I was going to come up with a flashy title for this post, but I didn’t want to give anyone a nasty surprise. I promise there are no gory pictures and anything explicit is after the cut… If you want detailed instructions, I used Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens and How To Butcher A Chicken as references. I found these to be the clearest, step-by-step tutorials out there.
Below you will find my thoughts on the process, things the books didn’t tell me, and my musings on a very intense first step in a direct relationship with my food.
Most modern references recommend using a “killing cone” (basically a wide mouthed funnel used to suspend the bird upside down) and a very sharp knife to severe the jugular. The key is the very, VERY sharp knife; we’re talking razor sharp, scalpel sharp… I wasn’t confident enough in my knife sharpening skills, but I knew my hatchet was sharp enough to cut air. I decided to go old school.
We’ve all heard stories of chickens running around after their heads are chopped off. I can tell you that mine didn’t run, but there was a definite twitch and flop that was very disturbing. Honestly, it will take me a long time to get used to that - if I ever do.
Once the chicken is dead, the next step is to drain the blood from the carcass. Maybe I watch too many horror movies that imply everyone and everything is basically a blood bag walking around, but chickens have a lot less blood than I expected.
Next is plucking, or “picking” as the professionals call it. I dry-plucked as much as possible so my husband could use the feathers for fly tying, then I dipped the bird in 130* F water for thirty seconds to scald the feathers and loosen them up. Plucking feathers is disturbingly like popping zits on a dead body. Some feathers have gooey insides that need to be pulled out after the feather has come off; some feathers pop off at the skin, leaving a shaft that has to be tweezed or scraped out, and that’s not even talking about pin feathers and hairs… I decided next time I will skip picking all together and just skin the bird.
I won’t go into details of eviscerating the carcass - it’s not much different from cleaning a fish, if you’ve ever done that. I will say that if the bird is properly drained of blood, at this point it’s just meat, meat with bits that have to be cut out, but just meat. Three things of note during the evisceration:
One: chickens have an oil gland above the tail that has to be carefully cut out. The oil gland has a nipple that looks just like the base of a feather, but no matter how you pull on it, it won’t come out. The guides describe carefully cutting out the oil gland, following the back bone in a “scooping” motion. They don’t tell you that the gland is shaped like a saddle over the base of the tail. I ended up starting the cut about an inch above the tail and just cutting off the whole tail.
Two: I wish I had used my kitchen shears more. This is what they were designed for and I think I would have more control with scissors than with a knife.
And three: I wish I had kept a mental checklist of organs as I pulled them out. I am not a fan of organ meat, so I didn’t plan on keeping anything. They all went into the trash bag as they came out. Unfortunately, that meant I kept checking the carcass obsessively, convinced I missed something. I didn’t, but I would have had more peace of mind if I had paid more attention.
All in all it took about three hours from start to finish, and a lot of that was stealing myself up for the death blow. I can say that I will continue to cultivate this direct relationship with my food, so I can ensure that the life of my livestock is happy and healthy, their deaths are quick and painless, and the meat is kept clean and contaminate free for my family, however, I don’t think I will ever say it’s easy.
