Based off of our quick internet search we had tow options for cleaning the chickens: we could pluck them or we could skin them. It did not take us long to realize we were not committed or prepared enough to pluck these birds. One of the first steps of plucking would have been to dunk the rooster in boiling water. We do not have a pot big enough for this. We moved on to the next option, skinning.
First you completely remove the head from the body and then cut the legs off just below where the feathers stop. Ideally this is where one would cut to keep the bottom joint of the what would soon be the chicken legs intact. I managed to cut above the knee and therefore our chicken legs looked a bit off as they were missing the bottom joint.
Removing the neck, wings and legs of the rooster was the most difficult part of the entire process. As I stated in my last entry this was our first ever time processing a chicken, and we were not as prepared as we could have been for this. We killed the rooster with a sharp pocket knife but how were we going to cut through its bones? I'll tell you how. We used a combination of craft scissors, a hammer, paint putty knife, and probably the most effective was a small pair of hand clippers I use in my garden. I will not go into too much detail about this experience as it was labor intensive, embarrassing, and ended in a broken putty knife.
After removing the legs comes the skinning. We were not 100% sure where to cut or what would be easiest so we cut a slit lengthwise down the neck and began... peeling (sounds a lot worse than it was) off. I did this first and once I removed the skin from the neck I ran into the wings rather quickly. The wings do have some meat on them but are considered not quite worth the hassle. I removed the wings and continued peeling away the skin working my way to the bottom of the chicken.
The skin came off with brute force. As the skin and feathers pulled away, I was left with a very familiar looking chicken, one you might find in a grocery store. Pulling the skin off the legs was like trying to get sweaty socks off of your feet or a sweater that is a bit too small over your head.
Getting the skin to come away from the bird was not a problem except for the neck, everywhere else the skin came away with ease. The skin needed to be ripped down the belly as it was too narrow to simply be pulled over. At this point I was elbows deep into the process and did not have time to second guess my slight squeamishness with ripping the skin off the body of a rooster. Also with the head removed and the "naked" body looking like something I have previously bought from Publix, I was becoming much more comfortable with our decision to eat the roosters, and not just kill them and throw them away.
There were two points during the skinning that I doubted whether I could continue forward. First was when I was cutting the legs off of the rooster. I had moved on to using the hand clippers but was still struggling with getting them to cut through the bone. I had the rooster's foot in my hand while yanking with the clippers in an attempt to get them to cut through. The clippers slipped and placed pressure on a ligament in the rooster's leg... This led to the rooster and I holding hands. The grip from its little talons around my fingers was enough to cause me to jump about a hundred feet high, and there was a good three or four seconds where my lungs refused to pull air into my body. At this point I needed a couple minutes to regather myself before more carefully removing the second leg.
The second instance where I thought I would not be able to continue on was when Sean was pulling the skin from around the body of his rooster. We were both engrossed in his actions as, for whatever reason, the skin from the rooster was not slipping off as easily as mine was. He placed his hand on the body of the rooster for leverage when all of a sudden a not so subtle squawk of protest escaped the rooster he was currently attempting to skin. We did not know what to do except gape at one another until a nervous laughter bubbled out between us. In truth, it was as horrible as it sounds.
Once the skin was removed we had to gut the birds. This is done by cutting around the anus, very carefully, and pulling out the insides. We did this by cutting around the anus and then shaking the bird upside down until the guts presented themselves. While this was not the most efficient way, and this is definitely not what youtube videos suggested, we were eventually successful.
Using the hose we finished cleaning the birds buy rinsing off any of the residual unwanted parts (including feathers). When we finished, we were both so proud of our handiwork, and immediately put them in the fridge to begin plotting how we were going to cook them.
Almost everything we saw online advised us to bake the birds whole in the oven. The first bird we cooked, we decided to stuff it with a whole onion and added some rotisserie rub to the outside. It cooked for just over an hour. Periodically we opened the oven to poke a thermometer in it, and to make sure we weren't completely ruining it! It turned out to be very delicious! What did it taste like you ask? It decided just like chicken :) Arguably it was more gamey and the flavors from the meat were more prominent.
The second bird we baked whole as well but this time we combined a bit of something from three recipes we could not decide. First, we stuffed it with some box stuffing. In the bottom of the tray we placed some cubed potatoes, chopped onion, and some dried prunes. The recipe called for plums but those were not in season when we cooked the birds back in February. Not only that but we placed twenty or so whole cloves of garlic in the bottom of the tray as well. It was quite the eclectic meal, it came out wonderfully. I do however wish we could have gotten the potatoes to crisp rather than become more soggy/ smushy.
The experience from start to finish is one I am glad we both have under our belts. Our adventures are constantly introducing us to new things and giving us opportunities to help us grow together. When we talk, its always at some point in the future that we will be farmers... However, I'd say that we aren't doing so bad for ourselves now :)
Look out for my next post about the garden my Papa, Sean, and I put in over Spring Break.
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