Dressing a Chicken

It's been some time since we've updated our Blog as we've been hunkered down studying. Our apologies for those of you who've been waiting at the edge of your seat. I, Wilson, also came down with a nasty bit of food poisoning last weekend.

Onward...
A few weeks ago we killed and dressed our first live chicken!

For about three weeks, we were fortunate to be in the company of Marta, a sweet gal from South Carolina who was in town brushing up on her Spanish grammar. She is currently teaching deaf children in El Salvador on a church mission. In addition to being able to sign and speak Spanish, she also an expert at killing and cleaning chickens. Her family in the States raises broilers and can house more than 200,000 at one time. So before she left, she was kind enough to impart her knowledge about this valuable skill to me. Three other missionaries lived at the house.

It's not imperative in this day and age to be able dress your own chicken, especially when we live in San Francisco. But oddly enough, one night Agnes and I discovered that we were the only folks at the dinner table never to have done so. All the missionaries had, and our house mother does it with some frequency. One of the missionaries, Karlyn, hunts for most of his meat near his home in Oregon. In fact, he hunts elk with a bow. After a successful hunt, he and his hunting partners will field dress the carcass and hump the meat out of the woods on their backs. He is also good with a rifle. Ranchers in Oregon sometimes struggle with coyote attacks on their cattle and allow hunters to hunt them on their land. Karlyn will often take out a coyote from 400 yards.

Anyway, feeling a little left out, we decided to exploit the expertise of our roommates. Our house mother, Hilda, I'm sure was happy to get the night off since I'd offered to cook. She was also kind enough to show me the best place in the market to purchase a bird I think she thought it was a little odd that I wanted to slaughter a chicken in her house. Also, upon hearing that we were simply making a soup out of it, she remarked that we should just buy a dead one (to take full advantage of a fresh chicken, I think you should roast it, but I thought it would be easier to feed a bunch of people with chicken soup).

Buying a chicken wasn't difficult but we did go sort of late in the day, and had to choose between the last two chickens in the market, which cost 50 Quetzales, or about $7. Hilda said I got ripped off and should not have been charged more than 40 or 45. But since we got to market so late in the afternoon and not much was left, I had no choice but to cough up the extra 5Q.

I suppose one reason chickens have been domesticated is that they are so calm. I thought perhaps after purchase, that I would be supplied with a carrier or box or something, but they just tie up the feet and you carry it home in your hands. The animal displayed no signs of alarm when being carried upside down by its feet, as if this were the preferred method of transport. That said, Hilda thought it better that I carry it right side up by it's wings. Not sure if this was for the chicken's comfort or mine. Once home, we tied it too a post and gave it some water. I asked if we should feed it since we weren't eating it until the next day, but was told that it's actually better not too feed it since it will just result in more shit to clean.

Killing and dressing a chicken is a really easy thing. You can either break its neck with your hands in one swift motion, or lop its head off. I chose the latter. Hilda thought that twisting the head of the chicken was cleaner but another of the missionaries offered that sometimes you aren't sure if it's really dead. Her cousin was dressing a chicken once and it came to life again when she was soaking it to remove the feathers.

Anyway, to lop its head off, Marta held the feet, I stretched its neck out and Agnes took pictures. One of my primary goals was to offer the bird a swift and painless death, as I think it's the least you can do for an animal you're about to eat. Unfortunately, I think I failed. My knife was a little on the dull side, and fearing that I'd chop off my own hand rather than the chicken's head, I took kind of a gingerly whack at it. And then another, and then I actually sort of ended up sawing the poor bird's head off while it flopped about in the sink. It's unclear to me how much of the flopping was done while the bird was alive and how much while dead, though I'm certain much of the struggling occurred after the head had been more or less removed (save for a few stringy bits). I considered letting the carcass run around a spell but I didn't want to muck up Hilda's kitchen.

Afterwards I held the bird upside down (the same way I carried it home) to let it drain. This doesn't take long since there's surprisingly little blood in a chicken. Then you soak it in hot water to loosen the feathers. These are easily removed and then you're left with something that more or less looks like it came from Safeway (though still with feet). To remove the innards, you make a small horizontal incision near it's bunghole and then just tear out everything on the inside with your hands. Marta helped me discern the useful bits from the waste. For instance, we saved the heart, liver and gizzard and discarded the intestines and a lot of gloopy purple stuff she was unable to identify. I never thought I'd say this but tearing the guts out of a freshly killed bird with your bare hands feels exactly like you'd think it would. Once you've done this and chopped off the feet (which we saved for the soup), you're all set to prepare whatever way you normally would.

One thing I do have to mention is that a bird looks a good deal larger with its feathers. In fact, I believe the chicken I killed must have been the smallest bird I've ever eaten. So if you plan on killing and eating a chicken, I suggest you buy a larger animal than you think you'll need.

In the end, we boiled the chicken with some vegetables and made an ok soup. I think with enough salt and pepper, anything can taste good.
Agnes also made cookies that I think went over even better than the chicken.

It should be noted that most people in Antigua do not dress their own chickens. They buy theirs at the market like most people we know (though the chickens are usually recently killed – save for the american imported chickens which come frozen). So killing a chicken wasn't one of those “When in Rome...” kinds of cultural experiences. But it just so happened that I lived two blocks from a market where live chickens are sold in a house where animals are occasionally slaughtered and we were in the company of an expert chicken cleaner. Clearly this was an opportunity not to be missed. I like the idea of better understanding where my food comes from and how it looks as it's being prepared for my dinner. Perhaps one day we'll be able to kill a boar and make prosciutto.