One Chicken, Three Meals
The voice on the other end of the line was tentative – a determined calm on the verge of hysteria. I asked the caller to hold on just a moment while I dropped the other call I’d been on. I clicked back over to my husband, “Sorry honey, I’ll have to call you back later. It’s a chicken emergency.”
The caller was Susan. She’d taken a class with me once and lives nearby. I’d just run into her at the Farmer’s Market that day. “Okay, you know that guy you buy the chickens from that you say are so good? Well, I bought one today.”
“That’s great! What are you thinking of doing with it?”
“Well, I was just going to roast it. But, you see, he didn’t have any roasters, so he sold me something else.”
“Probably a fryer, right? It’s a bit of a small bird, eh?”
Her voice perked up. She seemed thrilled that I knew what she had and that there was promise in whatever it was. “Yes, I think that’s what he called it. Well, oh my, okay I think we have a problem, though. I just reached inside and, oh ick, I think they left the guts in it!” Her voice was teetering on a squeal, building in speed and pitch. “I mean, why would they leave the guts in it?! Is that something they do with these fryers? I just paid $16 for a bird so I could pull the guts out myself?! Could they have made a mistake?”
“Susan, I am fully confident that no bird can get through a processing plant uneviscerated. Here’s what you need to do. Reach inside and pull out the stuff that’s in there. Got it? Okay, put it on your cutting board and look at it.”
“Look at it? Really?”
“Yup. What you have there is a neck, a heart, a gizzard and a liver. That’s great for sauces, gravies and even stock depending on what camp you’re–?
“Oh no!” she shrieked, full throttle. The phone dropped. In the background I heard her imploring and threatening her kids to stay out of the kitchen. “Absolutely not. I don’t care what you do. You just may not come in this kitchen. You will never eat chicken again if you see what’s going on in here and I just can’t deal with that now. Out! Out! Out!” She picked the phone back up.
“Alright Susan, now back to the goodies. You’re going to grab a freezer bag and put those goodies inside. You’re going to store them in the freezer.” I then walked her through how to roast the bird. I had her do it whole as I concluded that suggesting she use kitchen shears to cut through bone and sinew to spatchcock it was probably pushing it too far. I emailed her a basic recipe.
I followed up the next day by email. I got the following response.
that was possibly the best chicken i’ve ever had! and tonite we’re having individual pot pies with a pastry crust. then i’ll attempt the broth but not having any cheese cloth and only mini coffe filters hmmm…
I live for this kind of victory.
I should create a whole category on this site for funny stories about folks and whole chickens. I have a few more good ones, some of which are compliments of the aforementioned “chicken guy,” a.k.a. Steve. In my experience, nothing is more intimidating to my students. Why?
Foremost, its because a whole chicken actually looks like the animal that it once was. The typical American cook hasn’t purchased anything but boneless, skinless breasts which look like- nothing. We can readily pretend that wasn’t even an animal- its just a boneless skinless breast. When you’re staring at a few stray pin-feathers on your bird, its undeniable that there were once many more. Steve has actually had people return birds to him because of these offensive pin-feathers.
What’s my thing with whole chickens? First, you can usually only get pastured chicken as a whole bird. What’s pastured chicken? Simply put, it is a bird that is raised in conditions that are natural to it- pecking around outside and eating a combination of feed, seeds, bugs, and whatever else it likes. A pastured bird is a healthier, happier bird. And while its warm and fuzzy to know that my dinner enjoyed a good life, that little dose of moral superiority isn’t what really motivates me to buy pastured meat. It tastes fantastic. It tastes rich and well, “chickeny.” Even an organic store-bought bird tastes like an old kitchen sponge in comparison. It also happens to have a better nutritional profile, but again, if it tastes better, that’s good enough for me.
Because these birds have more and better flavor, you can get so much more out of them. I have a “One bird, three meals” system. First, I roast the bird (in the summer, I often grill it). I always spatchcock the bird. Spatchcocking is the process of removing the backbone from the bird and opening the bird up. Its actually quite simple and can be accomplished with a simple pair of kitchen shears, though poultry shears are really nice to have if you do this often. Why bother? Spatchcocking puts the legs and breasts on the same even plane and allows for better heat distribution, resulting in a bird that has perfect, juicy breast and leg meat. When I grill a chicken, I take it a step further and cleave the breast in half, giving me two equal sides. Its just easier to arrange them on the grill that way.
When dinner’s over, I save all the bones- pulling them off of plates and putting them into freezer bags. Don’t gross out. You’re going to eventually turn them into stock, bringing the water to a boil and then simmering them for a few hours.
Now you’ll go back to the carving board to pick the bird clean of all of its pickin’s. You can turn those pickin’s into a dish that same week or freeze the pickin’s too. You’ll have chicken ready to go into chicken soup or chicken gravy or, as Susan suggested, pot pie. When the carcass is picked clean, you freeze that too.
