Butcher Day = Kitchen Day

(reposted from March 2020)

Yesterday we butchered chickens for the first time. We've been talking about butchering a few of our older Rhode Island Reds for a little while now and finally had a weekend we could do it. The fact that we had two roosters hovering over 16 hens kinda sped up the decision. It'd gotten to the point that the older girls would just stay in the coop rather than enjoy the sunshine and have to deal with the males' advances so it needed to be done.

Not by hand...

I'm lucky enough to have parents who've done a lot of this kind of stuff before. They'll do it a time or two and then come up with an easier (sometimes) way to do it or build a contraption to help. They moved to a new house in December and it just made sense to bring their chicken plucker to our house for storage at the time (hehe). Let me tell ya- that thing made the whole process soooo easy! I've never manually plucked a chicken before but I have done a duck. Horrible idea to do it by hand. Horrible. A couple minutes spinning in this thing (a topless 50 gallon plastic barrel with rubber nipples inside attached to some random electric utility motor) with the water hose going and VOILA- feathers gone. We only butchered two hens and a rooster but it was enough to get our feet wet and give the boys something enjoyable to do. (I'll spare you most of the photos I took of them through the morning.) Next up- meat chickens!! haha-And sometimes people wonder why my husband rolls his eyes at me...

My kitchen is a mess!

Today it was my Instant Pot that got a work out! I started off the morning pulling meat off the bone from the hen I cooked down last night. I've always heard that old hens are tougher and only good for things like dumplings. After having to pull those tough old birds apart I believe every bit of it! I cooked the second hen while working on the first one and had to split the rooster into two cookings because he was so long-legged. I had my own little de-ssembly line going. One cooked, one cooled, one was torn apart in little chunks LOL. A cup of water and 10 minutes on Manual in the IP yielded 3 cups of good flavorful stock topped off with almost a cup of fat per hen! I couldn't believe how fat those two girls were- guess the rest of them will be getting a little less scratch to eat in the mornings. The young rooster was much easier to debone and definitely more slim and trim-leaving barely half an inch of fat floating in my half gallon jar.

Once bones were as clean as I could get 'em I put the bones back in a stock pot and my Instant Pot with some carrots, celery, onions, and leek scraps I've been saving in the freezer. Cooked them down for several hours and turned them into some more delicious smelling stock. I definitely prefer the kitchen smells of cooking broth in the stock pot but was curious to see how well it turned out in the IP for the amount of time it saved. Cooking on the stove takes 8-12 hours which means an entire day in the kitchen or close to it. My IP's Soup/Broth function got it done in four. The color was much paler than on the stove (apparently due to lack of movement as the liquid cooks) but taste seemed about the same. I mixed it all together before dividing it out into jars to can anyways so it didn't really matter. Note- IP for small amounts but stove cooking is preferable- now I know, and that's half the battle, right?

The Pay-Off

All in all I ended up with eight pints of chopped chicken meat and 18 pints of broth. It took two round in the pressure canner (one for meat and one for broth), but all 26 pints sealed perfectly and will make some future meals super easy!

And my girls are much happier!