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

[stuckinthecity]

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You have some good plans for cooking!

 

[TimG]

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I know that we all rest our chickens for a day or two between killing and eating, but...

Aren't there lots of Asian markets where fresh chicken are butchered for the customer who takes it home and eats it the same day? My grandfather tells of his dad getting a chicken out of the yard to butcher for dinner, but does not recall an aging process.

 

[BlackBart]

My Mom who is 93, so not quite 100 said they used to bottle cooked meat (boiling water bath), smoke meat in the chimney, dry meat, put meat in salt brine wooden barrels or kill a chicken/pig/lamb when needed. The weather here is temperate so no very cold winters etc..

They had a ice cellar dug deep into the ground and they would buy blocks of ice from the ice man and she said it kept the fresh meat very well, just like a very cold fridge.

 

[rhoda_bruce]

There is only one cellar in this town and it was made possible only due to an huge canal that was dug and the resulting mud applied to the outside of a masonry block chainwall.
All the locals did have iceboxes that had the same principle as the ice cellars, although I would imagine the ice cellars may have kept a cooler temp.
I was also told that the locals used wells to keep things cool. I am not sure how they kept them cool and clean however.
Believe me, I think about old ways often. Until Hurricane Katrina, there were very few generators in this area and we sometimes had to do without electricity. I spent about 2 weeks without power after Katrina. My family spent 3 months without power after Betsy in '65 and my grandmother speaks of it often. She claimed she began filling every mason jar she owned, as well as others she obtained. She claimed she only lost a little squash from her freezer and got free food for weeks because everyone was giving away food from their freezers so as not to waste.
This keeps me mindful that I cannot become too spoiled to modern conviences. They can all be taken away real quick. Live storage is probably the ticket. That and possibly learning to caponize, so they remain tender.
To tell the truth, I would more wonder how they kept an entire cow from spoiling, but then I guess it was shared around with other families.

 

[redhen]

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I know that we all rest our chickens for a day or two between killing and eating, but...

Aren't there lots of Asian markets where fresh chicken are butchered for the customer who takes it home and eats it the same day? My grandfather tells of his dad getting a chicken out of the yard to butcher for dinner, but does not recall an aging process.

My grandma used to eat the chickens right after processing too.. Every sunday..thats what they did.... went out and got a bird at dinner time and cooked it right away...

See..if you wait too long after processing rigor mortis (sp?) sets in.. and the meat gets tough for a little while...

So you either have to eat the birds right away..or age them so the rigor mortis passes and the meat is tender again..... (thats my laymans understanding anyways...)

 

[Beekissed]

I can my chicken using a boiling water bath and it is a lovely texture and flavor for not having been pressure cooked. We make chicken soup stock and other soups.

This year we will freeze the breast in various ways but the rest will be cooked down into stock and taken off the bone for other purposes, like making a chicken pot pie filling and placing it in individual little turnover-type dough pockets and then freezing. Our own little hot pockets!

We also will be canning a creamed chicken and broccoli mix, to use up our garden excess of broccoli.

There are various ways to preserve chicken but canning is the most expedient and lasts the longest.

 

[vatterpa]

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Now thats resourceful! I know this sounds funny but watch the Little House on the Prarie show, they even had an icehouse in a couple of episodes. My Grandma told me that to preserve their hogs (I know thats not a chicken), they smoked, cured, and ground the sausage then put it in a barrel covered in melted fat. She said that left it sealed off from air, so it kept longer.

As for on the claw, buttermilk does wonders for a tough chicken. Also, consider splitting it up, breasts, thighs, wings, and drumsticks take up much less room than a whole chicken. Everything else goes in the stockpot.

 

[bucketgirl]

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As an aside, some cultures consider cold foods (iced tea, ice cream, gazpacho) to be cooling in hot weather. Other cultures believe hot foods cool you down the best (notably hot tea).

I am from the U.S. but have found over my lifetime that I don't like the feeling of consuming something ice cold on a hot day. Makes me feel a little ill.

Going back to the stock making - a friend of mine starts the stock while I'm still rinsing the last carcass. He keeps it boiling for up to 2 weeks, ladling off as needed. It's important to note that you mind the 'raft' of bones/vegetables at the top if you go with this method. They have had a batch go bad when the bits exposed to air cooled enough to rot right on the stove.

My most recent breakdown:

- break down chickens into component parts.
- thighs, legs, and wings go into a slow simmering chicken and dumplings soup (they are boned after they cook, which is way easier than it sounds, and makes the broth super rich). Completed soup can be frozen for later, and you just make fresh dumplings. Since you bring it to a boil every time you do dumplings, this would probably last quite awhile without refrigeration if you weren't able to freeze it.
- leftover bones removed from c&d go into the stockpot with the back, wings, etc., plus any reserved skin and bones from the freezer, to make light stock.
- breasts are used in whatever recipe that calls for just breasts.
- light stock is used to make my signature soup, which is just fresh vegetables cooked until just done, noodles, very fine egg drop, a dash of soy sauce instead of salt, any chicken bits still hanging around, and top with fresh cracked pepper and freshly grated parmesan.

now, what's left over from there is bones and skin, and chicken fat if you reserve it. Chicken fat must be used to make the dumplings, no exceptions. The bones can:

- go in the garbage.
- go in the wormbin (where the dogs won't find them) and then later be crushed for the garden.
- be boiled again for 12-24 hours until they are crumbled into crumbles and fed to the dogs. Your options for feeding chicken bones to dogs are absolutely raw or absolutely cooked well beyond death and into dust. Nothing in between is safe, IMHO.

 

[Bossroo]

I butchered 3 Cornish X yesterday which yielded 6-8+ pound carcasses. I cut them all up into legs, back, breast meat, to freeze. After deboning the breast meat, I boiled the meat off the rib/breast bones + necks . I got almost 2 pounds of eatable meat plus about 3 cups of stock, so my wife made head cheese from this meat using her grandmother's recipe. We had livers, hearts, gizards, scrambled eggs and hashbrowns for this morning's breakfast. MMmmmmm !!!

 

[Hollywood Chickens]

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Some people would pack each block in 3 inches of sawdust and it would stay frozen all summer, they would also store baked good wrapped in a towel and then in a barrel filled with sawdust.