a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Category: Cooking-Roasting Tips

Roasting a Rooster

This is a seven and a half month old Golden Buff rooster, butchered at 224 days, and let to rest for four days in the refrigerator. Three to four days is a good time to let a chicken rest before roasting, especially these chickens which exercise so much every day.

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These are not birds which sit around all day, doing nothing but eating and growing fat. They aren’t crowded together cheek by jowl. What they do provide is a big story and a big taste. A chicken does a lot of living in seven months. As chickens go, it’s seen the world, traveled far from it’s roost every day, had the chance to experience romance and live a full life. At times they go so deep into the woods they can’t see another chicken. You’ll never find chicken like this in your supermarket.

January 10, 2014
Fresh Liver

Fresh Liver

You’ll never find liver like this in the store. Liver from chickens which exercise much of the day, get plenty of fresh air and sunshine, is plump and dry.

When chickens are out walking all day, rummaging for food, playing, and having a good time, they are pumping copious amounts of oxygenated blood through their bodies, much like people who exercise. Chickens raised in cramp quarters and butchered at a very young age, never attain the level of health of chickens raised outdoors. And this shows in the quality of their livers.

Cooked Liver

Fried in butter, chicken fat, or olive oil for several minutes on each side, it has so much flavor that no salt is needed. In fact, you should first taste it before adding any salt. Often salt, instead of enhancing the flavor of foods, just makes foods taste like salt.

Dish of Liver

Liver is best eaten within a few hours of processing a chicken. Are there any stores which sell chicken liver from chickens butchered that day? Let me know if you find one. The next time you buy chicken liver in a store, ask the grocer when the liver was taken. If they don’t know, what does that say about their concern for the quality of the food they sell to you?

January 5, 2014
Roasting your chicken – preparing it

You’ve gone to the great effort and expense to procure one of these incredible heritage breed chickens from A Man and His Hoe. Unlike a whole chicken you buy in the store, which you have no idea when it was butchered, your chicken will have been butchered no more than 24 hours before you procure it. It may even have been butchered a few hours before you get your hands on it. And you’ll know the exact day and time down to the minute when it was butchered. You’ll also know when it was hatched and how old it was when it died. You may even know the mother that raised your chicken, and if you are lucky, you may get a chance to thank the mother while you are picking up your chicken. Each mother has her own way of raising chicks. Some mother hens are strict constructionists and keep their little chicks in line. Other mother hens are as carefree with their brood as a pot smoking Marin county liberal. Does it make a difference how the chickens taste when roasted? It’s up to you to decide.

These chickens are best roasted. And since your chicken is so fresh (unless you’ve committed the ghastly crime of freezing it, heaven forbid!), you will want to give it a few days rest to help it get over the trauma of dying. Chickens like to die as much as you do, and they deserve a few days to recover from their fate.

Go out into your garden (or if you aren’t in the mood to venture outside send your gardener, that’s why you hire him or her) and fetch a nice handful of herbs. Rosemary, thyme, oregano, marjoram, sage and the like. Basically your favorite herbs.

Set out one to two teaspoons of salt.

Peel some garlic cloves.

Unwrap your chicken and rub the salt all over the chicken. As the chicken rests over the next two to three days, the salt will tenderize the meat, help it relax, and flavor it.

Stuff the cavity of the chicken the the herbs and garlic. They will help the chicken relive those many pleasant days it spent out in the garden.

Truss the chicken. If you don’t know how to truss a chicken, search “trussing a chicken” on youtube. Have fun watching the many thousands of trussing videos and pick a method that suits you. There is no single right way.

Place the chicken in a heavy pot which has a lid.

Cover the pot with a lid and put it in the refrigerator for two to three days.

That’s all it takes to prepare your A Man and His Hoe chicken for perfect roasting.

November 6, 2013