How to Cook Heritage Chicken Meat

Reader Contribution by Mary Lou Shaw
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USDA/Lance Cheung
Chickens roaming through and feeding at Lakota Ranch during From Service to Stewardship a two-day workshop in Remington, Va.

How to cook heritage chicken breeds offers more nutritious and flavorful recipes than store-bought chicken, but require different cooking techniques.

We’ve been raising and eating Dorking chickens for more than seven years. We chose them originally because they’re dual purpose (good for both meat and eggs) and because we want to help save their rare genetics. We were proud last year when the Dorking breed won first place for its taste in the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy’s competition. However, this also made me suspicious that my repetitive three-meals-from-one-bird method of cooking might omit some gourmet’s delights.

Part of the pleasure of raising these chickens is that our flock can maintain itself by producing new babies each spring. Heritage birds grow more slowly than the omnipresent Cornish-cross bird, and we wait until they have “some meat on their bones,” or until they are 20 to 22 weeks old, to eat the cockerels (males). I still remember confidently barbequing that first one and then biting into a drumstick the consistency of hard rubber. That’s when the three-day approach began.

Techniques for How to Cook Heritage Chicken Meat

I found the “toughness problem” solved by cooking these birds for a longer time at a lower temperature. Therefore, I roast the bird, oiled and breast-side down, for two and a half to three hours at 325 degrees in a non-vented roaster. The meat is tender and extremely tasty, and the juice is wonderful.

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