Cleaning freezers, chicken sausage

Last fall I got an interesting barter proposal from a farmer up the road. He had a small flock of laying hens that was not earning its keep – that is, the ladies were eating lots of expensive grain without producing lots of marketable eggs. It was time to make room in the coop for some new birds. The idea was that I would bring over the IGI unit, we would process the old hens together, and I would receive half the birds in exchange for my help.

Sounded like a bargain to me. I signed on, and ended up with twenty five birds in plastic bags in the bed of my truck at the end of the day.

In November, this seemed like no big deal. There was a long, cold season ahead, and I saw many a chicken stew in my future. But the thing about these birds is that they cook up nothing like the broilers you buy at the supermarket.

Whereas the average broiler lives a fleet eight weeks, putting on fat like there’s no tomorrow, these birds made it to fifty weeks, and spent their lives scratching around the yard and putting energy into eggs. Their breasts are comparatively narrow and bony, their flesh tough and lean. Cooking up a tasty meal with these gamey birds takes a little forethought, a little creativity.

So suffice it to say that spring rolls around, and I’m nowhere near through my winter bounty. I’ve been storing them in a borrowed chest freezer behind the house, but my friend Jefferson of the GOOD Farm, will soon need his chest freezer back, to fill it with fresh birds for market.

I am in a bind.

I decide to make sausage. Lots and lots of sausage.

I go to the local deli and buy a little tupperware full of casings.

I invite people over to eat and hang out and help. Jefferson owns all the relevant hardware, ie a kitchenaid with a meat grinder attachment and a hand-crank sausage stuffer machine, and knows how to operate them, and teaches us how. James breaks down birds. Tim tells stories. Amadine takes lovely pictures. We all drink wine.

I get designated head casing fitter, a job for which I am perhaps ill qualified for, but manage to execute nonetheless.

We get to work. We do about fifteen birds, and between the wine and the tiny kitchen and the other random projects (pates, burgers, salads, etc) it takes almost all day. Here’s a rough idea of what went into the grinder:

chicken
pork fat from North Tabor Farm (sausage needs fat. an 80-20 meat-fat ratio is ideal)
fresh feta cheese from Mermaid Farm
parsley
salt

My goal in making this stuff was just to make sure the birds were not wasted, that they were put to good use. The fact that the sausage turned out to be seriously delicious was a nice bonus though. I tried various types of stews in the winter months, but this project was far and away the tastiest way I found to turn those gamey hens into dinner.

Between the eating and the giving away, we ended the day with full bellies and a few tidy ziplocks that fit easily into my kitchen freezer, lunches and dinners for days to come.