ok to put in cooler? I dont have enough coolers to put the birds in with ice for 24 hrs.

 

[3KillerBs]

The thing is to get the temperature down before using a fridge. If the temperature is down they can go through the resting period in the fridge.

 

[iwltfum]

Do they have to be in an ice bath for 24 hours or can I put them in a upright cooler? Not a cooler that you can carry beer in, lol. A cooler that stores have for pop and such.

A drink cooler from a store should get the birds down to temp fast enough, they are much stronger than a normal household refrigerator and blow chilled air around unlike your normal household fridge. We just butchered 68 birds today and put them all into a 3 bay coke cooler and they are all at 40F now even the ones we put in there only 4 hours ago.

Edit to say that: we kept the birds in water from the tap in a cooler and transferred them to the coke cooler in batches so they did start their chilling process in the cold water, but no ice. We use the coke cooler as an air chiller for the last couple seasons and it works really well. We have no access to ice where we live unless we bought an ice machine.