Poultry Keepers Podcast
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At The Poultry Keepers Podcast, we’re building a friendly, informative, and inspiring space for today’s small-flock poultry keepers. Whether you're a seasoned pro with decades of experience or just beginning your backyard chicken journey, you’ve found your community. Here, poultry isn’t just a hobby—it’s a way of life.
Each episode is packed with practical, science-based information to help you care for your flock with confidence. From hatching eggs and breeding strategies to flock health, nutrition, housing, and show prep—we cover it all with insight and heart.
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Poultry Keepers Podcast
Heritage Poultry: Flavor and Cooking, Part 2
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Unlock the secrets to succulent poultry as we dissect the myths surrounding self-basting turkeys and brining. Say goodbye to bland birds and hello to full-flavored feasts; our discussion sheds light on how brining techniques employed by commercial brands may not be the moisture miracle you've been led to believe. Get ready to learn why additives aiming for consistency could be sacrificing the quality of your poultry, and how you can avoid these pitfalls. We'll also let you in on our top methods for aging poultry to achieve that tender, restaurant-quality dish you crave, whether you're team refrigeration or air-drying aficionado.
As we lay out the blueprint for poultry perfection, we'll guide you through mastering the spatchcocking technique—a surefire way to achieve even cooking and that coveted crispy skin. Have you ever wondered about the best way to weigh down your bird for that perfect sear? We've got you covered, complete with cautionary tales from our own kitchen blunders to illustrate the vital importance of the breading process's 'dry, wet, dry' mantra. With the culinary wisdom shared in this episode, you'll be armed to take your poultry prowess to heights that'll have your dinner guests begging for seconds—and the recipes!
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Understanding Brining and Aging Poultry
Speaker 1Hi, welcome to the Poultry Keepers podcast. I'm Rip Stalvey and, together with Mandolin Royal and John Gunnerman, we're your co-hosts for this show and it's our mission to help you have a happy, healthy and productive flop.
Speaker 2Well, the whole self-basting concept that Mandy just brought up, the self-buttering birds, you know, there's turkeys that claim to be self-basting. That was actually a marketing thing, for I remember it on the shrinkwrap package. I don't remember which brand it was. I think it was Butterball, wasn't it? It might have been, and Butterball used the Dwarf as a repeat, but would they have done that?
Speaker 3through brine injection or through genetic.
Speaker 2I believe that was done. Now most commercial poultry off the shelf. If you read the label very carefully it'll say may or can contain up to whatever percent brine.
Speaker 3Usually five percent, I think, is the cutoff.
Speaker 2Yeah, so for the, that's doing a lot of things, but it's basically giving you salt water and charging you meat prices for it, because you're paying by the ounce.
Speaker 3Yeah, sometimes they just soak them in it, and other times they do injection.
Speaker 1It could be injected, yeah.
Speaker 3Depending on your brands, and if it was sold as whole or parts, it might be there for preservation sake, depending on the market it's going to. I'm not going to call out the brand, but there is a brand that has 17 different flavors, tenderizers, preservatives and flavors. Then why do you have to put 17 different ingredients into this brine to make it taste like chicken?
Speaker 2So it all tastes the same to the consumer.
Speaker 1Yeah, because the chickens they're buying today don't have any flavor to them.
Speaker 3Well, it changed the color of the bird even it cooked up a little almost gray in color, not like a healthy pink or white or you know a normal meat color. It was a little dingy, looking like it got cooked in the dish water.
Speaker 1I got to confess I didn't see that one coming to hope.
Speaker 3Well, it was cheap, so there was that going for it.
Speaker 1True, true. You know we've reached the part in the show where we're going to get into specific cooking and all that stuff, and with John being a professional chef and Mandy always being up her elbows, and I think the best thing for me to do is just shut up and turn the show over to you guys. So y'all got the floor Carry on.
Speaker 2Well, mandy pretty much cooks heritage poultry exclusively. I don't have that luxury, being in a commercial kitchen environment. All our poultry comes in through our mainline suppliers.
Speaker 3Well, I've had one Cornish Cross store bought bird to eat in the last eight years and I only went and got one to do a little comparison because I didn't want to grow my own. To me it was heartbreaking to grow them, and even though they're faster, cheaper, I'm so used to seeing the way normal chickens run that I can't watch them grow. So, cooking wise it's all been heritage, with various levels of success based off of breed growth rate, and probably the worst chicken I ever had was when I didn't know about aging, so that very first bird we cooked. If we had made our decision off of that first bird, we probably wouldn't even eat chicken anymore, I mean it was terrible.
