[Sca-cooks] chicken plucking

[Olwen the Odd]

>Olwen said:
> > >Ah, well, I hate doing poultry- I hate plucking the
> > >things ;-)
> > >
> > >Phlip
> >
> > Hey Phlip, I'm really good with an automatic chicken plucker!  I can get
>off
> > over 95 percent of the feathers without breaking skin!  Hate doing it by
> > hand though.
>
>So, how does a one-at-a-time automatic chicken plucker such as you
>mention work?
>
>What do you do if you don't have such a machine? And is this how
>it was done in period?
>
>What do you do with all the resulting feathers? What did they do
>with them in period? I guess you could stuff pillows with them,
>but I imagine there are other nicer feathers for this. But maybe
>that just determined who would buy such items stuffed with
>chicken feathers.
>
>Thanks,
>   Stefan

Stefan, I answered how it works in an email you haven't gotten to yet.  Is
it period?  No.  It's electric.

When doing in a bird, first you catch it (it's usually best to catch it and
put it in a holding place for a while and feed it the good stuff with lots
of water), then chop off it's head, then catch it again, gut it but do not
remove it's feet so you have a hand-hold, have a pot with heated water in it
and dunk the bird (this causes the skin to shrink back or something and the
feathers come out easier) then start plucking.

I don't know what they did with the feathers.  I suppose you could boil them
to rid them of the bugs and stuff and then use them for stuffing stuff.  I
never bothered.
Olwen

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