Turkey, chicken

Modest, in'nit?

Every time I cook a turkey I think, "If the idea is to cook a big bird, why don't you just cook an ostrich, you loon, or an emu or California condor? Why hold back? Why not go all Flinstone and cook a pterodactyl since size seems to be the whole point. I mean honestly, it's ridiculous. Then I have this gigantic carcass and bird bits to deal with. I'd rather cook a bunch of chickens instead. More manageable, more fun.

Two things: Brining and compound butter placed under the skin. Kitchen gloves. You really do not want raw chicken subcutaneous fat shoved under your fingernails. The very thought gives me the creeps.

Let's get some good birds while we're at it. It is a holiday, after all. Some worm eat'n, seed peck'n, no steroid have'n or antibiotic take'n, walk around a little bit and exercise do'n, get'n down in the farmhouse birds. At least that's how I'm imagining it.

Chickens are fundamentally radical. As pets, they're actually rather horrible. Once they discover how fantastic eggs are, there's no stopping them going after each others' eggs. At that point the only thing left to do other than segregate and confine them is slaughter them.

Oh! Oh! Oh! I just found a new thing online that I'm going to try a little later. A place in the US where they're raising the rouge label birds from France. You know how seriously they take these things over there. They totally put us to shame with their obsession for quality, generally speaking of course, sometimes they slum it too. Here it is, Joyce Foods. I think I'll go for the Poulet Rouge Fermier because I prefer slightly older birds for roasting --- more flavor IMO. I can't wait to try this. What am I waiting for? Uh. I do not know. I suppose I'm waiting to finish eating these things here.

Finished Diestel turkey Finished Bell & Evans chicken 3.5 LBS I did a terrible job pushing the butter around under the skin. I'm not at all good at that. I tend to just leave it in lumps. Maybe softer butter is the way to go. You're supposed to get at the legs too but my fingers break through the skin. I'm a klutz.

Diestel turkey. Quite small for a turkey, 8.8 LBS.

Bell & Evans chicken 3.5 LBS.

Brining liquid started on stove to dissolve the salt and sugar. 1 cup salt, 1/2 cup sugar, peppercorns, fennel seed, hey, it's what I had. Supplemented with ice and water to cover birds. Covered, put out on the balcony.

Brining turkey and chicken in a bucket.

Butter and herbs. Sage, chive, rosemary (because who doesn't want the woodsy flavor of pine tree to go with their turkey and chicken? Euell Gibbons approves), thyme.

Compound butter

Birds in baking bags (I just cleaned the oven and I don't have casseroles large enough for both birds. Because the turkey is small for a turkey, I could fit both in the same bag, after sealing the bag it occurred to me they'd cook at different times. Duh. So I opened it up and put the chicken in its own bag. These bags are almost as good as my favorite clear casserole dishes, which through a series of inept moves resulted in my no longer owning them, but at one time I had four and I did use all four at once to cook chickens simultaneously. I like them because you could see what was going on and they were like little ovens within the oven. These bags come close to that. But I do yearn for those halcyon days of yore when I had four clear casserole dishes, and I just may step out to the dollar store and rectify this situation.

Result: The chicken was a lot better than the turkey. No contest. The brining worked much better on the chicken. There was more meat by weight on the turkey, obviously, but it was altogether a weaker bird than the chicken. In fact, the chicken came darn close to having as much meat. Pulling them both apart, one right after the other, I much prefer the chicken. This proves to me once again that turkeys are little more than a cruel hoax perpetrated upon an unsuspecting public and the animal kingdom. If cost means anything, I could have bought three excellent chickens for what I paid for one scrawny supposedly up-scale turkey. (My housekeeper said she bought a much heavier turkey for less than I paid for the chicken, but she wasn't doing an experiment). The turkey meat pictured plated above (first photo) was overcooked, dry and unpleasant to eat. Bleh. I erred. Although twice as large as the chicken, I should not have cooked it longer. The chicken meat was perfect, plump, and delicious. I'm soaking the pulled meat of both in the oily liquid released by the birds during cooking in the hope the turkey meat can reabsorb some of it and possibly be salvaged. I would be ashamed to serve the turkey to guests, but well-pleased to serve the chicken. Conclusion: upscale turkeys are not what they're cracked up to be. Forget about them. If you simply must cook a giant bird, get one on sale, and forget about all that other what-white-people-like crap. Even brining and compound butter cannot elevate them. That has been my experience, anyway. Also, I'm not going to do this again until I get a decent roaster that completely encloses the bird, one to fit a turkey and possibly two or three chickens at once. But now for the good part, what I'm really in this for is to render the carcass to stock. That should make this all worth while.

traditional fried chicken

Fried chicken the old-fashioned way. These are all thighs, because I like thighs. Plus they were on sale the day I went for milk. There were other things on sale too but I didn't care.




1) Brine, I included sugar, then after a few hours, soak in fresh water so the salt that was dragged inside the chicken flows back out to equalize with the soaking liquid after brining but leaving behind the extra moisture that crossed the cell membrane. The water stays equalized too by pressure on both sides of the cell membrane. The problem with all this is you can not taste as you go along because it's raw chicken and you'll die!

2) Dry

3) Season, but not salt.

4) Dust with seasoned flour, absent salt, I used habanero powder and pepper

5) Heat two cups of oil to 375°F, just enough to almost cover a single layer of chicken. Allow the heat to drop to 350°F, cook for 12 or so minutes turning infrequently. A splash guard is helpful at this point, then cover completely after the heavy steaming has ceased and turn down the heat (covered the heat tends to rise), continue cooking until internal temperature of the chicken reaches 180°F. Because you've brined the chicken, your margin for error is expanded slightly on the side of overcooking. For the second batch I was getting tired of frying chicken so I double layered it and moved them around a little more. It worked fine. The thing was covering them for the last half of cooking and the oily steam pretty much covers it. Mine got to internal temperature of 195°F, which is quite high and considered overdone, but they were perfectly desirably moist without having burned portions as the first batch did.

6) drain on paper towel or paper grocery bags. Serve immediately, or it gets soggy.

This beats the pants off of KFC that was pressure-cooked by children and which sits there forlornly waiting for someone to come along.