Speaker 3It was right smack in the middle of Rigor Morris when I threw that sucker in the oven and it was like a gym shoe.
Speaker 2It's quite a problem. The very first bird goes on the grill While it's. If you get it when it's super fresh, you're fine, and then you got to wait a while.
Speaker 3It needs to be like, within an hour or less, from walking around chicken to cooking that chicken. You've got to be fast.
Speaker 2You know, I remember watching Julia Childs back in the 1970 mumble somethings when she was working with chickens. She would always have the carcass on the bench in front of her and you notice she was moving the legs around. That lets you know when it's ready After going through culinary school and everything that lets you know that the Rigor Morris either hasn't started yet or it's subsided. And you're not going to get a tough bird?
Speaker 3You need to get full mobility out of all of the limbs before you cook it. If it holds up a little bit, that's going to translate to a much tougher texture than you want.
Speaker 2And it does definitely change the flavor because ultimately the Rigor Mortis is the buildup of lactic acid in the muscle tissues and fibers and that it's an acid. So it is going to change the flavor profile of the meat. It's going to acidify the meat slightly until it dissipates. So another reason why you it's not going to hurt you in any way, but it will change the flavor.
Speaker 3Now how long you age the birds, that can vary based on the bird and what your cooking goals are, and there's also little details that you can tweak to find out what methods that you prefer. So I go for a four day age and I do it inside of the shrink bag. I don't pull them out and air dry them, because you get different results, like just those little nuances of variation. If you, some people will do a cooler of ice water with salt and they'll leave the birds in there for 24 to 48 hours and then after that they do what they do with them after that. But we like to do a brief soak with salted water, but not enough for it to actually brine them, and we usually have them dried off and back into a shrink bag the same day that we processed and then we'll do a four day age at refrigerator temperatures. But if you want to get super fancy with it, you dry off the bird and put it in a refrigerator to dry uncovered for up to like 10 days.
Speaker 2Or a hand sewn linen sack. Yeah, if you wanted super fancy, you can sew them into a If you want to really do the whole breast thing.
Speaker 3Well, that actually happens under compression too, and it helps press their develop fat into the meat a little more. We haven't gotten that fancy with it. That's what they do overseas in France.
Speaker 1Got a question. You're talking about compressed fat and I'm just asking because I've never done this. Okay, but does the vacuum bag that you put those birds in have the same effect as sewing them up in the linen sack?
Speaker 3Potentially, but no one has studied that they have the compression, but it would have the air flow air, chilling the air exchange, it creates something called a pedicle.
Speaker 2It's like a protein layer over the top of the skin, and that will actually Wow. We're gonna dive really, really deep here. I don't know if Roll for it, John.
Speaker 1You're on a roll, son.
Speaker 2Let's just say there's a pellicle layer that's formed and that is very helpful in the future for flavor. When the myard reaction occurs and caramelization happens on the meat, that pellicle really comes alive and brings a lot of flavor, and it's also very sticky and clingy to just things floating in the air. It'll definitely pick up flavors from your refrigerator, but it'll also work great for a dry brine later, and there's a difference between dry brine and wet brine. I don't know if we're gonna get there today.
Speaker 3We're supposed to. It's on the list.
Speaker 2Okay.
Speaker 3Well, we talked about aging and during the aging, that's when you would want to start thinking about brines or rubs. And then the type of salt even matters for that, definitely, and table salt is the fastest to absorb and bring about a salty result. So if you're doing a 24-hour kind of brine, you don't want to use the table salt, rather use kosher salt, because the way that it gets absorbed is different. Maybe John knows more of the science about that than I do.
Speaker 2Well, it's a different particle which dissolves quicker, but ultimately it's just NACL. There is a very good. I do want to give a shout out to StellaCulinarycom. They've got a great chart for different brine and resting times and they actually recommend the chicken breast Now this is commercial crosses brine for four to six hours and then come out, rinse off the chicken and let it rest for two to four hours to equalize. Otherwise you get a high buildup of the salts on the outside and it doesn't Say. Your first bite could be very salty, whereas you get into the middle of the chicken and it's not very flavored.
Speaker 3Oh yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2You know, john, they've got a good page that describes the different brining techniques. The most important thing is making sure your salt content is correct, because a little bit too much is not a good thing, just like a little too little is not a good thing either. You got a very tight window.
