Rooster Soup

~ This article first appeared in The Leader-Vindicator newspaper. ~

Their combs told the whole story.  Even at a young age, three of our four chicks had pronounced combs and wattles that suggested one thing: Roosters.

“Maybe I’m wrong,” I thought.  “Maybe they’re just a different breed.”

Then they crowed.  The first time a little rooster puffs up and gives a holler to the sky it sounds like a fox being electrocuted while drowning.  My mom was visiting and grabbed the children: “What’s going on?! Something is dying up there!”

 “Nothing is dying, Mom, except my aspirations to enter the egg business,” I responded.  We officially had a rooster problem.

When life hands you lemons, you make lemonade.  After pondering the situation I decided I didn’t have a problem at all; I had an opportunity.  I can eat the roosters.

Never one to keep anything to myself, I immediately changed my tune from Egg Baron to Meat Maniac and told everyone within earshot that I had a little flock going that I intended to butcher.  Everyone responded without hesitation that roosters taste terrible.

Crap.

I carry with me stories handed down through the family of Sunday dinners at the farm.  The whole gang would gather and a couple of the older boys were in charge of catching and killing a chicken for the soup.  Surely, I reasoned, there was a rooster in the bunch.  It defies logic to assume that all of the eggs hatching on the farm were females, and it also seems unreasonable that the hatched roosters either grew to maturity to flog the farmers or were shot and wasted; this was a family coming out of the Depression and the folks didn’t even waste a shoebox. 

The boys who killed the chickens are our older generation now, and I grilled them on the Sunday ritual.  Did they eat the roosters?  Were they terrible?  General consensus remains that Grandma’s soup was fantastic and nobody remembers if the chickens were roosters or not.  Net gain of zero in the information department.

Sometimes the best way to answer a question is to answer it for yourself.  I decided to press on with my plan and poured feed to the growing birds, reasoning that a fat rooster would taste better than a skinny bird.  Henry and I diligently kept the flock on fresh pasture to ensure ample lush grass and grasshoppers.  While we tended them, I explained over and over that we were going to eat the roosters; the hens would remain (we had purchased more to supplement the flock). 

At the request of my family I agreed to spare the four-year-old from butchering day and thus arranged to do it while Henry was at preschool.  I had a two hour window on a chilly Tuesday morning to do something I had never done before: Convert a live bird into a meal-ready carcass.  Yee Haw.

To be completely honest, I enjoyed the process.  It took 35 years, but I had actually raised, killed, and cleaned some real sustenance; something much more substantial than a garden squash and cucumbers.  Everything went very smoothly considering that I had practiced only once on one bird at a friend’s farm a month prior to chicken-o-rama in my own back yard.  My biggest take-away is that I appreciate the need for extremely sharp knives.

I had three carcasses to show Henry when he got home.  After his inspection we put them in a five gallon pot with some squash and fresh herbs to start simmering.  By evening it was time to answer my burning question: Does rooster soup taste terrible?

It’s quite good, and I’m not saying that through gritted teeth in a desperate attempt to convince myself.  Fat in the broth is a rich, creamy yellow but does not carry a pungent gamey flavor.  And the meat is extremely tender with a mild taste that is very satisfying on a cold day.  We stored enough broth from our three birds to last for months, and on top of that we have some meaty chicken soup starter that will be delicious when the snow flies.  Between the garden, the apples, the walnuts, and the chickens, I can say we’re going to be awfully happy with our dining over the winter.  I’ve been sleeping with a sense of accomplishment recently.

The Rooster Soup breakthrough of 2022 is something I’ll remember.  Certainly this will make chick purchases in the future less daunting, as I will gladly accept less expensive straight-run batches of both boys and girls.  Maybe we can bring back the Sunday dinner tradition and train our kids to kill the birds while we sit on the porch anticipating a meal.  Even my wife is a fan, admitting to her coworkers she’s glad that the most dramatic thing in her life is a crazed husband killing chickens behind the shed instead of reality-TV inspired shenanigans that seem to plague other couples.  Put one in the plus column for this guy.

I can’t wait until next season.