How to Pick, Pluck, and Prepare Your Own Poultry
(Page 3 of 5)
Relax! No matter how poorly you scald and pick your first
few chickens, they should still be edible. Practice makes
perfect. Keep trying. You'll soon get the hang of it. I
don't even use a thermometer. I just remove my boiling
water from the fire, dip a chicken in quickly if it's young
and a little more slowly if it's older, re-dip the really
tough birds as necessary, and then place each scalded bird
on the pile of newspapers and let it steam for a few
minutes. Then, as soon as the wing feathers will pull out
easily, I know it's time to go to work.
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Grasp the body of a scalded and steamed bird in one hand
and one of its legs at the top of the thigh in the other.
Then (Fig. 3) pull the second hand down toward the leg's
foot. Most of the feathers will slip right off the leg in
one operation. Repeat this process on the other leg, both
wings, and the neck. If the chicken was scalded properly
and didn't have too many pinfeathers, most of the body
feathers can then be pulled out by the handful. In the
beginning, of course, you'll probably select chickens that
are "all" pinfeathers, scald them poorly, and pick so
slowly that the birds' feathers tighten up on you again
before you have them cleaned. Don't despair! Work faster
and you'll soon have the knack of stripping the feathers
from a chicken so quickly and easily that others will think
the fowl picked itself. In the meantime, though, reconcile
yourself to slowly and laboriously plucking seemingly
endless pinfeathers from your first few birds . . . one . .
. . by . . . . . tedious . . . . . . one.
OK. Feathers and pinfeathers all out? You're ready to singe
away the fine hairs that are still on the chicken. This can
be done over an open gas flame (Fig. 4) or, if you have a
wood-burning cookstove, you can remove one of the range's
lids, shove a wadded section of newspaper down the "eye",
light the paper, and singe the chicken over the blaze. Or
just twist some newspaper together, strike a match, and
singe your birds outside if the wind isn't blowing too
hard.
Remove the picked and singed chicken's feet by bending each
foot back (Fig. 5) and cutting through the joint. Some
people like to skin the feet and cook them for soup or to
add flavor to broth. Others just throw the unskinned feet
to the dogs.
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