Speaker 1John, I will say that the brine recipe that you gave me when we cooked our heritage turkey, that bird turned out really. It would have turned out great if I had lowered my temperature in my smoker a little bit, but it kind of got away from me for a little while so it was a little bit dried out. But man, that bird had great flavor and of course I like smoked anything, but it really picked up the smoke flavor well too.
Speaker 2Thank you, john. Again the process. You can change the flavor profile any way you want. As long as it's pulling in the salty water, you can bring in any spices and flavors along with it.
Speaker 1Well, you had suggested that and I thought I don't really think I want to do that, because I wanted to get the flavor of the bird itself, yeah, yeah, and I could tinker around with spices and flavorings and herbs and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2But later, I usually just grab a whole big pint jar of vegetable base better than bullion veg base and mix that up as my brine solution, because it's got everything in there that I love. There's a nice little pro tip.
Speaker 1Yeah, good tip there. I appreciate that yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah, take that and mix it into enough water. It doesn't need to be the flavor you'd expect a soup to be. In fact, you don't want it that strong.
Speaker 3No, yeah, with the older birds. They have so much of their own flavor you don't have to overdo it and drown them in spices to get something out of them. Less is more. When it comes to the older birds, there is something about baking soda as part of a tenderizing brain. That was the new I was looking at. We've tried it a couple of times and I noticed the biggest difference when we were doing chicken tenders and stuff in the air fryer that way. And then what was that other thought I just had, oh, buttermilk.
Speaker 2I was just about to give a shout out.
Speaker 3Yeah, what's the?
Speaker 1difference. My brain milk is buttermilk a lot.
Speaker 2Yes, and that is a beautiful thing because it helps denature the protein. The acidity in the buttermilk is a wonderful thing, and if you don't have buttermilk, plain yogurt works great as well. It's the same thing.
Speaker 3Yeah, once you start getting into the science of the different ingredients and the reason that they're in there, there's so many options and flavor profiles that you can start playing around with, like chicken doesn't have to taste the same every time you had it.
Speaker 2And then, when you had it cooked, there's a lot to do with it. Yeah, so in this case we've got malo-lactic acid denaturing the protein. That's basically the acid that's in the buttermilk.
Speaker 3Yeah, you can't go wrong with a good buttermilk. Brian.
Speaker 2One of my favorite restaurants in the whole wide world, gus's in Memphis, tennessee. They say their secret recipe is no secret. They soak it over buttermilk, fry it the next day as I'd see there's tubs every night. They just load up the tubs and fill them with buttermilk and the next morning they come out, dry them off, bread them and fry them. Did we?
Speaker 3talk yet about the cooking methods versus the age of birds. I don't think we really spent much time on that.
Speaker 1We did not, yeah, I think you should do that.
Speaker 2That's huge.
Speaker 3Yeah, I think. Yeah, it's kind of important. So, for example, a fryer if you're going to fry chicken from raw, that bird needs to be young. It needs to be less than 14 weeks old, and that's just because of the texture of the meat it changes as they start maturing. So, yeah, you could take your Cornish cross and fry them from raw easy peasy. But the others, you really want to know how old that bird is because otherwise you might need to poach them a little bit and do some pre-cooking with them and then fry them. You can make it kind of a double process to use older chicken. I was playing around with that and had pretty good results doing it that way.
Speaker 2Well, that's why most of the recipes from the old cookbooks, 1950s and earlier, actually specify the age and type of chicken. For this recipe. Use a roaster or a broiler, because the age is paired to the cooking technique.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 2You know hot and fast, or low and slow, so to speak.
Speaker 3Yeah, that's pretty much the gist of it really, and the young.
Speaker 2Meat exactly like that you see there, just like cooking a steak. It's either hot and fast or low and slow, like a pot roast, and in between you've got shoe leather, or at least in my opinion.
Speaker 3That's a good way of looking at it. I usually, after about 18 weeks of age, I default back to the low and slow, and that has always given a pretty good result, and I consider low to be Less than 350 degrees Once you get, I think, in a Dutch oven. Oh, yeah, yeah, I need to get a new one of those.
Speaker 1Mandy, I got a question for you, then maybe John too, but I know Mandy processes a ton and a half of chickens, but Do you Give me? Do you write the age of the bird on the bag?
