- Sep 12, 2008
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I've been lurking, rarely posting, while I raised five or six hundred meat birds over the last couple years. I thought I had learned a lot from this forum, but apparently I wasn't paying quite close enough attention. If you are relatively new to raising your own birds and still figuring everthing out, do as I am about to say, not as I have done.
Last night I processed 6 birds, from set up to clean up, in the same amount of time it used to take me to process 2. I plucked all six in less than 5 minutes each.
Apparently, in the nervous sort of rush that I created in my mind whenever I set out to process birds, I had been failing to understand the importance of water temperature. I now have a new motto:
Friends don't let friends process chickens without a thermometer.
I read numerous times that the birds were supposed to be scalded. So when I first started, I put my water on and scalded the birds. And the skins tore and they looked like nuclear war zone chickens. Which caused embarassment and prevented me from serving them as whole chickens very often. I devised a rating system and wrote a rating, either A, B, or C on the wrapping paper, indicating how bady I had mangled the bird so I would know if it was worthy of cooking in front of friends months later.
But then one day recently, I finally slowed down and used a thermometer in my water. I had the thermometer the whole time. I just never thought of bringing it out of the house kitchen to the processing operation until I was already too messy to go into my house kitchen, so I never used it. BIG MISTAKE. HUGE MISTAKE. I AM A DUMB**S
I've now done a couple hundred birds using the thermomter and, as penance for my stupidity, I need to stand on a mountain top and shout this:
75 seconds in water between 150 and 160 degrees will yield a beautiful bird that plucks in seconds.
Don't be dumb like I was.
Apparently, in the nervous sort of rush that I created in my mind whenever I set out to process birds, I had been failing to understand the importance of water temperature. I now have a new motto:
Friends don't let friends process chickens without a thermometer.
I read numerous times that the birds were supposed to be scalded. So when I first started, I put my water on and scalded the birds. And the skins tore and they looked like nuclear war zone chickens. Which caused embarassment and prevented me from serving them as whole chickens very often. I devised a rating system and wrote a rating, either A, B, or C on the wrapping paper, indicating how bady I had mangled the bird so I would know if it was worthy of cooking in front of friends months later.
But then one day recently, I finally slowed down and used a thermometer in my water. I had the thermometer the whole time. I just never thought of bringing it out of the house kitchen to the processing operation until I was already too messy to go into my house kitchen, so I never used it. BIG MISTAKE. HUGE MISTAKE. I AM A DUMB**S
I've now done a couple hundred birds using the thermomter and, as penance for my stupidity, I need to stand on a mountain top and shout this:
75 seconds in water between 150 and 160 degrees will yield a beautiful bird that plucks in seconds.
Don't be dumb like I was.
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