Broiler

“ These birds being unfastened, and ready at ten or twelve weeks, give a quick turnover with less expense and risk than older fatted birds; and this peculiar demand has largely dominated American poultry-farming, a great deal of which runs in the direction of great “broiler-plants” solely devoted to the hatching and rearing of these broilers, while large “brooder-houses,” similar to those used in that business, are prevalent on more miscellaneous farms. ”

“ Where the fish is very thick, this is a good plan. If the fish is taken from the broiler to be put into the oven, it should be slipped on to a tin sheet, that it may slide easily into the platter at serving time; for nothing so mars a dish of fish as to have it come to the table broken. In broiling, the inside should be exposed to the fire first, and then the skin. ”

“ Wash and wipe fish; grease a wire broiler with clarified butter, lard, or pork fat. Season fish with salt and pepper, place on greased broiler and broil over clear fire, turning every five seconds. If the fish is a thick one, hold at quite a distance from fire until fish is cooked through, then hold nearer embers to brown. Separate, first skin side, then flesh side, with sharp knife from the broiler. Remove to hot platter, butter, garnish and serve. ”

“ Over the coals.—Put the meat between the hot greased wires of a broiler. Place over a very hot, clear fire. Turn the broiler every ten seconds. Beef one inch thick cooks rare in eight minutes.
(2) Pan Broiling.—Heat a frying-pan smoking hot. Lay the meat in flat; turn constantly until seared, then frequently, as in broiling, but do not pierce the muscle part with a fork. Beef one inch thick cooks rare in ten minutes.
3. Boiling:
Cover the meat with boiling water. ”

“ One is the development of poultry fattening and crate feeding in this country. This has resulted in supplying the consumer with choice chicken-flesh that can be produced more economically than broilers. Formerly it was a case of eating old hen—rooster, age unknown, or broilers—now we have capon, roaster, crate-fattened chickens and green ducks, all rivals for the place formerly occupied exclusively by the broiler. ”

“ Many people who had been through several unsatisfactory ventures in poultry keeping thought that they saw in this the one sure road to wealth, and began to make plans to grow broilers in large quantities. Besides these business ventures there were countless small ones, sometimes conducted under the most unsuitable conditions. People tried to grow broilers in living rooms, in attics, in all sorts of unheated outbuildings, and in house cellars to which the daylight hardly penetrated. ”

“ As you might expect, the first morning sound is the crowing of the roosters, and let me tell you that it is no trifling sound on the farm at present. Between thirty and forty broilers are practising crowing and there seems to be a very sharp rivalry among them. Some of the older ones can crow almost as lustily as the father of the flock, while a lot of young fellows cannot manage anything better than a hasty mixture of a squeak and a squawk. ”

“ Feed it three times a day—9:00 A. M., 12:00 M. and 3:00 P. M. The last two weeks before killing, omit all the dry grain; feed nothing but mash, made as before, only as soft as possible without being sloppy. Feed four times a day all they will eat in ten minutes, but on no account leave food before them longer than that, or they will become satiated. Birds pushed along should be in fine condition for market when from ten to twelve weeks old.
Our broilers are never given water to drink, but always scalded milk. ”

“ Most of them operated in a very small way, taking up this work simply for occupation when they had nothing else to do. Many were gardeners who had just about enough slack time, after the harvest of one year was over, to hatch and grow one lot of broilers before beginning their regular spring work. ”

“ Rub the wire broiler with some of the fat, so that the chops will not stick. Lay in the chops and put over a clear, red fire without flame, and toast one side first and then the other; do this till they are brown. Lay on a hot platter, and dust both sides with salt and a tiny bit of pepper. Put bits of lemon and parsley around, and send to the table hot.
Panned Chops
If the fire is not clear so that you cannot broil the chops, you must pan them. Take a frying-pan and make it very hot indeed ”

“ This is seldom excelled in, though it appears simple, and is of general utility; for few like to dine on cold meat, and none dislike a broil. There is no economy in broiling, but such meat, poultry, or game, as cannot be hashed with advantage, had best be broiled. ”