Speaker 3Only if it's outside of my normal range, so if it's younger than our tip, because normally is 16 to 18 weeks. So if it's blank, I know it's there. If it's over 20 weeks, I'm making note of that because there's some cooking options that are off limits. I can't fry it from raw, I can't grill it from raw. So, like when we grill a bird, the best results I've gotten is to take that bird hole and spatch cocket and then put it in the oven you know 200, 225, and treat that bird like a rack of ribs and Only put it on that grill at the very end for maybe 12 minutes Just to pick up the flavor of being grilled, but rely on the oven for the cooking process.
Speaker 1Guys, how about explain what spatch cocking is, because some of our listeners may not be familiar with that term?
Speaker 3Pretty much when you cut the spine out and then flip it over, give it one hard press like you're doing CPR on it, and that kind of flattens out the whole bird. You get a more even cooking result that way, because you're eliminating that interior cavity.
Speaker 2If you've ever seen a pressed duck in the window of an Asian market, that's the same thing. We're just butterflying the whole thing out, but that that allows the heat to access the meat better, you know heating up heating a flat thing on a grill is a lot more efficient than heating around thing on a grill.
Speaker 1Especially if it's got a big cavity in the middle seems like I saw and I could help me out here. I could be dead wrong in saying this, but I saw some recipes where they spatch, cocked a chicken and and then wrapped a brick in aluminum foil and laid that on top of the chicken to cook it in a Dutch oven To press it down while it's cooking?
Speaker 3Yes, Would you get a brick mark?
Speaker 2Well, I think, first off, I think as long as your brick is clean to begin with, you don't need to wrap it in aluminum foil. But I do play a little hazardous with my cooking. As long as it's in a Dutch oven, any of the fats and juices that are pressed out are going to be recaptured in the, the potlicker or the Sauce that's created, so I wouldn't be too worried about that. I would be concerned about any sort of weight on a grill because all those fat and juices are gonna fall down to the fire, caused flare-ups, and that's generally a bad thing.
Speaker 1I was just wondering if that message would make the flesh dry. Essentially depends on what kind of you're it? Yeah, you know, I don't recall. I just remember seeing this aluminum polywrap brick laying on this chicken carcass in the Dutch oven.
Speaker 3Ok, but that's been a while back, so you know, maybe they didn't do that CPR move to could be keep it flat, Because if you don't do that it'll kind of want to revert back to its shape. You really just will pound at one time You're going to.
Speaker 2Spatch proc. You really got to push down until everything cracks, just like doing CPR effectively. If you're not cracking ribs, you're not saving lives, is what they tell us last.
Speaker 3Because I've never heard it put that way.
Speaker 2Yeah, I've heard that before. It's true, I mean you almost you have to break ribs to do CPR correctly, just about. But the same thing, it's just a matter of getting all that surface exposed and not having these undulations and cook it A meat side down first, flesh side down. So when you flip it now you've got the skin which can crisp and caramelize and basically create a self containing bowl for all those juices and meat to cook inside of.
Speaker 1I don't, I can. You're talking about the crisping of the skin. Yeah, I can remember my grandmother's fried chicken was so good. I would always pull the skin off, set that aside and save that for last, because it was so darn good.
Speaker 3Well and to get that kind of result, there's very particular methods to follow to get that crispiness and I found it's a little bit of a ballet to get an even Christmas and it starts with drying the bird off. So like if you packed them wet and you cooked it wet and you kept it covered, you're going to end up with like more rubbery, not crispy skin, Like there's a lot that has to happen to the science to get that result.
Speaker 2There's a mnemonic that I use to remember that in culinary schools dry, wet, dry. So you start with the dry bird and then you put a dry coating on it and then if you're going to use an intermediary like an egg, it's wet and then dry again, your final coating. But you're always putting dry to wet or vice versa. You're never putting a wet coating on top of a wet bird or a dry coating on top of a dry bird. Oh, that makes sense. And cornstarch, so my base layer is almost always cornstarch, really, yeah. Yeah, it's inexpensive and I always have some on hand, but it creates a great surface for other things to stick to later on.
Speaker 3So the very first time I was going to try fried chicken for the I mean, this is an embarrassing story, but I'm going to tell it anyways.
Speaker 1It's never stopped us before, Mandy.
Speaker 3So you know how, when you open up a recipe off the Google and they go through their entire life story and all the things that have nothing to do and you just give me the recipes and I saw the button to skip to recipe.
