So, in an effort to see whether I could actually "eat local," I went to a farmers' market last week in search of pastured meat. At the farmers' market, there are two local farmers who produce pastured beef, chicken, pork and eggs. Game on. This is going to be so easy -- all I have to do in order to eat local is go to the market instead of the grocery store. I want to test out Michael Pollan's claims that free range chickens are "more chickeny" than commercial chickens, so I go for a 3.5lb bird.
Anyway, being local apparently does not make my farmer's chicken immune to bacteria, so the chicken is frozen solid and takes three days to thaw. No biggie, this just gives me more time to plan a menu. After three days, I get my first good look at the bird. Hmm. What's that weird hot-dog-looking thing where the neck hole should be? Oh god. It's the neck. I've never seen a chicken with its neck attached before. Crap. It slowly dawns on me that "no neck hole" probably means that there is still stuff inside the bird -- slimy, smelly, slippery stuff. Gross. How badly do I want to do this experiment? Very badly. Luckily I'm Chinese, which means that there has to be a meat cleaver around here somewhere. Ah, here it is -- right next to the 25lb bag of rice. So. No excuses then.
If you're like me (and why would you be? because in retrospect this seems like such an odd thought for someone who's never actually seen a chicken neck before) you think to yourself, "This is probably pretty self-explanatory." If by contrast you're like Blaine (and thank god Blaine is like Blaine) you say out loud, "Hey! Why don't we hop on the internet and google "chicken butchering" so we don't accidentally eat a mouthful of chicken poop?" Good idea! Naturally, we find a great blog on how to butcher a chicken, which was creatively titled "how to butcher a chicken." This site takes you from whole chicken to cut up wings, breasts and thighs in 10 easy steps. If you visit this site for fun, I would not blame you for skipping the part about removing the head (Step 3) or the bit about pulling the heart out and scraping the lungs off (Step 8).
We jump right in with Step 5: Remove the Neck. As I'm making my cuts to the bird's neck and twisting and pulling as instructed, I flip the bird over and a big flap of skin flops to the side revealing. . . THE HOLE!!! Thank god! The (empty!) cavity was just covered by a ginormous flap of skin that froze to the bird's legs, making it look un-butchered. It does cross my mind how karmically unfair it is for someone who knows so little about chicken to ask a chicken to give its life for her dinner, but what the hell -- I'm just so freaking glad I'm not going to be scraping any lungs tonight!
Dinner was a success; very chickeny indeed, but this week we're going for the pastured ground beef.
Anyway, being local apparently does not make my farmer's chicken immune to bacteria, so the chicken is frozen solid and takes three days to thaw. No biggie, this just gives me more time to plan a menu. After three days, I get my first good look at the bird. Hmm. What's that weird hot-dog-looking thing where the neck hole should be? Oh god. It's the neck. I've never seen a chicken with its neck attached before. Crap. It slowly dawns on me that "no neck hole" probably means that there is still stuff inside the bird -- slimy, smelly, slippery stuff. Gross. How badly do I want to do this experiment? Very badly. Luckily I'm Chinese, which means that there has to be a meat cleaver around here somewhere. Ah, here it is -- right next to the 25lb bag of rice. So. No excuses then.
If you're like me (and why would you be? because in retrospect this seems like such an odd thought for someone who's never actually seen a chicken neck before) you think to yourself, "This is probably pretty self-explanatory." If by contrast you're like Blaine (and thank god Blaine is like Blaine) you say out loud, "Hey! Why don't we hop on the internet and google "chicken butchering" so we don't accidentally eat a mouthful of chicken poop?" Good idea! Naturally, we find a great blog on how to butcher a chicken, which was creatively titled "how to butcher a chicken." This site takes you from whole chicken to cut up wings, breasts and thighs in 10 easy steps. If you visit this site for fun, I would not blame you for skipping the part about removing the head (Step 3) or the bit about pulling the heart out and scraping the lungs off (Step 8).
We jump right in with Step 5: Remove the Neck. As I'm making my cuts to the bird's neck and twisting and pulling as instructed, I flip the bird over and a big flap of skin flops to the side revealing. . . THE HOLE!!! Thank god! The (empty!) cavity was just covered by a ginormous flap of skin that froze to the bird's legs, making it look un-butchered. It does cross my mind how karmically unfair it is for someone who knows so little about chicken to ask a chicken to give its life for her dinner, but what the hell -- I'm just so freaking glad I'm not going to be scraping any lungs tonight!
Dinner was a success; very chickeny indeed, but this week we're going for the pastured ground beef.
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