“ The method of broiling in the case of poultry of all kinds does not differ in any way from the same method applied to cuts of meat. Since broiling is a rapid method of cookery and heat is applied at a high temperature, it is necessary that the poultry chosen for broiling be young and tender and have a comparatively small amount of meat on the bones.
Broiled poultry is not an economical dish, neither is it one in which the greatest possible amount of flavor is obtained, since, as in the case of the meat of animals used for food, the flavor develops with the age of the birds. ”

“ Then chop, mix with the pounded boiled livers of the chickens, and one-sixth as much bread-crumbs as you have meat. Season. Have ready, cleaned and washed, a pair of nice chickens. Fill with this force-meat. Cover the breasts and sides with thin slices of fat salt pork; put into a dripping-pan; pour about them a large cupful of boiling water, and roast—basting often—one hour. Take off the pork; lay it in the gravy, and dredge the fowls with flour. As this browns, baste well, with butter once, three times with gravy. Take up and keep hot while you strain; cool, skim and thicken the gravy. ”

“ We must take the principles as granted, and apply them to an examination of the different substances usually employed in poultry feeding.
Grain forms the staple food of poultry, the varieties used being generally either barley, oats, wheat, Indian corn, or rice.
Barley is perhaps more frequently used than any other grain; it is better relished by fowls than oats, and its first cost is considerably below that of wheat. It contains from ten to eleven pounds of flesh-forming, sixty of starchy substances, and two to three of oil or fat in every hundred. ”

“ Another way is to sprinkle about a teaspoonful of chopped eschalots, or onions, over them whilst being sautéd; this materially changes the flavor, and meets the approbation of many.
For the cooking of mutton chops, steaks, cutlets, broiled fowl, broiled bones, or remnants of poultry or game, I must refer you to where they are given as receipts for the dinner-table.
31. Bacon and Ham, how to choose both fit for broiling.—Ham for broiling ought not to be too old or too dry, it would perhaps eat rank: nothing requires more care than broiling. ”

“ The ample supply of poultry, of all descriptions, fed in coops on the poop, and a small flock of sheep, perhaps from twenty-five to forty in number, maintained there on hay, &c. enable the captain, for the most part, to exhibit fresh meat, of some sort, every day; which added to abundance of prime beef and pork for his use, together with tongues, pickles, sauces of all kinds, potatoes, rice, pastry, olives, &c. &c. form a tout ensemble, where even the most dainty may find something acceptable to the palate. ”

“ The quantity of the dinner is answerable to the space which it is to cover: it generally consists of barley broth, or cock-a-leeky, boiled fowls, roasted ducks, joints of meat, sheep’s heads, oat and barley cakes, butter, and cheese; and in summer, frothed buttermilk, and slam. In the glens where goats are kept, haunches of these animals and roasted kids are also added to the feast. In the olden time, venison and all kinds of game, from the cappercalich to the grouse, were also furnished ”

“ The legs, for boiling, should not be black.—Pick nicely, wash, singe, truss, and flour it—put it into boiling water, and simmer gently. A middling fowl will take forty minutes. Serve with parsley and butter, oyster, lemon, liver, or celery sauce.
Neither parsley and butter, liver and parsley, celery, onion, caper, curry, nor other sauce should be poured over boiled meats, but sent up separately in a boat.
VEGETABLES.
All vegetables are best when fresh from the garden,—when dead they are useless. ”

“ Many and many a pleasant stroll they had among the poultry markets, where ducks and fowls, with necks unnaturally long, lay stretched out in pairs, ready for cooking; where there were speckled eggs in mossy baskets; white country sausages beyond impeachment by surviving cat or dog, or horse or donkey; new cheeses to any wild extent; live birds in coops and cages, looking much too big to be natural, in consequence of those receptacles being much too little; rabbits, alive and dead, innumerable. ”

“ You might have thought that cat and dog were paying good money for their board, the way they would mew and whine if a meal were late. I took very good care of the chickens, giving them plenty of warm food, so from about Christmas I got a dozen or more eggs each week. The cow, too, I fed well on ground feed and hay, with pumpkins and sometimes a few potatoes, and she gave me a fair quantity of milk all winter; and on the eggs and milk, together with potatoes, bacon, and salt codfish, I and my boarders managed to live tolerably well. ”