Speaker 3So I tap that button. There's all my ingredients. I get everything out, I measure it, I put everything in the one bowl and then I start putting the. I go to stir this kind of look like pancake batter and it wouldn't stick and it started turning into dough and I'm like what the heck is going on. This is not going to do fried chicken because I failed to read the very important instructions that your wets go with your wets and your dry goes with your dry and you dredge it and you do this whole thing and I had just taken all those ingredients and put them all in the same bowl and I didn't even work for bread when I was like I'll just bake it this way and see if I can make croutons out of this and not waste everything in there. Yeah, instead of doing a wet bowl and a dry bowl and doing the chicken for fried chicken, I ended up with this big ball of dough. Wasn't good for anything.
Speaker 3So the big takeaway here is technique is important and follow instructions and read the important parts of the recipe, get the life story, but definitely go and look for those important little tidbits on how you know two different bowls.
Speaker 1Yeah, but sadly they they embed those little tidbits throughout their story, so you got to read the whole dang story.
Speaker 3Get the good stuff or or get actual cookbooks that were from the period that are working with the items you're going to be cooking and you get your clear and concise instructions, with some nuance in there, of some of the historical methods and figure it out from there. But I think when it comes to chicken, it's pretty much 1950s or earlier. If you're doing heritage birds, those are the recipes you want to be following with.
Speaker 2Yes, or pick yourself up a reprint of the escoffee cookbook in English, if you can find it. It's definitely preferred. I mean, that's what every culinary school student and classically trained chef has been traumatized by. But those those, that's how to cook literally, and it'll specify. You know age and preparation, just like you know the old. What is it Better? Homes and Gardens, the red and white checkerboard covered book, if you get an early enough one or a coffee cracker cookbook?
Speaker 2Oh yeah, we have those on the shelves. We got the Betty Crocker, franny Farmer. They all have these old recipes and techniques in them still, so keep your eye out at yard sales. A lot of libraries are cleaning out their shelves and they're just putting these out for free.
Speaker 1Grab them. Yeah, that's a great way to pick up a cookbook, but it's a shame in the sense that it's not gonna benefit very many people.
Speaker 2Yeah, but you know they looked at when was the last time this book was taken out? Oh, 1984. Is it really relevant? We need shelf space. Oh, I know, I know Everybody's into molecular gastronomy. Now, how do I get foams and bubbles and stuff in my food? So that's what's hot and popular now.
Speaker 1Well, I'm sorry, but I'd rather have a nice piece of fried chicken than I have a spoon full of foam.
Speaker 3Yeah, Maybe at some point someone will do the book called oh what could we call it? The Homesteaders Guide to Cooking Heritage Chicken.
Speaker 1There you go. That's a really good project for you and John.
Speaker 3My list is too long already.
Speaker 1Oh, come on, now Give it a try. Well, is there anything else you guys like to lay on us before we go?
Speaker 3Goodness, I wish we had audience for questions, but unless they ask us.
Speaker 1This would be a good show for that.
Speaker 3So well you got maybe no email, yeah, pre 1950s.
Speaker 1Like Mandy said, if you have a question or comment, we'd love to hear from you with a quick email and just let us know what it is.
Speaker 2But I do want to put out. I mentioned a document, stela culinary dot com. It's called the science behind brining. So if you go to stela culinary dot com, slash brine just type that in. S-t-e-l-l-a, s-t-e-l-l-a, culinary C-U-L-I-N-A-R-Y dot com slash brine. They've got a great video by Jacob Burton who explains it very, very well and they go into a lot of the different science behind osmosis and air diffusion and salt diffusion and levels and I highly recommend that document. It's all there in one place and it's described better than I can hear.
Speaker 1Excellent advice, john. I appreciate that as soon as we stop recording I'm probably going to go look that rascal up.
Speaker 3Yeah, I probably will too.
Speaker 1So until next time, we thank you for joining us and we hope you enjoy your birds and have fun with them. And now, after this show, maybe you cook up one or two. I don't know why, but-.
Speaker 3Go out there and find the weakest link. There you go.
Speaker 2You got to eat them, to save them when you're breeding here in this poultry.
Speaker 1Thank you for joining us this week and, before you go, make sure you subscribe to our podcast so you can receive new episodes right when they're released, and they're released every Tuesday. If you're enjoying this podcast, we'd like to ask you to drop us an email at poultrykeeperspodcast at gmailcom and share your thoughts about the show. Thank you again for joining us for this episode of the poultrykeepers podcast. We'll see you next week. Thank you so much for being here.
