Raw Chicken Dare: Tales of a Quartered Chicken

It’s time for another installment of The Raw Chicken Dare inspired by Elizabeth at Flourish in Progress. (And if you aren’t reading her blog, you must go now. Don’t worry; I’ll wait here patiently for you).



Last raw chicken post, I included the backstory of my fear and left off with mastering the boneless, skinless chicken breasts that I split and trimmed all by myself. See, here’s the picture.

I'm no butcher, that's for sure.

Next step was to move on to a whole quartered chicken. I am just not yet ready to cook a whole bird and totally not ready to butcher it myself. So I thought this would be good practice.



Sunday, I went to the market. I approached the butcher counter and took a number. As my number became closer to being called, my heart was racing a bit faster and the ink on my list was starting to fade a bit due to my sweaty palms. An intoxicating cocktail of adrenaline and fear began coursing through my veins. I imagine this is what it must feel like standing at the open door of an airplane with a parachute pack on just before jumping. As the butcher (a former student, which totally threw me off a since I was having this super vulnerable moment in front of someone I used to teach) handed me my bag of chicken, I felt a tinge of victory for even making it this far.



When I got home, I put it in the fridge for the next day.



In my mind, I planned this perfect moment to accomplish the next step of my goal: The Babes would be quietly watching TV while I had some time alone in the kitchen to oh-so-carefully prepare this chicken.



This was not the case.



Here is what my kitchen table (which is only feet away from the raw chicken) looked like:

Total Art Project Chaos!

Marie was working on a project, and not a low-maintenance-here’s-come-crayons-and-stickers-have-fun-project. I had to be involved and then Thomas had to have a project. They both needed my help, and before I knew it, that chicken needed to get in the oven if we wanted to eat before bath time.



I had planned to just place the bird into the pan without rinsing it, but it was slimy and *swallows uncomfortably* bloody. Ick.



So I rinsed the chicken off and bits of carcass and blood swirled around the drain. So ick.



But I couldn’t really focus on the ick factor because I had one Babe asking me to start his stickers and wanting to play with Elmer’s white glue while another Babe needed me to cut her paper to size for her Disney scrapbook that she wanted to bring in for show-and-tell on Friday. (Did I mention this chaos was just feet away from my raw chicken zone and that I prefer to work alone in the kitchen when dealing with raw meat of any kind?)



I managed to rinse the chicken and put it in the oven. It looked rather gross: its rubbery skin with random hairs on it from feathers.

This looks like a glamor shot of raw chicken.
Not at all how I remember it.

I disinfected the sink thoroughly, yet not obsessively. I didn’t have time. The Totally Art Project Chaos demanded my attention, and I needed to prepare the rest of dinner which included some roasted yellow Yukon potatoes, steamed broccoli, and sautéed Swiss chard.



An hour later, I took the chicken out, checked the temperature (180 degrees), and let it rest.

Looks delish!

I put in on the table

I’m not a food stylist, but I think that looks like it could belong
on the pages of Whole Living magazine, if you ask me.

Harrington said that this was arguably the best chicken he had ever tasted. I knew he must have been telling the truth because he did not put hot sauce nor BBQ sauce to dip the simply seasoned chicken.



SUCCESS!



In fact, I am not sure if I ever want to go back to the boneless, skinless breasts again. There is something too magical and satisfying about eating food and having it taste so delicious and simple . . . how it was intended to taste before the era of processed foods.



And speaking of success and goals, I would also like to mention that this is post 199. I can’t believe that I am one post away from 200! I’m pretty excited about that.  I have a fun announcement about how I plan to celebrate this milestone, so stay tuned for that!



Are you working on any personal goals? Have you accomplished one that you are proud of? I’d love to hear all about it!