Scalding and plucking~ VS ~skinning the whole thing

[rufus]

Personally, I would pay the money and avoid the mess. But if you decide to do it yourself, do them one by one. Don't kill them all at once or the feathers will set up before you get to them. Kill, scald, pluck, singe and then draw them one by one. Also, if you do it this way, you can quit when you get tired of it. Otherwise, you are committed to completing the project.

The professionals do it so much faster. I watched them when I was a kid. They have a system, and it really works.

Rufus

 

[Jackschicks]

I am in the Houston, Texas area and I just processed my first batch of 30 dual purpose birds for the freezer. The original plan was to do it ourselves (my daughter and I) but the temperatures were over a 100 degrees everyday. Although I have processed birds before it has always been just a few at a time and I will admit to being slow. My daughter has never done it before. It probably would have taken us most of the weekend out in the heat and flies to process the birds. After a great deal of searching, I found a processor who would charge me $3 per bird so we loaded them up and off we went. I watched them do it and I was appalled. I will not do it again. Or at least, I will not do it again at THAT place for several reasons. There was a definite communication problem, only one person spoke english and he didn't seem willing to listen to me. Although the killing cones were there (hanging on the wall) they did not use them until I had an insistent conversation with the 1 guy who spoke english and by then they were almost done. They just slit their throats and tossed them in a trash can to flop around. From there they went into the plucker and then on to be gutted and placed into the coolers full of ice water that I provided. They did a terrible job of gutting the birds, my daughter and I spent the rest of the day cleaning out pieces of liver, lungs, gizzards and testicles from the birds. I had 5 birds with broken legs and 1 with a broken back. I don't know if that happened in the plucker or if it happened when they were flopping around in the trash cans.

Granted, I raised these birds for meat but one of the reasons I raised my own birds was so that I would know exactly HOW the birds were raised and processed. These were healthy, beautiful birds that had lived a good chicken life for 21 weeks, well fed and cared for. I know that once their throats were cut that it really shouldn't matter whether they are thrown in a trash can or a killing cone but it does somehow matter to me. When I do it myself, the birds don't thrash around and I don't have birds with broken legs or backs. Next time, I will either do it myself or I will find another processor. I guess I just need to learn how to do it faster!

 

[jimbob86]

Holy Thread Necromancy, Batman!

Practice makes things go faster.

DIY, and you get all the quality control you wish to achieve.

It's not really that hard, technically- it's just not something most people have any experience with.

To answer the OP: Scald and Pluck, unless you want some really dry chicken....... and the skin is 1/2 the secret to really good chicken stock!

 

[blucoondawg]

It could take you awhile if you haven't done it before. It took me awhile to get a good system down to speed up the process. I pluck mine but now I have a small plucker I built which does speed it up some

 

[CrazyTalk]

If I'm doing one bird, I skin. If I'm doing a couple, I scald and pluck.

The whole reasoning is that it takes a while to heat up a couple gallons of water to 145, and if I'm only doing one bird, I don't have time for that.

 

[blucoondawg]

I also don't really find that there's much smell involved with butchering. My mom claims it's revolting and won't eat chicken she butchers, from one time we had some when I was a kid, and I do seem to remember a smell back then but now when I do it I don't smell anything at all really, my wife agrees with me that they don't stink. Maybe a wet chicken smell comparable to smelling a wet dog or any other animal but nothing revolting