How to cook a domestic rooster so that it is soft. Culinary portal Masterkok

Origin of the species and description

Photo: Rooster

All male Galliformes are called roosters. For example, a male partridge can be called a rooster, just like a male domestic chicken. In the everyday view, a rooster is precisely a domestic bird, which is distinguished by a comb, spurs and, as a rule, motley plumage.

Video: Rooster

Roosters, along with domestic cocks, are divided into the following types:

meat - produced for meat production, characterized by large size and high body weight;
egg - these include chickens, but there are also special roosters that fertilize a flock of hens;
fighting. Only roosters are used for this variety, since male domestic chickens are more aggressive than females. Fighting cocks are large in size but light in body weight. They are maneuverable, have long claws and spurs;
decorative - such roosters are bred as pets, and they are distinguished by some special characteristics - dwarfism, gigantism, special plumage, and so on;
vocal - roosters bred specifically for singing.

A rooster is an artificially bred bird obtained by crossing wild chickens, partridges and other birds. Roosters were bred as birds that are not afraid of people and quickly gain weight. Also, since ancient times, roosters have been valued as songbirds that herald the arrival of the morning sun with their crowing.

Vermicelli soup

Homemade rooster produces a rich, aromatic broth that serves as an excellent basis for preparing a variety of first courses. To feed your loved ones delicious noodle soup, you will need:

2.5 liters of clean water.
3 onions.
1 stalk celery.
1 rooster carcass weighing about 1.5 kg.
250 g vermicelli.
Salt, rosemary and bay leaf.

The cut and washed rooster is placed in a pan, filled with the required amount of water and sent to the fire. As soon as the liquid boils, add salt, coarsely chopped onion, rosemary, celery and bay leaf. After about an hour, the bird is separated from the bones and returned to the strained broth. Bring all this back to a boil, add vermicelli and cook for another ten minutes.

This rich filling soup will definitely appeal to anyone who considers himself a fan of Russian national cuisine. To cook aromatic cabbage soup from domestic rooster for dinner, you will need:

300 g white cabbage.
400 g rooster meat.
1 carrot.
1 sweet pepper.
1 red tomato.
2 onions.
4 potatoes.
Salt, water, oil, spices and herbs.

You need to start the process by preparing the broth. To do this, place peeled onions and pieces of washed meat in a saucepan with water. All this is put on fire and boiled, periodically removing the resulting scale. After some time, the onions are caught from the broth, and potato slices and shredded cabbage are sent in their place. At the next stage, future cabbage soup is seasoned with fried carrots, peppers and tomatoes, added salt, flavored with spices and brought to full readiness.

Appearance and features

Photo: What a rooster looks like

Due to the variety of breeds, roosters have variable appearance. But in general their constitution remains unchanged. This bird has long strong legs, with poorly developed wings, on which it is either incapable of flight or can fly for a short time. Roosters have a short but high neck, a small head and a distinct comb and “wattle” - leathery projections at the bottom of the beak.

Many roosters have a noticeable tail. The feathers on it are elongated and have a softer structure. Thanks to their tails, roosters can attract females, like peacocks. Most breeds of roosters have spurs - fingers set slightly higher than usual with sharp, strong claws. Roosters are larger and stronger than hens. They are also distinguished by the fact that they can sing loudly - crow. This is possible due to the special structure of the larynx of these birds.

Egg-breed roosters are distinguished by a large crest on their head, which is often colored a bright scarlet hue. This ridge is so large that it can fall to one side. Such roosters weigh up to three kg, and meat-and-egg roosters can reach four kg.

Interesting fact: Regardless of the size and feeding of the rooster, its meat is a dietary product.

Roosters of exclusively meat breeds can weigh up to five kg. These are breeding birds that often have difficulty walking on their feet because they cannot support their body weight. Meat roosters grow quickly, unlike egg breeds. There are also decorative roosters raised exclusively for exhibitions, competitions and amateur keeping.

For example:

Brahma roosters are very large laying hens that are distinguished by thick feathering on their legs. This plumage is similar to "pants";
curly roosters. The name speaks for itself - these roosters are distinguished by their curled hair, which forms real ringlets and curls;
Millefleur roosters. These are real beauties who can boast of colorful plumage. Their black tails, dotted with white symmetrical specks, are also luxurious;
paduan - roosters with a huge feather comb;
Oryol dwarf roosters are very similar in appearance to female partridges.

