About once a year I offer a slightly different product in my chicken line up: the "stew chicken". This kind of bird must be cooked very differently than most chicken you are used to from either the grocery store or poultry growers at the farmers market. Roasting a stew chicken is a great recipe for chicken flavored rubber bands! Braising or simmering in a liquid is a must to get these birds tender.
What is a stew chicken?
You may hear stew chickens also called stew hens, this is because they are typically 'retired' laying hens. Unlike chickens raised specifically for meat, which are harvested at only a few months old, stew chickens are often 2 to 3 years old and are usually processed once they are no longer laying well.
Some differences you might notice are that there is very little breast meat on a stew chicken and they are overall leaner with longer legs. Roosters can also be used as stew chickens but unless they are processed at a young age (no more than 4-6 months old) they will be even tougher than a laying hen. Roosters are also typically much larger than hens.
Why do stew chickens look and taste so different?
While the age and lifestyle of a chicken have some impact on the taste and texture of the meat, there are also bigger factors at play.
If, for example, you selected a random person from a chicken-eating culture at almost any point in history, they would think that a stew chicken looks and tastes very normal! It's actually the modern breeds of broiler chicken that are the biggest departure from the usual chicken in human history.
Just like pets and other livestock, humans have been practicing selective breeding with chickens for thousands of years. Traditional or heritage breeds of chicken are much larger and more productive than their jungle fowl ancestors but for most of history have been more or less dual purpose.
This means that most breeds of chicken do a decent job at both egg production and meat production, though certain breeds are more focused on one or the other. When that really started to change was in 1948.
A little history
Prior to about the 1950s, the stew chicken would have been one of the most familiar types of chicken to most Americans, especially for the large portion of the population that still lived in rural areas. The only way to get a tender bird for roasting was to raise or buy a young rooster or a capon (castrated rooster) but that bird would still look positively scrawny by today's standards.
In 1948, the A&P Store partnered with the USDA to create the "chicken of tomorrow" contest. You can read about it in more detail here. In summary, this was a contest that encouraged farmers (by means of a cash prize) to produce larger, plumper chickens, grown in less time and on less feed. The results of this contest were the precursors of today's broiler breeds, which are now ubiquitous in both grocery stores and farmers markets.
Adapting Recipes
The problem with most modern recipes is that they almost all assume you are working with meat from a broiler chicken. Even classic tough chicken recipes like coq au vin have often been modernized, so it's important to know how to adapt recipes to suit a stew chicken.
The main thing you need to do is allow a minimum of 2-3 hours stove top simmering time (1 hour in a pressure cooker). If there are potatoes, carrots, greens or other vegetables in the recipe, this amount of time risks over cooking them. So I make sure to withhold those ingredients until the chicken is tender. Vegetables like onions and garlic can be cooked for hours with no issue.
The simplest substitution is to simmer stew chickens until tender and then use the shredded meat in any recipe calling for cooked chicken.
Show me the recipes!
With all that in mind, here are a few recipes you can use with stew chickens with little to no adaptation:
Coq au Vin
French for "rooster in wine", this is one of the classic tough chicken recipes and of course you can use either a rooster or hen! With an overnight marinade, followed by a 2 to 2.5 hour cook time, this recipe shouldn't require much if any changes. Just make sure to check the meat for tenderness after cooking and before proceeding with the rest of the recipe. Recipe from Alton Brown of the Food Network.
African Chicken Peanut Stew
A popular stew from West Africa, this stew call for a 90 minute cook time, so probably only needs to be extended by a half hour or so. If you've never had this type of stew before I strongly recommend it! The flavor combination is delicious. Recipe from Simply Recipes.
Chicken Paprikash
From the other side of Europe is the Hungarian classic, chicken paprikash. The only recommendation I would make here is extend the simmer time from 30 minutes to at least 2 hours and to withhold the frying pepper until near the end of the simmer time. Recipe from Saveur.
Dakdoritang (Korean Spicy Chicken Stew)
This spicy stew from Korea features gochujang and sweet potato. The way I've altered this recipe for a stew chicken is to simmer the chicken until tender and then use the resulting stock in place of water when making the sea kelp broth. Then I make the recipe as directed, using the cooked chicken in place of the raw chicken. Recipe from Beyond Kimchee.
Thank you so much for the fascinating information about stew chickens. I have always wondered what happened to laying hens when their laying days were over. I always figured they ended up in pet food.
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