Advice Needed: Roosters and the Flock

[FortCluck]

So say I have a Delaware / Jersey Giant mix... What age do you suggest would be best to process them?

How do you want to cook it? The younger you butcher it the less meat you will have but the more options you have on how to cook it.

I have heard that slitting the neck in a cone in allowing them to bleed out helps a lot with the meat... I don't know if this is true because I'm new to processing chickens and won't be starting until the springtime.

Bleeding them out helps the meat quality. There are different ways to bleed them out. Some people use the cone method, I use a hatchet and stump. There are others.

I've also heard that allowing them to rest in a refrigerator from 2 to 4 days will help the meat be tender as well...

After an animal dies rigor mortis sets up. If yo cook it before rigor mortis sets up you will be OK. If you age it until after rigor mortis passes you'll be OK. If you cook it before rigor mortis passes you will not be OK.

There are three things that people often get confused about this. Aging and brining are typically done to young birds, marinading is often really helpful on older birds but can add flavor to young birds if it is not overdone.

Aging is where you keep the bird cool until rigor mortis passes. There are different ways to do that, but aging is just to get past rigor mortis.

Brining is where you soak the bird in a liquid solution with salt while it ages or for a portion of the time that it is aging. You can use other additional ingredients but the standard is salt, preferably kosher or canning salt. The salt adds some flavor but the big thing is that it causes the bird to absorb water. The meat is moister than it would be otherwise. This moisture is especially good if you or grilling or frying. The more salt in the brine the less time it needs to brine.

Marinading is where you soak the meat in an acid solution, usually vinegar or wine but beer works. people have a lot of different recipes for a marinade. The acid dissolves some of the connective tissue in the meat and makes it a lot less chewy. This works best for older birds. The longer it soaks the more it affects the texture. Keep it in the marinade too long and it can get mushy, especially young birds.

We usually cook our meat in an air fryer, a pressure cooker, or the grill.

Processing meat is confusing to me. So many different methods, but I have plenty of time to figure it out

 

[Ridgerunner]

I don't air fry or grill mine. Someone else needs to help you with that but I'd suspect they would need be relatively young. I also do not use a pressure cooker but you can cook any age chicken in those. I don't want to give specific info on method I don't use.

I generally bake my 23 week old cockerels at 250 F fro about 3 hours or use a crock pot for older birds (old roosters or hens) on low for about 8 hours on low or use them to make broth, that's usually 14 to 20 hours in water on low.

 

[aart]

After an animal dies rigor mortis sets up. If yo cook it before rigor mortis sets up you will be OK.

I've found that rigor seems to set pretty darn quick, maybe it's because of the scald water. By the time I'm done scalding plucking(~10 minutes after kill) and get ready to gut those legs are pretty locked in. Anyway, resting the cleaned carcasses before cooking and freezing is essential here.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I've found that rigor seems to set pretty darn quick, maybe it's because of the scald water. By the time I'm done scalding plucking(~10 minutes after kill) and get ready to gut those legs are pretty locked in. Anyway, resting the cleaned carcasses before cooking and freezing is essential here.

Different methods different results. Growing up I'd scald and pluck a chicken and give it to Mom who would cook it immediately. No problems but that was more than 10 minutes. But that was only one bird. And the way I scalded them was to pour a pot of boiling water over them. No dunking. So partially scalding, partially dry plucking. Hey I was young then, my fingers still worked.

Now I skin them, no dunking at all. But I do several at a time so I'm not fast enough to avoid rigor.