Vegetable soup

This tasty and easily digestible first course will certainly be appreciated by those who have not yet decided what to cook from a domestic rooster for lunch. To cook it, you will need:

200 g of young green peas.
400 g rooster.
7 potatoes.
1 carrot.
4 peas of allspice.
2 bay leaves.
Salt, water and herbs.

First you need to deal with the rooster. It is thoroughly washed, placed in a saucepan, filled with clean water and boiled, not forgetting to season with bay leaves and peppercorns. When the meat is almost ready, pour potato slices and carrot pieces into a common container. All this is boiled for twenty minutes, and then supplemented with salt, chopped herbs and young peas. A little less than a quarter of an hour later, the heat under the pan is turned off, and its contents are poured into plates.

Where does the rooster live?

Photo: Rooster in Russia

Roosters are exclusively domestic birds. Theoretically, they can live in warm climates in the wild, but they are unlikely to survive in such conditions. Roosters are not frost-resistant birds, and the fact that they cannot fly makes them vulnerable to all predators.

The majority of the rooster population of all species is kept on factory farms. Approximately 75 percent of meat comes from factory hens and roosters, and about 70 percent of eggs come from factory farms. A small part of these birds are kept by private breeders - in dachas, villages and home farms. An even smaller percentage are ornamental chickens and roosters kept at home.

Roosters are not at all picky about living conditions. The breeds of these birds are bred in such a way that it is enough for them to provide a minimum of living conditions. Meat breeds of roosters are often kept exclusively in cages, where they are provided with food until the birds grow up and go to slaughter.

Roosters in domestic households and on smaller farms are kept in more humane conditions. Roosters and hens are provided with chicken coops, in which the birds set up small nests, rest, or produce offspring if the breeds are egg-laying. Roosters also need green grass, for which there are grazing areas - fenced areas where the birds can safely browse the grass.

Aspic

This dish, which no feast is complete without, is a frozen clear broth with pieces of meat. To make jellied rooster yourself, you will need:

3 liters of clean water.
2 carrots.
3 onions.
6 cloves of garlic.
15 black peppercorns.
1 root celery.
1 rooster carcass weighing about 2 kg.
2 teaspoons salt.
2 tbsp. l. gelatin.

The washed poultry is cut into pieces, placed in a large pan, filled with water, put on the stove and cooked for about an hour and a half from the moment of boiling, not forgetting to remove the resulting foam. After the designated time has passed, peeled vegetables, roots and spices are added to it and cooking continues. After another hour and a half, the meat is removed from the pan, separated from the bones and placed in any suitable container. Add crushed garlic there and pour in the strained broth, in which the gelatin was previously dissolved. All this is cooled at room temperature, and then kept in the refrigerator for at least four hours.

What does a rooster eat?

Photo: Rooster bird

Ordinary roosters are practically omnivorous. They are indiscriminate eaters and are able to feed on both plant and animal food. When grazing freely, roosters eagerly peck at green young grass, pick up seeds, and dig up roots.

Roosters rake the ground with their paws, looking for the most delicious food. They can eat worms and insects, and can even chase lizards. Sometimes small mice become their prey. If a rooster catches large prey, he throws it up with his beak and cackles, inviting other chickens to feast on the meat.

Interesting fact: Roosters often attack poisonous snakes, which they kill with sharp claws and beaks, and then eat with pleasure.

Roosters do not need much water because they get most of their fluid from green grass. Roosters drink by putting their beaks into the water and throwing back their heads, thus swallowing it. Meat breeds of roosters are fattened using various nutritional supplements.

In general, roosters are fed the following components:

vegetables and fruits;
grain - oats, millet, barley, millet and so on;
bran;
eggshells crushed into powder are important for the growth of chicks;
Low-fat cow's milk can be added to dry food for a calcium supplement;
special vitamin complexes for farm birds.

Now you know what to feed the rooster. Let's see how it lives in its natural environment.

Stew

This product is canned heat-treated meat that is subject to long-term storage. It goes well with pasta, vegetables and other ingredients and serves as a universal basis for preparing hearty and tasty dishes. To make your own stew from domestic roosters, you will need:

600 g chicken fat.
5 kg of rooster meat.
6 bay leaves.
5 tsp. kitchen salt.
16 peas each of black and allspice.

First you need to deal with the fat. It is sent to any suitable pan and heated. As soon as everything is ready, pieces of the cut rooster are poured into a common container and simmered over low heat for four hours. Shortly before the process is completed, the contents of the pan are supplemented with salt, bay leaf, black and allspice. The finished stew is packaged in glass jars, closed and sterilized for about twenty minutes.