“ For instance, for twelve hens and a rooster in a wire cage you will have to give a first feed, say at six o'clock in the morning, of soft food—pollard and sweet potatoes is very good, or kitchen scraps consisting of potato peels, meat, waste bread, &c., all boiled together and mixed with enough pollard or meal of some kind to make it into a stiff dough, and allow for each bird a lump about the size of a cricket ball. Instead of scattering the soft food it should be put into a long narrow trough, so that all can get at it easily. ”

“ Roast Fowl
HOW TO SELECT
A chicken’s feet are soft and smooth and the end of the breastbone is flexible. Poultry that is to be carried over from the season of plenty is carefully selected and specially fed and prepared. Only the choicest corn and milk fed poultry is worthy of the skill and science displayed in modern cold storage. Scientific methods of packing fresh poultry, and shipment in the refrigerator cars originated by the packers, assures the most select fresh poultry in season. The undrawn poultry is preferred to the drawn poultry in the market. ”

“ In my treatise, I have shown that, in America, all the hogs and pigs, all the poultry of every sort, the greater part of the oxen, and a considerable part of the sheep, are fatted upon this corn; that it is the best food for horses; and that, when ground and dressed in various ways, it is used in bread, in puddings, in several other ways in families; and that, in short, it is the real staff of life, in all the countries where it is in common culture, and where the climate is hot. When used for poultry, the grain is rubbed off the cob. ”

“ Poultry should be well covered with white fat; if the bottom of the breast bone be gristly, it is young, but if it be a hard bone, it is an old one. Fish are judged by the liveliness of their eyes, and bright red of their gills. Dredge every thing with flour before it is put on to boil, and be sure to add salt to the water. ”

“ Day after day rising to feed the cattle, night after night bending over the sooty stove listening to the ceaseless voice of the wind as it beat and brushed, whispered, moaned, and piped or screamed around the windows and eaves—this was their life, varied with an occasional visit to the store or the post-office, or by the call of a neighbour. ”

“ All their Meat is this: Boil Barley in water, till it be tender, keep some so, and another parcel of it boil with Milk, and another with strong Ale. Let them be boiled as wheat that is creed. Use them different days for variety, to get the fowl appetite. Lay it in their trough, with some Brown-Sugar mingled with it. In the partition for Liquor, let them have water or strong Ale to drink. They will be very drunk and sleep; then eat again. Let a Candle stand all night over the Coop, and then they will eat much of the night. With this course they will be prodigiously fat in a fortnight. ”

“ The term Poultry, includes all the domesticated birds reared for the table—fowls, capons, turkeys, geese, ducks, and guinea fowl. Those who live in the country and intend to rear fowls for the consumption of their families, should have a poultry-yard, called by the French, a basse cour. It should be well sheltered, with a warm aspect, and sufficiently inclined to be always dry. It should also be supplied with sand or ashes, and there should be also a supply of running water, of which poultry are fond. A green patch of earth should be next to the poultry-yard, to allow the fowls free exercise. ”

“ One pair of full-grown fowls. 1⁄2 lb. salt pork cut into strips. 2 eggs. 1 cupful of milk. 2 tablespoonfuls of flour and the same of butter. 1 onion. Parsley, pepper and salt.
Joint the fowls neatly, and cut the back, neck, and breast apart from each other, the latter into two pieces. Lay them in salt water for half an hour. Put them into a pot with enough cold water to cover them, and the pork cut into thin strips. Cover and heat very slowly. Stew constantly, but never fast, for one hour after it comes to a boil, or until the chickens are tender. ”

“ Broiling, sometimes called grilling, is cooking by the direct action of fire brought almost into contact with the meat. The outer surface is burned or seared, the albumen hardened and the juices, which have a tendency to escape on the side turned from the heat, are retained in the meat by frequent turning. The fire for broiling must be very clear, intensely hot and high in the grate. The utensil required for broiling is a gridiron, the bars of which are greased and heated to prevent sticking and subsequent tearing of the meat. ”