My first chicken.....

Tuesday for language class, we cooked with our maes (my mae was working, so my Irma came).  They showed us how to make a Mozambique dish while we made them an American dish.  We made for them the very American dish: chicken tacos. 

Many of you have heard stories about having to kill your own chicken here in Africa, and today was the first day I witnessed this process.  I did not have the heart nor the guts to take the chicken’s life myself, and let my friend Anna do the deed (she had already done it a few times before with her mae.)

DISCLAIMER: STOP READING NOW IF YOU DON’T LIKE BLOOD or goriness or animal cruelty or if you would like to continue thinking that chicken always comes from the grocery store, nicely plucked and packaged.  This is definitely not something for the faint of heart…..

So you choose to keep reading? You asked for it, so here’s how it’s done. 

You lay the live chicken on its side on the ground, its wings together behind its back then proceed to hold it down by stepping on its wings with your foot and holding down its feet with your other foot.  The chicken does not fight or even move really, like it knows its inevitable fate and is in a sort of trance state (the chicken actually moves more when it is “dead”/dying). 

Then you take the knife and slice the chicken’s head off, just like that.  (Side note: The knives here are typically not the sharpest.  As a result, rather than slice in a quick fluid motion, one must sort of saw back and forth, somewhat hacking at the chicken’s neck, trying to be “humane” and do it as quick as possible.  And if the knife is too dull to make it all the way through the chicken’s neck, you grasp around the cut part  and bend it open so that the blood can flow out as the chicken dies slowly.)  The blood squirted all over Anna’s foot (she was wearing sandals), yet she just kept cutting through that chicken’s neck, trying to go quickly as it was clearly still alive with twitching feet. 

Once the head is fully cut off, the legs continue to kick and the eyes still move around, the beak even opening and closing as the decapitated head lies there on the dirt.  This lasted for at least a few minutes, maybe even longer, probably shorter but feeling longer.  Gives a whole new perspective on the idiom “running around like a chicken with its head cut off”.  Thank goodness this chicken wasn’t running around though, but those legs continued to twitch and the blood continued to spurt out.

And then the chicken finally stops breathing and the blood stops flowing and now it is time to pluck it.  You put the chicken into a bowl and pour boiling water over it and then just pluck out those feathers.  (I swear, the chest still moved up and down as we plucked this chicken.)  With four of us doing it, the plucking went fairly quickly, like 10 minutes or so. 

Then Dylan’s mae proceeded to separate the chicken parts.  First, simply cutting off the feet, then the wings, then we were in for an anatomy lesson.  She uncovered basically the entire organ system of the chicken: liver, stomach, intestines, lungs, unrecognizable parts, just sitting there in the bowl with the feet, legs, wings, etc.  I’m pretty sure they use almost all parts of the chicken at some point as typically nothing is wasted here, but I have never been served the organs, at least not that I know of…  I’m still not sure why, but she also inverted the butt part of the chicken, which yes contained poop, and removed the inner lining (the poopy part), saving the rest.  She then braided the intestines. 

IF YOU STOPPED READING BEFORE, YOU CAN CONTINUE NOW.  NO MORE BLOOD OR GORE.

Now it was time to make our tacos.  Dylan separated out the meat part of the chicken from the other organs and body parts while I diced onion, tomato, garlic, green pepper, and lettuce and Anna made the tortilla dough.  None of us had made our own tortillas before, but it actually all turned out really good.  I fried the dough and formed them into taco shell shapes and then demonstrated how to assemble the taco.  The maes and our professors seemed very hesitant, but quickly said how good it was and went back for seconds and thirds.  The maes made a leafy dish with coconut and almond milk and xima (corn meal) and rice.  Made for a delicious lunch! 

Just something you might remember next time you go to the grocery store to buy your chicken….