You might be interested to see what a chicken, in this case a chicken capon, from our local poultry vendor looks like. It's been prepared for cooking. Most of the feathers have been plucked off. The little ones (pinfeathers, no?) that are left on the bird are burned off. The poultry preparer uses a little blowtorch to do that job.
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The feet are cut off below the joint of the leg. That way, when the bird is roasted the meat doesn't pull away from the bone and get dried out. You can't see them in these photos, but there are giblets inside the chicken's cavity — the gizzard, the liver, etc.
The neck is left on. It's suprising how long it is. I took off the layer of skin that was left on the neck, and then I cut the neck off and poached it along with the other giblets to make stock for gravy and stuffing. I'll pull the cooked meat off the neckbones and feed the morsels to Tasha as a kind of gastronomic Christmas present for her.
Here's that neck and its shroud of chicken skin, along with the gizzard, starting to cook in salted water. The livers go in for a few minutes at the end of the cooking and will be incorporated into the stuffing we'll have with the bird. More tomorrow or the next day, after the capon has been roasted in the oven.
Merry Christma Ken Balmy here in western NC
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas in western NC. It's balmy here in Saint-Aignan too. Time for the afternoon walk with the dog.
DeleteThe capon does have a long neck indeed. I remember seeing the butchering process many times since my father was a poultry dealer and dressed his own chickens. The vat of boiling water and the plucking machine are lasting memories. He cut the chicken up with a simple sharp butcher knife. It was messy. Looking forward to hearing more tomorrow. Merry Christmas Eve!
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas eve Eve.
DeleteMerry Christmas to you and all your readers! When I was a child my mother would prepare the turkey neck and giblets for our dog, who absolutely adored them. When I tried that in recent years with our cat, she was not in the least interested, which I found surprising.
ReplyDeleteI remember my au pair family burning off the little bitty feathers on chickens we roasted... I had never seen that in the U.S., so that was interesting to me.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure your meal will be wonderful! Merry Christmas Eve!
Judy