Pobre Gallina

Our friends Glenda and Giovanni came over for dinner this weekend, like they have many times before. We usually cook Honduran food, with them as head chefs and us running around as the sous chefs. Its fun! BUT, this past time Glenda got a glint in her eye and wanted to do something a little different. She proposed bringing over a live chicken, killing and cleaning it and then making sopa de gallina (not to be confused with sopa de pollo).

This is something a city girl like me has never seen before, so it was quite the experience! We documented the event with photos, so here they are -

(Caution - vegetarians and animal lovers beware!)

Here is the gallina that Glenda brought over in a Maggi bag (Maggi makes those little bouillon cubes that are chicken or beef flavored, which is kind of ironic).

"Please don't eat me!"

Next you've got us holding the chicken, which Glenda made us do before killing it. Shortly after it pooped on our floor.

Then Glenda did the actually killing. Everyone was too "chicken" to do the killing themselves (including her husband Giovanni). Glenda is a pretty tough lady!

To kill it, you've got to swing it around by the neck til you break it.

Next, we had to use hot water to pluck off the feathers as fast as you can. This bucket is also a laundry bucket I use, so with the blood and feathers, it was sort of freaky.

To get the rest of the feathers off, we lit some newspapers on fire and held it over the fire. In this picture the chicken almost looks fake!

(Notice the bloody cutting board and machete in the background. Nice!)

The cleaning and cutting:

And finally, the meal. Javi convinced them to make fried chicken, with mashed potatoes, gravy and corn (made by us) instead of soup. Well, we also made a broth soup with the chicken bones.

Man, this chicken was REALLY tough and neither of us could hardly find a bite of meat on the whole thing. But it was a skinny little chicken, not like those fat, caged chickens that end up at our supermarkets. We left a lot of "meat" on there after a good effort at eating it (I mostly got tendens and super super tough meat) but Giovanni and Glenda ate that stuff down to the bone. Later, someone at work told me you are supposed to leave it for a day so it gets softer, but I don't think there was hardly any meat to even get soft.

All and all it was pretty fun (minus the actual meal) and definitely one of those new experiences for us!