To and from Grammies today. Carried a bunch of stuff out of her basement. Oh my gosh. Can you say SPIDERS????!!! I still have the creepy crawlies... and some serious jim jams, too, let me tell ya. Yeee!
Dropped off some chickens on the way down. Six Ameraucana and two Cuckoo Maran pullets, plus three cockerels. All eleven weeks old. Should easily be laying by Memorial Day. Speaking of which, one of them is on the cover of FLAVOR magazine.
Anyway, I was exceedingly happy to get home in time to cook "The Chicken." That's what we call him now. Only "The Chicken." It's sort of like his new Indian name. In hindsight I guess we could have been more creative. Maybe, "Walks With Celery." Anyway, you get the idea.
So... I get home and my ORIGINAL idea was to have slow cooked him in my crock pot all day. After all, this fellow has been out-running ... and knowing this rooster, possibly beating up, fox and coyotes for at least a year. But... Ben really wanted me to roast it, and so, against better judgement, I did. I have no words to adequately describe what a bad decision this was. Tough doesn't even come close to depicting the unyielding flesh of this bird. Carving it... CARVING it? I hacked at it for upwards of twenty minutes using my entire arsenal of kitchen knives, eventually mutilating it just enough to get it on a serving plate.
And now that we all have TMJ, the new rule is... chickens over six months old get cooked in the CROCK POT.
The TMJ comment cracked me up. Looking forward to more posts.
ReplyDeleteGood luck even in the slow cooker. We butchered 10 of our young roosters and roasted one, slow cooked one and made a slow cooked chicken stew with one. Alas, all three were the toughest, stringyest chickens and couldn't hardly be eaten. We chunked all of them in the trash! The only other thing I can think of to try is a pressure cooker. It was an interesting learning experience!
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