I take my water bath canner out because it is the biggest pot I have and put it on a fire in the fire pit. I try to keep the water so that it is just at a boil.
I then take my little piece of baling rope that I made two loops in and slip one on one chickens foot, then over the clothes line and the the other on the second foot. I cut the throat, let it bleed out and die, the go dip it in the boiling water. If you have the temperature of the water just right the feathers will just slip right off the bird, if it is not hot enough you will have to pull, if it is too hot, it will make the skin rip.
Anyway, after plucking I gut the chicken saving the heart, liver and gizzard. Then I go ahead and cut up the chicken. I leave the skin on the legs, thighs, and wings but skin the breast. They are such nasty birds on their breasts from sitting on them all the time besides we usually eat the breast as chicken strips anyway. The 4 birds that I did completely filled my 16 qt. stock pot. It is in the frig now so the chicken can cool for a couple days. Sorry should have taken a picture of the meat but I am tired and am not getting up again.
we always just skin the birds rather than pluck... my mother when i was very young accidently ordered an incredibly stupid amount of chickens and come butcher time it was an entire weekend of doing nothing but plucking... the smell of it n thought of it alone make me sick to this day :)..
ReplyDeleteWe just really like the skin on when we cook the dark meat. I have plucked plenty of chickens as a child but never more than 6 or 7 at once.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't do that! If I had to kill chickens I would turn Veggie!
ReplyDeleteIt is definitely not pleasant but I have a good bit of meat now and I know how it was raised and processed.
ReplyDeletecongrats to you on raising your own food..I am yet to kill a chook as we only got ours (for eggs) a few months ago but will be helping a friend do so soon. As an ex-apprentice butcher I am familar with cuts but never killed :) hope the taste good
ReplyDeleteWe've never plucked our... just skin em. Maybe one day I'll pluck acouple just to see what I'm missing, lol. We are no experts, we've only processed about 13 roosters in our chicken lifetime, lol.
ReplyDeleteYes, it's that time of year. Our meat birds are just weeks away from being in the freezer. It's not a job we look forward to but knowing what they were fed, how they were raised and how they were butchered and cleaned is a blessing.
ReplyDeletePeeps sound like fun, we only ordered meat birds this year and have never had much success with hatching our own so we don't even try any more.
Blessings for your week
I have my chickens, but I can't kill them.
ReplyDeleteI love meat but It is to difficult to me to do that.
I think it is not so bad for me since we did it growing up and when I was growing up you were expected to just put your sympathies aside and get the job done. So when I look at these birds I just think of them as meat right from the start. I have other chickens that were never thought of as meat and if I had to kill them it would really bother me. Same with the ducks, quail etc.
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