Ever since I learned the traditional
way to cook an old chicken, I’ve been much more
enthusiastic when a tough old bird needs to be culled from the
flock.  My cooking method produces delicious flesh, but you still
need to decide what to do with the meat to turn it into a meal.



Soup is my favorite use
for an old hen.  If you take the meat off the carcass once it’s
tender, stew the bones for a few more hours, then pour off the broth,
you have the base for a delicious chicken soup.  Add some onions,
garlic, parsley, salt, and pepper to the broth and cook for an hour,
then add potatoes, carrots, and the cut up meat and simmer until the
vegetables are tender.  Or, in the summer, turn the broth into the
base for harvest
catch-all soup.



But it’s simply not the
right time of year for soup.  We ate the last of our fall carrots
a few weeks ago and the new ones are only a few inches tall in the
garden.  Similarly, last year’s parsley is going to seed, and the
new herbs aren’t big enough to pick.  So I had to find a more
creative use for our old
rooster.



Coq au vin is the only recipe
that’s easy to find on the internet and that starts with an old
chicken.  I’ve yet to try it — I’m sure coq au vin is delicious,
but the lengthy prepration looks pretty daunting.  Instead, I
opted to turn the flesh from our rooster into a very simple chicken
salad by adding a cup of Hollywood
Sun-dried Tomatoes
and an apple, then serving the concoction over baby lettuce from the
garden with a bit of parmesan grated on top.  Add roast asparagus
and fresh strawberries on the side (all from the garden) and we had a
feast.



What’s your favorite way
to turn an old hen or rooster into a delicious meal?