Can you freeze a whole chicken and process it later?

[Chubbicthe2nd]

Can you freeze a whole headless chicken and process it later?

We already drained the blood and cut off the head, scalded it and plucked off the feathers.

So ... Can we just stick it in a gallon Ziploc bag and freeze it... And just thaw it out later and then scrape out all the guts and chop it up and get out the glands and whatnot later? Say, a few months from now? Or would that ruin it? Does it all have to be processed at once?

 

[sourland]

Hopefully you processed it yesterday.

 

[LaFleche]

Can you freeze a whole headless chicken and process it later?

We already drained the blood and cut off the head, scalded it and plucked off the feathers.

So ... Can we just stick it in a gallon Ziploc bag and freeze it... And just thaw it out later and then scrape out all the guts and chop it up and get out the glands and whatnot later? Say, a few months from now? Or would that ruin it? Does it all have to be processed at once?

I am late to the party, but for anyone else reading this thread in the future:

No. The bird needs to be gutted within 15-20 minutes of death as the intestinal barrier keeping the bacteria inside the colon breaks down after about 15-20 minutes (depending on ambient temperature) and bacteria will infest the meat rendering it unsafe for human consumption.

 

[Shadrach]

No. You need to get the bird gutted and cleaned out as soon after death as possible.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

As above.

NO. At least, not in the US.

Remove the innards before moving to the chill chest or freezer.

Yes, aparently you used to be able to get a bird from the butcher with all the organs still in it (as opposed to just heart liver, gizzard, maybe kidneys). This was before my time, I have no first hand experience with it.

I strongly suspect food safety laws have a lot to do with that. And while I have no particular fondness for law for law's sake - I've processed enough of my own birds to know I want to minimize opportunities for spoilage and opportunistic infection by whatever is present in my environment, or in the digestive tract of the chicken itself.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Can we just stick it in a gallon Ziploc bag and freeze it... And just thaw it out later and then scrape out all the guts and chop it up and get out the glands and whatnot later?

I would not, but not for the reasons stated above. A traditional way to manage certain game birds is to "hang" them. There are rules to that. Temperature is very important, you don't hang a bird that is torn up, you don't gut them. If you gut them they would dry out too much during hanging. That raw meat exposed to the atmosphere would be unsanitary and unappealing.

Any bird you butcher needs to age past rigor mortis unless you cook it immediately upon dispatch. If you don't age it past rigor mortis it can be very stiff when you cook it, sometimes pretty inedible. The traditional way for us to age it is to clean it first and then store it in an ice chest or refrigerator until rigor has passed. Butchers have coolers for this purpose.

I don't do it that way. I kill them, skin and gut them, and cut them onto serving pieces, then immediately freeze them. I take them out of the freezer on a Sunday and keep them in the refrigerator until I cook them Thursday so they can thaw and age. You can wait until after freezing to age them.

When you cool, freeze, or thaw them do not stack them too deep. If you have a pile of meat the meat in the middle is insulated by the other meat so it can be much slower to cool, freeze, or thaw. That can be unhealthy even if they are gutted.

If you freeze a bird without gutting it the guts will be the last thing to freeze or thaw. That's why temperature is so important in hanging a bird. And hanging exposes the body so it can cool rapidly, they are not piled up.

You are probably thinking what is the difference in hanging a bird after it is frozen and thawed instead of hanging it immediately after killing it as long as the temperature stays low enough to stop bacteria from multiplying. From that aspect not much.

My thoughts (and you may think it is silly) is that when water freezes it expands. It can break walls and barriers. It just doesn't feel right for the thawed liquids in their guts, crops, gizzard and body cavity to be sitting there and maybe soaking in while it ages. It is probably not a health hazard if you wash it well but I just don't like the feelings about that. It's the freezing and thawing I don't like, not the thought of hanging a bird.

 

[5Australorpasaures]

NO, NO, NO and again NO. Entrails are taken out to speed the cooling of the carcass as quick as possible, bacteria start at death. spoiling can also be accelerated during the thawing with the guts and digestive track full of who knows what.