Chicken kitchen menu

Okay so now I have all this chicken. I’m dubious about what it will taste like – will it be the same as the supermarket or not? I started hunting down chicken recipes with a passion. In South Africa, there is a typical meal called Chicken a la King. It’s yummy and after much thought, I settled on this one. This would be our first meal made from 100% our own birds. I started by chopping up the garlic, onions and herbs and frying them. After pre- boiling the chicken and removing the meat from the bone, I added the mushrooms, capsicums and white sauce to the onion and chicken mix. Finally ready, I served the meal with rice and a salad. I remember that night clearly. It was a defining moment for me. We all sat around the table staring at our plates. There is an old saying in South Africa which comes from the Afrikaans language. “ek eet met lang tande” It means to eat very unenthusiastically, hesitantly or without enjoyment. This saying describes how that meal went to . What would it taste like? Would we survive? Would we enjoy it? I’d noticed the colour of the meat while cooking was different and that bugged me. It was much darker meat and had less fat on it. I was to learn later that it had everything to do with the birds free ranging. After the first mouth fill, I relaxed a bit. It tasted good. A little stringy though, which I didn’t like but overall a decent meal. On other occasions, I tried fried chicken and chicken stew and came to the conclusion that the age these birds were slaughtered at, was too old. The fried chicken and roast chicken were not good and the meat was tough. It was undisputed that Spot would get any future roosters that landed up in the kitchen and they would not end up on the dining room table. I have future plans to raise meat birds and compare the difference to this experience. But that’s another story for another time.