(no subject)

[flemmings]

Up here the supermarkets have something called a New York chicken, generally a 'soup chicken' but sometimes a roaster. It's usually split in half and looks weird, even for a chicken. I assume with the soup chickens that the guts are intact, is why all the weird stuff, but even the skin looks funny. Age?

Googling reveals nothing about New York chickens as a breed. Anyone know anything?

Comments

[chomiji]

The only thing I can find is several articles on numbers of people in NYC raising chickens in their backyards. But if the supermarkets in general in your area have these as a typical offering, I can't imagine that they're all leftover egg chickens from NYC backyard operations.

BTW, I come from a traditional chicken-soup-making family (I'm the grandchild of Eastern European immigrants), and we never put guts in the stock. My mother would fry up and eat separately the interior bits she found appealing.

Older chickens - such as "retired" egg-laying chickens - would indeed look leggy and scraggly and big compared with the young pullets usually sold as eating chickens in most places in the U.S. and Canada. But I'm used to seeing them referred to as "stewing hens" (even if they are actually roosters sometimes).

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I can't think of anyone who puts guts in the stock. Ruins the stock. Maybe I shall ask one of the butchers there, if I can ever find one around.

[cesmith.livejournal.com]

I'm from New York and I've never heard of a 'New York Chicken'. Also, in our chickens the innards ( The heart and gizzard that is.) are usually packaged separately, and placed back into the body cavity. The neck is placed there too, but loose. Usually older chickens have thicker, yellower skin.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

That's the usual way of it up here-- heart and gizzard for chickens (maybe), heart gizzard and liver for turkeys. These guys-- as I say, they look far too messy to be one of those tidy roasting chickens.