Taste of Store Chicken versus home grown chicken

[mamaboyd]

Ours tasted so much better than store bought chickens, although the first one we ate, the dark meat around the legs were a bit tough, but other than that, they were way better. We fed starter feed and than grower feed right up until the end.

 

[aprice6]

We skinned the chickens, and put them in cold water with ice for several hours and rinsed them again, before putting in freezer bags. It sounds kinda stupid, but they taste like they smelled when we were plucking them. If you hold the chicken breast before cooking though, they have no smell, but after I cooked them, deep fried, and you opened it, it had the smell and weird taste. That was the first pack we tried. We killed and cleaned 20 chickens the same day. Weather was 30 degrees out and as soon as we plucked them, we cut them up and brought them to the house and put in ice water after rinsing them. We were disappointed, thought we did everything fine,but something must have went wrong.

 

[silkiechicken]

Interesting. You plucked them and then skinned them? Maybe something got into the water you were soaking them in? Maybe you can let them age some more and rinse more before cooking? Don't really know.

 

[Cara]

The difference might be that store bought chicken doesn't have any flavour.

 

[aprice6]

When you are using the boiling water, should you change it between so many birds? We are thinking that it was the water too. Or should we have washed the birds off with a hose before dunking them in the boiling water? Being that they are really big poopers, and are messy birds?

 

[FutureChickenMan]

sounds like something went wrong.. is this the method you used?

http://butcherachicken.blogspot.com/2007/09/step-1-getting-ready-to-butcher.html

Graphic pictures ahead!

 

[aprice6]

We didnt change the water, that was used for dunking and pulling out the feathers? The book we were using didnt say anything about changing it.

 

[FutureChickenMan]

I don't think you need to wash them between the "kill" and the "scald", but most certainly wash after the scald and after the gutting. Most of all, the person who plucks shouldn't handle the meat again unless they've thoroughly washed their hands/tools. The link I posted has a pretty straight forward method and explains the steps nicely.

I'm thinking there was some kind of contamination occuring between the steps. Or the oil gland / galbladder got busted.

Can you describe the after tase?

 

[aprice6]

We washed them after the gutting and soaked in cold water, than rinsed again before bagging and freezing. We cut the oil glands out, but you never know, we might have nicked one and when it was soaking messed up the rest.

 

[aprice6]

We didnt wash them after the scalding we just went straight to the cutting, so that was probably what we did wrong. All a learning experience.