Features of character and lifestyle

Photo: Golden Rooster

Roosters are flocking birds. Like many galliformes, there is only one adult rooster in a flock, which has the right to mate with all the females, as well as several growing roosters. Adult roosters are expelled from the flock by the leader. If the owners of the flock do not seed them independently, then the weaker individuals will be constantly subject to pressure from the leader.

The rooster controls a certain number of hens. He looks for food for them, shares random prey, announces their daily routine - the chickens go together to sleep or to water. Roosters are not known for their docile nature - they are aggressive and lively birds, which is why they began to be used for bird fights.

Interesting fact: Fighting roosters always fight to the death.

Roosters are either indifferent or aggressive towards humans. These birds rarely show affection or interest in people. Most often, they seek to demonstrate their dominance by driving the stranger out of their territory.

Roosters and their flock of hens are territorial birds. They are not adapted to migration, so they prefer to always stay on one piece of land as long as it is able to feed them. Roosters move after fresh food. They spend winters comfortably in warm chicken coops.

Roosters are extremely thermophilic. They freeze quickly in the cold because they do not have any protective mechanisms against getting cold, unlike other birds such as partridges, pigeons or crows.

Roosters are also prone to molting, which occurs in late autumn - early winter. Their top layer of hard feathers falls off, in their place new feathers will grow by the next summer season. Roosters sleep with their heads hidden under their wings and standing on one leg.

Baked bird

This fragrant and beautiful dish of homemade rooster will fit perfectly into the holiday menu. It takes a little longer to prepare than the one for which a store-bought broiler is used, but the result will definitely justify the time spent. To make it in your own kitchen, you will need:

100 g sour cream.
1 rooster weighing about 2 kg.
5 apples.
5 cloves of garlic.
5 tbsp. l. soy sauce.
Salt, curry and Provençal herbs.

The plucked and gutted rooster is thoroughly washed, dried and rubbed with a mixture of sour cream, spices, garlic and soy sauce. After a couple of hours, the marinated carcass is stuffed with apple quarters, packed in a special sleeve and sent to the oven. Bake it at 200 °C for 120 minutes. Shortly before the process is completed, the sleeve is carefully cut so that the rooster has time to brown.

Social structure and reproduction

Photo: White Rooster

Chickens lay eggs whether they have a rooster or not. A rooster is needed only to produce chicks from eggs. Roosters guard their hens very jealously and can impregnate them every day, so these birds do not have a specific breeding season.

Roosters, especially young ones, have a moment of courtship. The roosters spread their wings, fluff their tails and begin to dance around the hen they like. Sometimes they may lower the wing a little. There may be several dancing roosters, but in the end only the leader will have the right to mate.

The leader does not allow other roosters to mate with his hens. He fights with them, and these fights often result in torn combs and broken beaks. Fatalities are also common, because in battle the rooster also uses sharp spurs on its legs.

During mating, the rooster grabs the hen's comb or neck feathers to maintain balance. He can trample up to ten laying hens a day, and the next day he can mate with the same hens.

Interesting fact: The oldest rooster was listed in the Guinness Book of Records - he lived for 16 years and died due to heart disease.

Roosters rarely live to old age - most often they are used for meat. Young cockerels hatched from eggs also rarely survive, since there can only be one adult and strong rooster in a flock. Roosters are bad fathers because they show no interest in their offspring. In total, roosters live from five to ten years, depending on the breed of bird.

Fertilization of eggs

The mature egg enters the oviduct, in the upper part of which the fertilization procedure takes place directly through the acrosome reaction: the upper part of the sperm penetrates through a special tubercle on the female gamete. His tail separates at the same time. During fertilization, several sperm penetrate the chicken egg at once, but only one merges with it.

Next, the egg is gradually coated with protein produced by special glands located in the walls of the oviduct. When moving forward, the so-called subshell membrane is formed on the future egg, and behind it is a dense shell, which is a compound of calcium carbonate. This substance is already produced in the lower part of the oviduct.

Natural enemies of the rooster

Photo: What a rooster looks like

Roosters do not live in the wild, so they have no natural enemies. Even the most common non-selective rooster would not survive in the wild, as they cannot fly or run fast, and their aggressive self-defense would not be enough to deter predators.

