Learning Chicken

Despite the fact that I descend from poultry farmers; I do not now, or ever have, or ever wish to become a poultry farmer.  In fact, I never really knew much about live chickens until arriving in Kenya.  Live chickens are given as a sign of respect to a person.  Chickens are eaten when important people come to dinner.  Chickens are REALLY dirty and stinky.  Chickens will run fast when you are trying to catch them, because somehow they know they are ending up in the pot (unless they are tied up, then they are easy to catch.)  Chicken happens to be the favorite food of the Luhya tribe of Western Kenya (my tribe by adoption).  Luckily, it happens to be one of my favorite foods too (no wonder they adopted me.) My prior experience with chicken basically looks like this: pull frozen meat from freezer, defrost, season, grill or fry or bake, and eat.  I now have a whole new level of appreciation for my ancestors of the poultry farmer persuasion.  Follow the story of chicken preparation (or how to become a vegetarian in 20 photos or less.)

The designated chicken was tied up, pecking away at bugs and stuff all day long.  Sadly, I do not have any photos of this part of the story.  The chicken was reeled in by the rope attached to its leg and handed over to .... ME.  So I got the bird into position on the banana leaf (so its easy to clean up later.)

Correct position is standing on the feet (so it can't run) and on its wings (so it can't flap around). 

I'm sure, based on the other components in the photo, you can tell what is about to happen (note the knife that is being handed to me).

FYI: Correct blade position is the neck portion by the jugular and aortic vessels.

If you don't like blood, skip the next few photos.

The deed is done, the chicken is no more.

The experts make sure I've done things correctly; didn't I mention the blood of poultry farmers runs in my veins?

A bit more hacking, a bit more blood.

The chicken is hung upside down to ensure as much blood as possible comes out.

At this point, the chicken is put into a pot of boiling water, again I sadly do not have any photos of this part of the process.  This is done to soften the place where the feathers are in the skin and it makes the feathers easier to pull out (as demonstrated in the next few photos.)

This takes less than two minutes.

Note how its all done on the banana leaves for easy clean up.

All clean.

Into the kitchen with the plucked bird.  Have you ever eaten a piece of chicken and seen a little piece of the quill still in the skin?  Well this next step takes care of that problem.

Over the stove (yes that is the stove) the skin is singed so that those quilly things are burnt away.

Now, to remove the innards.  The biologist in me cheers.

Not the usual dissecting knife.

If you ever wanted to know, this is what it looks like inside a chicken.

It's all coming out!

There it all is.

After the innards are removed, the chicken is cut up into pieces, rubbed with salt and left for about ten minutes.  The salt cleans the insides of the chicken.

Rubbing salt in.  Don't worry, it gets washed off.

The chicken is seasoned nicely and cooked.  If I recall correctly, stewed chicken.  No photos of the eating part, but it was yummy.


PS.  The mess was pretty .... well, messy.  Good thing we had those banana leaves, we just rolled them up and; all clean.

Center: Large Intestine, Left: Liver and Heart.  FYI.

Special thanks to PQB, photographer.