Scalding, Plucking, and Evisceration

Scalding

Feathers are held tight in the skin. A short dunk in hot water loosens them.

• Kansas State: water at 140 °F, the bird moved up and down in it for 30 to 40 seconds so the water penetrates the feathers; a little dish detergent helps it penetrate ¹.
• Maryland: water at 130-160 °F for about 1-1/2 minutes ².

The difference is the usual trade-off: hotter is faster but riskier. Test the bird, not the clock: when a wing or tail feather pulls out easily, it’s done. If the water is too hot, the skin cooks slightly and tears easily in plucking ¹. Keep a thermometer in the pot and add hot or cold water to hold the temperature as you work through birds.

Plucking

• By hand: hang the bird or lay it on a table and rub the feathers off in handfuls, working against the grain on the body and pulling the wing and tail feathers individually ¹.
• By machine: a drum (tub) plucker with rubber fingers spins a scalded bird clean in under a minute ¹. Worth renting or borrowing if you do more than a handful of birds.
• Pin hairs: mature chickens and turkeys may have a few hair-like feathers; singe them off with an open flame. Most meat breeds have very few ¹.

Then put the bird straight into an icy slush until all the birds are plucked. Cold slows bacteria, and keeping the carcass wet stops the skin from drying and browning ¹.

Evisceration

Take each bird out of the slush and work on a clean, flat, solid surface ¹:

1. Feet and head: cut off the feet at the hock joint and remove the head.
2. Neck: slit the skin of the neck from the head end to the body, and pull out the windpipe and crop (the food pouch at the base of the neck).
3. Oil gland: cut out the oil gland on top of the tail with a scoop-shaped cut.
4. Open the cavity: make a careful, shallow cut through the skin below the keel and around the vent, without cutting into the intestines.
5. Viscera: reach in along the inside of the breastbone and gently pull the intestines, gizzard, heart, and liver toward you, keeping the vent attached so the intestine comes out in one piece.
6. Lungs: they’re embedded between the ribs along the backbone; scrape them out with your fingers ¹.
7. Rinse the carcass inside and out with clean, cold water ¹.

Keep the gall bladder intact: the small green sac on the liver holds bile that turns any meat it touches bitter. Cut it away from the liver with a margin of liver around it.

Giblets: clean and rinse the gizzard (split it and peel out the tough lining), liver, and heart ¹. Chill them separately.

Chilling

Put the cleaned carcasses in ice water and bring them down to 40 °F ¹. Maryland’s rule is the same: wash thoroughly and chill promptly below 40 °F ². Then drain them before cutting up or packaging (next lesson).

Try it

For your first birds, work slowly with the evisceration diagram on the table next to you. Process two birds, and before cutting the second, find each organ in the first: crop, gizzard, liver and gall bladder, heart, lungs, oil gland.

What to take from this

Scald at about 140 °F for 30-40 seconds (or 130-160 °F for up to a minute and a half) until the wing feathers pull out easily; hotter water tears the skin. Pluck by hand or in a drum plucker, singe pin hairs, and hold birds in icy slush. Eviscerate on a clean table: feet and head off, crop and windpipe out through the neck, oil gland out, a shallow cut around the vent, viscera pulled gently with the gall bladder intact, lungs scraped out. Rinse and chill to 40 °F.