What did people do 100 years ago when there was no freezers?

[Marie1234]

My Great Grandmother canned chicken at home. Processed 100+ birds at a time hanging them on the clothes line to bleed out and worked in typical assembly line style common to families of 16 people. They did this every October right between tomato/green bean weeks and apple pear weeks keeping back young egg layers and breeders for the next year.

I don't think it was a surprise that all the girls in the family married factory workers rather than farmers.

 

[AHappychick]

dried the meat, kept it in coolers or caves or spiced it. Either that or boiled it till it fell apart. Depending on the country and weather people did different things. The Romans actually filled caves with ice so they could use ice in their watered wine and I am sure they also probably stored meat in there as well. The romans even had running water up to the second story of the buildings.

 

[yotetrapper]

I would agree the biggest way was keeping their chickens "on the hoof" until needed. In those days, every woman knew how to can and preserve meat. Meats were ground, and made into summer sausage, and then smoked. Jerky was made. Many jars of meat were canned. In those days doubtless many got sick or even died from improperly canned meats, but today that risk is taken away by the invention of the "pressure canner" Pressure canners, for a good large one, run over $100, but small amounts of pints can even be canned in pressure cookers which can often be had at yard sales for $5 or so. Jars can be found there too, or sometimes for free if you place an ad looking for them in the classifieds.

In the old days many farms and homesteads had a spring house. A spring house was a house constructed around a subterranean spring. Perishables such as milk, and butter, were kept longer by keeping them in the cold spring water. The area in the spring house outside of the water was cool, and while not like our current refrigerators, were cool enough to say, put today's roast chicken down there to use for sandwiches tomorrow. Root cellars were cellars dug into the ground, sometimes lined with stone, that were used for keeping veggies and such cool.

The predecessor of the refrigerator was the "ice box". Many older rural folks still use the term today. The ice box was refrigerator shaped, made of wood. The bottom compartment had shelves like our current 'fridges, and the top compartment held a huge block of ice. This ice was gathered in the winter, when all the men of the area would go out onto a frozen over lake with teams and wagons, and cut the blocks of ice from lake. The blocks were then stored in an ice house. An ice house was a simple building into which a layer of ice blocks were placed, then covered top, bottom, and sides, with clean straw. Another layer of ice was placed, followed by straw, ice, straw, ice, straw until the building was filled. Each man who helped gather the ice was entitled to his share of ice from the centrally located ice house. Stored properly, this ice would often times last all summer without melting! (That just amazes me, lol!)

 

[yotetrapper]

I have several quarts of canned chicken in the cupboard now, and debating between canning the bowl I have in the fridge, or making jerky of it. But, since it's all breast meat, think I might can it.

 

[onthespot]

My great grandfather was the "iceman" in his town, the last one... he kept on delivering with a horse and wagon until the end of the road for ice deliveries. Cool, but sad at the same time.

 

[bethandjoeync]

this is very interesting. so many of us (including myself) get so used to the everyday luxuries, that we don't even think of them as such. omg what would I do without my deep freezer?

I would love to be able to dig a root cellar under the house, our ground stays so cool, even in the summer time, as long as it's shaded. I could clean out my frig if I had one!

I know I am not much help on the topic, but it is helpful to me

 

[aprophet]

a lot of folks I have known would kill only what was needed and go back for seconds no leftovers here

 

[My Little Sister's Farm]

They ate meat as a luxury not a staple or commodity like we do today. They really only had a chicken when the pastor was over for dinner - it was a true luxury. They also salted their meat, dried it out and then rehydrated it or ate it as jerky. I guess you could can it too? I would suggest processing as you need them throughout the year and just cutting back on meat being your primary protein source. Eggs and beans baby!

 

[organicchef]

I can chicken with a pressure canner. It is a great way to preserve just about anything!!

 

[dancingbear]

A fresh, properly cleaned chicken will keep in the fridge at least a week to ten days. They need to age at least 24 hrs. before freezing or cooking, anyway. You could (depending on how often you eat chicken) butcher maybe 5 (or whatever number works for you) at a time, put them all in the fridge, and start cooking them, one at a time, after the first 24 hrs. Whatever is left at maybe 8 days, go ahead and freeze, if you won't be cooking it right away. If there's only 1 or 2 left at that point, kill another 5, if you have some ready. And so on.

Once it's cooked, it's good for another week in the fridge. So if you ate 3 chickens in 8 days, and had two left, you could go ahead and cook them up, and reheat the meat for meals until it runs out. If it's cooked in some way that can be re-heated repeatedly without drying it out, every time you re-heat it, you extend the keeping time. As long as you get it hot enough to kill bacteria, and I can't tell you what temp that would be, but if it gets good and hot, (boiling or simmering) for at least 10 minutes, I'd feel ok with that.

As for the ever-present soup...not a bad idea, you might try something like this for a little variation:
Reheat the chicken soup, pour through a strainer to get the broth off. Use the broth to cook up some noodles, stir fry some vegetables, dump in meat from the soup, add the noodles...spice it up with your favorite pepper sauce.

Or take the meat out of the soup, add spices, stir fry with peppers, onions, add some cheese if you have it, and roll up in a heated tortilla or other flat bread.

This all works better if the soup is mostly just the chicken, water (which at this point is broth, rather than water) and some seasonings. You can always make some dumplings to toss in that broth, too.

Put the meat on hard rolls, and dip the sandwiches in cups of that good broth, just like a french dip.

Make gravy from the broth, put the meat over slices of bread, and pour gravy over it.

Good luck, I hope some of that was helpful.