a baptism by fryer

In our meat share this month, we and the Daigles divided our delivery of two (whole) mini chickens, some beef steaks, pork shoulder, beef patties, and a dozen eggs. A few nights ago, TK and I decided to grill up our whole fryer which is, essentially, a chicken that is butchered around eight weeks old. Cute right?

Well, not for long. In our attempt to cut up our bird, we realized early on that we had no clue what the heck we were doing. Our inexperience with meat - an entire body of meat, complete with bones, skin, and other things I don't even have the first clue about - was evident and humbling. I mean, I've prepared a Thanksgiving turkey a time or two, but this, for some reason was a new experience. One doesn't need to ponder the composition of a chicken's body or meat content when they buy boneless, skinless chicken breast from the store, packaged and ready to cook.

We commandeered what meat we could from this baby, doused it in some wing sauce, and put it on the grill. Served up with a salad made of mostly CSA veggies, we tasted - for the first time I can recall - chicken from a local farm, completely free range and unprocessed. I was wary of and didn't want to convince myself that the meat would taste better, just because I had been told and had read that it was supposed to. But chickens who live in open space, and are not fed garbage, or aren't "abused" - essentially "happy" chickens - must taste better, right?

RIGHT! It was scrumptious! This bird honestly tasted different from other chicken I've tasted before...more meaty, if you can imagine, more substance. We did feel a little like scavengers, pulling every last morsel off the bones after having cluelessly quartered it. Hopefully our next installment will include a larger chicken with more breast meat so that we can feast for a little longer. For now though, I am thankful for the meal this little whole fryer provided us.

[This post submitted by Sarah]