Roosters are susceptible to infectious diseases, as well as colds and fungi. You can determine the health of a rooster by the color of its comb.

Namely:

if the comb is red, bright scarlet or pink, the rooster is healthy;
if the comb is light pink, then its blood circulation is impaired, it is necessary to conduct an examination for diseases before the bird’s condition worsens;
if the comb is blue or white, the bird is seriously ill and will soon die.

Most often, rooster diseases do not spoil their meat in any way. The exception is salmonella, which can be found in both eggs and meat (much less frequently).

Roosters may also be susceptible to the following diseases:

tuberculosis - often chronic in many egg-laying chickens;
listeriosis, which begins with ordinary conjunctivitis;
pasteurellosis is a disease that disrupts the respiratory systems of birds;
Leptospirosis, which causes fever in roosters and reduces the ability to lay eggs in hens.

Roosters easily catch colds or infections from open wounds. Therefore, you need to carefully monitor the health of these lively birds.

What to cook from a young rooster

Rooster in Greek

small rooster - 1 piece (per one and a half kilos) vegetable oil - 1 cup potatoes - also one and a half kilos butter - 2-3 tbsp. onion (finely chopped) – 2 pcs. dry white wine - half a glass salt, pepper - to taste, cinnamon, cloves - to taste.

Pluck the rooster, gut it, wash it and cut it into pieces.

Dry it a little, roll the rooster pieces in flour.

Place oil in a frying pan and fry.

then pour vegetable oil into the pan, put onions and spices, lay out the pieces of rooster and, when they are still fried a little, pour in the wine.

then add a little water and leave to simmer for 15 minutes.

Rooster in wine

Rooster Butter – 2 tbsp. l. Vegetable oil – 1 tbsp. l. Lard – 100 g Champignons – 150 g Cognac – 100 g Onions – 8 pcs. Red wine – 1 bottle Flour – 1 tbsp. l. Thyme – 2–3 sprigs Bay leaf – 1 pc. Garlic – 1 clove Salt Pepper

How to prepare “Rooster in Wine”: Fry the bird in a frying pan in a mixture of vegetable oil and butter. Place the peeled and thinly sliced onion in the duck pot along with the champignons and slices of lard. Add oil, bay leaf, thyme, chopped garlic, salt, pepper. Return the rooster to the container with the mushrooms and spices, fill it with red wine and leave to simmer over low heat for an hour or two. Trick: Before adding the wine, pour two tablespoons of cognac over the bird and let it warm up. Bon appetit!

Rooster in mushrooms

For cooking we will need: Rooster Large champignons Carrots Onions Garlic Chicken broth Spices to taste

How to prepare “Rooster in mushrooms”: Rub the rooster with salt, inside and out. Peel the onion and garlic. Cut the onion lengthwise into four parts and place it, along with the cloves of garlic, inside the cockerel. Preheat the oven to 220 degrees. Place the bird in a form of the right size, greased with a minimum amount of sunflower oil, cover with the remaining onion and garlic and send it to the oven. When it’s finished. hour, peel the carrots, cut lengthwise into four parts and place around the cockerel, sprinkling it with spices and turning it over to the other side. After another hour, add the peeled and coarsely chopped champignons and pour over the broth and bake until tender. P.S. If the bird is not domestic, then the baking process takes much less time. And do not forget to water it with its own juice during the entire stay of the rooster in the oven. Bon appetit!

Rooster soup

To prepare we will need: Rooster Vermicelli Onion A stalk of celery A sprig of rosemary A few bay leaves Salt

How to prepare “Rooster Soup”: Place a rooster chopped into pieces into a saucepan and add 2.5 liters of water. Bring to a boil and skim off the foam with a slotted spoon. Then add coarsely chopped onion, celery, rosemary, bay leaf and salt. Cook over low heat for about an hour or a little more, until the meat is tender. Then remove the meat from the broth. And strain the broth. Return the strained clear broth to the pan. Bring to a boil and add vermicelli. Cook for about 8-10 minutes. When serving, place a couple of pieces of meat in each bowl of soup. Bon appetit!

Roasted Viennese rooster

1 rooster, salt, flour, 1 egg, bread crumbs, frying fat, lemon slices and a few sprigs of parsley.

Divide the rooster into 4 parts, rub with salt, roll in flour, egg and breadcrumbs and fry in boiling fat on both sides until golden brown. Fry for about 15 minutes. Then dry well and decorate on green salad leaves with potatoes. Will make approximately 4 servings.

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