Via the kid & son-in-law & 2 in the oven comes this article about sustainable farming & fresh, I mean fresh chicken. I really hope that this sort of thing can spread to the rural areas & not simply be a function of a large urban population. I know that there are organizations in our area that are trying to market sustainable farm products. I would be great if fresh meat & poultry were part of the mix.
That chicken was food for a king: pale, tender, meadow-wind flesh and skin as delicious as sheets of bacon, dotted at key junctures with the yellow pockets of fat I associate with richer poultry like duck. With these available at $2.47 a pound for a whole bird, I am forevermore going to be a nightmare when it comes to reviewing local chefs' chicken dishes—they are going to have to do back-flips to surpass this.
The chicken came with additional benefits, and I don't just mean the giblets and neck, perfect for making stock or at least enhancing the store-bought kind. I mean the kind of benefits that come from talking to farmers and having your understanding of the world expanded. For instance, Callister told me that while they used to let their Cornish Cross chickens roam freely in pasture day and night, they now keep them in barns at night, because they were losing so many chickens to coyotes, raccoons, possums, dogs, skunks, and owls. Yes, owls.
Get this. Chickens have a "crop," a place where they store their feed and let it pre-digest a bit before it moves into the gizzard, for grinding, and then through the rest of their digestive tract. But owls find the corn-based feed that the Callister Cornish Cross eat so delicious that they would fly into the flock and slice off lots of chicken heads at exactly the right place to get in there and eat the crop. I found this anecdote both terrifying—those poor chickens! those poor Callisters!—and also deeply satisfying. See? City-slicker food obsessives aren't the only ones who think these farm-fresh chickens are fit for sashimi.
It's a bit embarassing how the author goes on about the bird's "crops". Jeebus, anyone who has ever spent a bloody afternoon butchering chickens knows all about crops & how they can dull a sharp knife. Crops are in all gallinaceous birds, including pigeons & ruffed grouse. This means they must ingest some sort of grit, whether it is provided from the feed mill, or comes from the gravel or sand on a road or opening in the woods. This grit accumulates in the crop & grinds the food before it hits further down the digestive tract. The crop is a great addition to dressing or gravy for that matter.
The crop is immediately under the neck. It has been split open. The tough membrane needs to be removed before cooking. In order: top - neck, liver; middle - crop; lower right - heart.
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