RIR for meat?

[tibbits]

I have some RIR hens that are almost 2 years old... if i decide to butcher them, will they make good meat? i dont want to butcher them and have a bunch of tough chicken to eat... with the heritage breeds such as Plymouth rocks etc. when is the best time to butcher?

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I have some RIR hens that are almost 2 years old... if i decide to butcher them, will they make good meat? i dont want to butcher them and have a bunch of tough chicken to eat... with the heritage breeds such as Plymouth rocks etc. when is the best time to butcher?

Accept disappointment.

If you want a tender bird, of any breed, you are almost two years too late. At that age, the only thing you can do is grind, season for sausage, and cure **or** stew/stock/pressure cook it.

With ANY BIRD of any breed, younger is better. The CornishX you get in the grocery store are between 2 and 3 months old. If you raised and butchered RIR at similar ages, they would be really tender. Small, but tender.

The older the bird, the more flavorful, and the less tender.

The more varied the diet, the more it can move around, the greater the flavor, and the less tender.

The older the bird, the less you want to rely on dry, high heat, fast cooking methods like broiling or baking, and the more you want to look to frying, smoking, braising, then stweing/stocking/sausaging. Its a sliding scale sort of thing. and comes down to personal preference as to where the cut off points are, but for most people, between 16 and 20 weeks, a bird has developed a good amount of "chew" and the bake-like methods are out.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

It's going to be very tough and you'll have to rest it and cook it slow to get it a bit easier to chew.

Best time to butcher is as close to 16 weeks as possible. I did however do a 21 week bantam male and 20 week standard male and after a few hours in a crockpot with the skin on and then removed, probably the best plain chicken I have ever had.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I have some RIR hens that are almost 2 years old... if i decide to butcher them, will they make good meat?

Mine tend to be 2-1/2 years old when I rotate them out to make way for young pullets. Like people have been doing for thousands of years, I eat them. You cannot cook them like you do chicken from the store, they will be too tough. If you try to fry or grill them you will consider them inedible. But with proper aging and cooking they make what I consider excellent meat. They are not going to taste like the chicken you buy form the store. The older they get the more flavor they develop. Some people don't like that, some of us prefer it. There are even ways to make a gourmet meal out f a rooster that is several years old and they don't come tougher or more flavorful than that.

You can get what I consider decent meat by pressure cooking them. There are several slow and moist ways to cook them that I consider to make good meat. Chicken and dumplings is best made with an old hen, that's not only comfort food but is a great way to stretch a small chicken to feed a lot of people. Old hens make excellent chicken soup. There are some crock pot recipes around. If you use ole hens to make chicken broth you can pick out the meat and use that for tacos, chicken salad, or in soup as well as get great broth.

Not everybody likes chicken cooked that way, if frying or grilling are you only options you are out of luck.

with the heritage breeds such as Plymouth rocks etc. when is the best time to butcher?

How do you want to cook them? How do you feed them, are you buying everything they eat or are they foraging for most or all of their food so feeding them is pretty inexpensive? We all have different personal preferences and methods to raise them. The best time to butcher may be different for each one of us. We'd need some fairly specific information about you and what you want to give you a good answer for you. Personally I butcher my cockerels between 16 and 23 weeks and my pullets at 8 months. My hens usually go at 2-1/2 years and most years I butcher a 1-1/2 year old rooster. That's best for me but probably wrong for almost everybody else on this forum.

 

[tibbits]

Mine tend to be 2-1/2 years old when I rotate them out to make way for young pullets. Like people have been doing for thousands of years, I eat them. You cannot cook them like you do chicken from the store, they will be too tough. If you try to fry or grill them you will consider them inedible. But with proper aging and cooking they make what I consider excellent meat. They are not going to taste like the chicken you buy form the store. The older they get the more flavor they develop. Some people don't like that, some of us prefer it. There are even ways to make a gourmet meal out f a rooster that is several years old and they don't come tougher or more flavorful than that.

You can get what I consider decent meat by pressure cooking them. There are several slow and moist ways to cook them that I consider to make good meat. Chicken and dumplings is best made with an old hen, that's not only comfort food but is a great way to stretch a small chicken to feed a lot of people. Old hens make excellent chicken soup. There are some crock pot recipes around. If you use ole hens to make chicken broth you can pick out the meat and use that for tacos, chicken salad, or in soup as well.

My hens usually go at 2-1/2 years and most years I butcher a 1-1/2 year old rooster. That's best for me but probably wrong for almost everybody else on this forum.

Thankyou! I think that is precisely the answer im looking for! I always wondered if thats how they used to do it back in the day, we surely can do it that way now too! And i love using my slow cooker, so im thinking thats where the old hens will goThanks so much!

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Thankyou! I think that is precisely the answer im looking for! I always wondered if thats how they used to do it back in the day, we surely can do it that way now too! And i love using my slow cooker, so im thinking thats where the old hens will goThanks so much!

There's a classic french recipe, "coq au vin" (essentially, OLD rooster in red wine). You can't make it with a modern bird (well, you can, but it doesn't work well, because the meat isn't nearly old enough), causing modern offerings of the recipe to either change the method, or change the bird, or both!

This is closer to the classic recipe

 

[Duckiiess]

One note on coq au vin: I marinate the bird for 24 hrs in the wine & herbs before cooking.. helps to tenderize the meat and shortens the braising time a bit.
Another classic French dish, cassoulet- can be done and is delicious with an old hen. Essentially slow cooked leg quarters with white beans, bacon/ sausage, and onions. Older birds make for much better soups/ stews/ stocks than young ones in my mind.

 

[3KillerBs]

And i love using my slow cooker, so im thinking thats where the old hens will go

A retired laying hen plus a crockpot makes the components of the best chicken and dumplings ever eaten.

 

[CNJ]

A lot of local islanders buy stewing chicken mainly for soups. The meat doesn't dry out like regular chicken during the cooking process.