rich dark meat of a three-year-old rooster

To the someone who has never eaten an honest-to-goodness three-year-old rooster, a bird that has spent its entire life sprinting nonstop to mount a hen on the far side of the muscadines, house, barn, it is hard to convey the rich flavor and amazing texture the bird offers when finally butchered. The gulf between the old-fashioned chicken and the modern industrial one may be why many are confused when asked if they want dark or white meat at the neighborhood picnic. It is all white meat, right? Not so with that older bird. The dark is dark, and the white is, well, kind of white.

As someone who cooks often, I frequently find myself reverse-engineering recipes to account for using “real” ingredients. Unless your cookbooks date back, say, 50 years, they inevitably call for quicker cooking times than are required for “traditional” meats. For example, when offering poultry, grocery stores used to provide a choice of “fryer,” a young chicken intended to be fried, and “stewing hen,” an older bird that needed extra time and attention. Today, they are all fryers: they are butchered at seven weeks and cooked in nanoseconds, resulting in a tasteless meat option, perfect for the infantilized tastebuds of a population raised on chicken fingers and an accompanying dip built on HFCS (high-fructose corn syrup) and unrecognizable ingredients.

Earlier this week on the farm, we finally got around to butchering a batch of roosters we’d been fattening, eight of them in all, ranging from 12-36 months. I selected the oldest for one of our favorite dishes, the Southwest Louisiana–style gumbo on which I grew up. (The rooster could have also been used for any dish that requires a low and slow cooking method: coq au vin, chicken and dumplings….) I thawed the bird for four days prior to preparing, a technique that is useful in breaking down the tough muscle fiber.

Yesterday morning I cut up the old boy into four cuts, plus the back and neck, and placed everything in a stockpot with 6-8 quarts of water. I added a little salt, black pepper, and dried thyme. The goal was not to season for the final dish, just to add some flavor to the resulting stock. I brought the water to a slow boil, then covered the pot and reduced the heat to a simmer for about four hours. Then I went outside and worked on the farm.

Early afternoon I removed the stock from the heat, pulling the tender meat out of the pot and setting it aside in a colander to drain and cool. (Remove the meat later from the bones.)

Once done, I did the prep work for the rest of the gumbo. (It helps to have everything in place before making the roux — a flour-and-fat combo cooked down to thicken the stock — as it’s a task that needs your complete attention.)

Ingredients:

1 rooster
1 large onion, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped
1-2 bunches green onions, green parts chopped
1 bunch parsley, chopped
1 ½ lbs. “country” pork sausage*, cut in pieces (This is link sausage, not loose breakfast sausage)
Salt, black pepper, cayenne powder, gumbo filé (ground sassafras leaves)
Roux (See below)

*Beware of products masquerading as Louisiana–style “andouille.” Andouille is a New Orleans–based sausage, not the country sausage favored in the Cajun areas of the state. The latter is more coarsely ground and has more fat. A good smoked Polish wedding sausage substitutes in a pinch.

Preparing the roux

Note: No, there is no okra in this dish. And there isn’t any celery in my recipe, which some may see as a sacrilege. Feel free to add the latter. Just don’t let me know if you use the former.

Making the roux:

¾ C oil
1 C flour

• Put the oil into a large cast iron pot or skillet over medium heat. When hot, stir in the flour and continue to stir until it turns a deep brown (25 -45 minutes). When I say “stir,” I mean STIR (See pics). Many instructions tell you to aim for a peanut butter color. They are flat out wrong. You want the roux to be a dark chocolate … dark enough that given another two minutes, it is ruined.
  

  the peanut butter stage

Making the gumbo:

• Sauté the onion and bell pepper in the roux until wilted, add the sausage, and stir for another few minutes. Note: If you don’t have a large cast iron pot, this is the time to transfer the roux and wilted veggies to a large stainless pot.
• Add a quart of cold water to the mixture. Note: Always start with cold water, then add hot water (or stock) as needed along the way.
• Add 2-3 quarts of the chicken stock. Bring to a simmer, then add the meat from the stewed rooster.
• Add a little salt and pepper and a teaspoon of cayenne. (Cajun food is not unnecessarily spicy, but it should have some heat.)
• Let the ingredients simmer on low for a few hours, stirring occasionally.
• Taste and adjust seasoning, adding more stock if needed.
• Add half the onion tops and parsley to the gumbo 15 minutes before serving. Set the remainder out in bowls as a garnish.
• Serve over rice.
• Set out the gumbo filé as a condiment.
  

  the dark chocolate stage

Enjoy. And remember, do not be afraid of flavor.

P.S. — Freeze the remainder of the chicken stock. Put the bones in a crockpot, cover with water, and make more stock.

………………………………………………

the finished dish

Reading this weekend: Democracy in America (A. Tocqueville). It is surprisingly readable and interesting. My 100-year-old aunt frequently quotes from it.