Defeathering a chicken involves removing the feathers from the usable meat of the bird. Instead of painstakingly plucking each and every feather from the bird, boil your chicken first to make the feathers much easier to remove. After a quick dip in boiling water, the feathers can often be removed in clumps rather than one at a time. Add this to my Recipe Box.
Instructions
1. Bring water to a boil in a large pot. Use a pot big enough to hold the entire chicken.
2. Take the pot outside. Defeathering the bird outside keeps you from finding feathers in your kitchen days or weeks after plucking them. Some people also find the smell of the boiling chicken flesh unpleasant, so this alleviates any smells that may occur.
3. Put on your rubber gloves, and grab the chicken by the feet. Dunk the chicken headfirst into the pot of water.
4. Keep the chicken in the water for 2 to 3 minutes, using a long wooden spoon to keep the chicken from floating to the top. Remove the chicken from the pot.
5. Pluck the feathers from the chicken by grabbing several feathers at once and pulling with the natural grain. Pulling against the grain makes the process more difficult.
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