The brown ring on the page behind the corned venison turned out to be rust from some old iron lid, the shape of it burned into the paper like a brand. Under that stain the next recipe started plain enough, two words in Amos’s heavy hand: “OLD HEN,” and under it a drawing of a pot with three little lines coming off the top that I took for steam before I realized he’d drawn the feet of a chicken poking up over the rim. The rest of the page read like it had been written by a man in a hurry, and it smelled, faintly, of nothing at all anymore.
A young hen is for the skillet, but a hen that’s done laying is too tough to fry and too good to waste, full of flavor a broiler never earned. So the old ones went in the pot, low and long, until the bones let go and the bird fell to pieces, and what stayed in the pot was worth more than the meat that went in. This is the recipe Amos fed his kids through more than one hard winter, and it’s the one he wrote the most notes on, which tells you something about how often it ran.
Recipe No. 11: Old Hen (Stew and Broth)
Ingredients
- 1 old hen, a laying bird that’s done her job, 4 to 6 pounds
- Cold water to cover
- 1 tablespoon salt, more to taste at the end
- 1 onion, cut in half, skin and all if it’s clean
- 3 carrots, cut in big chunks
- 2 ribs celery, if you got it
- 2 bay leaves
- 6 whole peppercorns
- 2 cloves garlic, smashed
- For the stew: a handful of potatoes, cut up, and a few more carrots and an onion, chopped
- Flour or cornmeal if you want it thick
The Boil
Put the whole hen in a big pot and cover it with cold water by a good two inches. Drop in the salt, the halved onion, carrots, celery, bay leaves, peppercorns, and garlic. Bring it up to a boil, then back it way down to the lowest simmer it’ll hold, and put the lid on. An old hen asks for time the way a broiler asks for a hot pan, so let it go three to four hours, skimming the grey foam off the top now and then, until a leg twists clean and the meat is ready to fall off the bone.
Amos’s note, written along the side of the page: “the pot dont care how old she is. it only cares how long you leave her. rush a hen and youll be chewin boot.”
The Stew
Step 1 — Pull the bird. Fish the hen out of the pot and set it on a board to cool enough to handle. Strain the broth through a cloth or a clean rag into a second pot and set it aside. Pick every bit of meat off the bones while it’s still warm, because cold hen meat hides in the little corners and a man wastes half of it being lazy. Shred it with your fingers or two forks, and throw the skin and any loose fat back in the broth pot for flavor if you like.
Step 2 — Feed the pot. Put the strained broth back on the stove and drop in your potatoes, the chopped carrots, and the chopped onion. Cook them until the potatoes are soft, maybe twenty minutes, then slide the shredded hen back in to warm through.
Step 3 — Thicken or don’t. Amos liked it wet, so the kids could soak cornbread in it. If you want it thicker, stir a spoon of flour or cornmeal into a little cold broth in a cup until it’s smooth, then pour it in and let it bubble a few minutes. Taste it and add salt, because an old hen drinks up salt like it never got enough in her laying days.
Amos’s second note, jammed under the cornbread line: “save the broth fo you eat the stew. the broth is what gits a boy through the fever and the hen is what gits him out of bed to ask for more.”
What It Actually Tastes Like
A stew made from an old hen don’t look like much in the bowl, a pale broth and a pile of stringy dark meat, but it tastes like it’s been cooking since before you woke up, deep and chickeny in a way the store birds forgot how to be. The meat isn’t tender like a breast. It’s got a chew to it that wants a bite of potato and a spoonful of that broth, and by the second bowl a man wonders why he ever fried a chicken at all.
Practical Notes
- An old hen is a laying bird that’s stopped. You’ll know her by the tough legs and the yellow skin. If the only bird you can get is a store rotisserie, it’ll work in a pinch, but it won’t give you half the broth.
- Simmer, don’t boil it hard, or the broth goes cloudy and the meat goes dry. Low and lazy is the whole recipe.
- The broth alone is worth the trouble. Freeze what you don’t eat and you’ve got the base for a month of soups, and it’ll cure a cold faster than anything you bought.
- This is a fine recipe for wild birds too, an old grouse or a tough wild turkey hen done the same way. Just watch for shot if you or your dog put it there.
Amos’s last line, at the very bottom of the page, under a smear that might have been chicken fat: “a hen aint wild but a man that raised her knows her better than any deer he ever shot. feed her to yor kids and theyll outlive you.”
Next from the folder: the page after the old hen has a corner burned clean off, and what’s left of the top line reads “COOT” and something about mud. We’ll get there.
