How To: The Chicken Dance

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November 11, 2025

Don't worry... I'm not planning to teach a crazy dance. The current generation has enough of their own crazy dances without my help.

I am talking about the choreography for how to use a whole chicken every week. When I take a whole chicken (or two, for my family of 5) and use every bit of it to nourish my family each week, it not only feels like a carefully planned and choreographed dance, but it makes me want to dance like a little kid. We need more of that feeling in our lives, don't you think?

If you're here, I'm sure you know the benefits of grass-fed, free-range, non-GMO, pastured, "beyond organic" chicken. Don't be fooled by tag words big ag uses to generate imagery of peaceful chickens living out their days surrounded by sunshine and fresh air...

Phrases like "All Natural", "Naturally Raised", "Antibiotic Free", and even "Free Range" can mean wonderful things. But when applied to industrially raised chicken, those labels don't actually mean you're eating clean nourishing chicken. (Joel and Dr. Sina McCullough talk about this in their book Beyond Labels. If you've never read it, I HIGHLY recommend it!)

All of that to say, the ONLY chickens I recommend using are those grown by dedicated, earth-stewarding, sustainable farms like Polyface.

The best practice is to begin by thawing your chicken in your refrigerator for at least a day before you plan to cook it.

Thawing the bird this way allows you to season it before cooking and ensures the best flavor.

Before placing your chicken in a pot, use a paper towel to pat the bird dry. This lets the spices penetrate the meat and results in a more robust flavor.

I season my chicken (you can rub seasonings into or even under the skin) with salt and pepper, and then choose one or two more spices like garlic powder, onion powder, rosemary, oregano, or thyme. An easy option is to keep pre-mixed seasoning mixes on hand. We offer several options that are GREAT for using on busy days.

You can cook the bird in the crock pot, Instant Pot, or in the oven.

In most cases, roasting the whole bird in the oven gives the best flavor and texture. My family's personal favorite way to cook whole chickens is in an enameled cast-iron Dutch oven.

Whatever method you use to cook your birds, I always recommend placing chickens breast-side down. This ensures the white meat doesn't dry out as it cooks, but stays moist and juicy!

In the oven, plan to cook your chicken at 350 for about 20 minutes per pound. Use a meat thermometer to check that your chicken reaches at least 165 degrees. A longer cook-time (at a lower oven temperature, if desired) and higher internal bird-temperature will result in a more tender chicken. Let your bird rest 10-15 minutes before you cut into it. This allows the juices to redistribute and locks them in for tastier chicken.

On the day you cook your bird, enjoy the mouthwatering flavor by serving it whole.

My husband and I both enjoy the dark meat most, so we eat the thighs on the first night. My 5 and 3 year-olds always request "bone meat", so they usually eat the legs. Now that my family is growing, we usually cook 2 chickens at a time so that we have more left over after our first meal.

After dinner, I pick whatever is left off the bone and store the bones and the chicken in separate containers overnight. The bones and whatever juice cooked off the chicken will be used tomorrow for making bone broth.

From a 4-pound chicken, you can expect 4-6 cups of boneless, skinless chicken (total). One of my chickens was around 5 pounds, and you can see in the photo that I ended up with around 8 cups!

If you want, you can freeze your shredded chicken to use later. Most recipes call for 2 cups of shredded or cubed chicken, so keep that in mind if you decide to freeze it. It's a good idea to freeze it in 2-cup containers.

Joel's wife, Teresa, once showed me her secret for cubing chicken.

When deboning, she separates the chicken into large chunks. Then, with a clean, sharp pair of kitchen scissors, she simply cuts it up into cubes of any size she wants! I've tried it, and these easy chicken cubes make the BEST white chilis, soups, or chicken salad you can imagine!

Since it will easily keep in a sealed container in your refrigerator for up to 7 days, you can spread your chicken meals out and alternate with another protein source some nights, or plan for easy homemade lunches.

Here are some of our favorite ways to use this now boneless, skinless chicken:

Chicken chili
Chicken pot pie
Thai chicken curry
Any casserole that calls for chicken
Homemade pizza
Chicken salad
Chicken enchiladas
Chicken Fajitas
Asian stir fry

We want our chickens to be more than just a nourishing meal — we want them to bring people together. Not tucked away in the freezer, but roasted, shared, and enjoyed around a full table with good company and laughter.

So tell me — do you have a favorite way to prepare a whole chicken? Share your recipes, stories, and those little traditions that make a meal feel like home.

Here’s to gathering often, eating well, and savoring every bite together.

Hannah

chicken

cooking

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Duplication

"How does this scale?" Whenever someone asks me that question, the underlying assumption is that production volume requires consolidation, concentration, and centralization. In other words, the only way to feed the world is to make bigger chicken houses in one place, bigger canneries in one place, bigger machines and bigger warehouses. I remember well being vilified by a Smithsonian historian at a food conference where he and I were both on a panel. When I dared to suggest bigger is not always better, he interrupted me and ranted for 10 minutes on why bigger is always better. "A bigger fort was always bigger than a smaller one. A bigger gun was always better than a smaller one." He went on and on about how historical accuracy and authenticity demands addiction to bigger. But biology is not forts and guns. It's not mechanical. Critters have an optimal size. As animal behaviorist guru Temple Grandin says, living things demand energy for three things: reproduction, growth, and immunological function. All three must be in balance. When anyone selects for only one of those traits, the other two suffer. That's why American dairy cows only have two lactations on average. When they milk as heavily as our one-trait genetic selection asks, they don't breed and have all sorts of sickness problems. Nature does not scale through concentration; it scales with duplication. If nature wants more oak, it doesn't make one big tree; it makes acorns. If nature wants more milk, it doesn't make a great big cow; it makes calves. If nature wants more tomatoes, it doesn't make a monster tomato plant; it makes a bunch of seeds that make more tomato plants. Nature scales with duplication. At Polyface, rather than having a chicken house big enough for 15,000 chickens, we have 170 little 120 square foot portable shelters holding 75 birds apiece and giving us cumulative capacity for 15,000. But they're spread out in modules, duplicated, to give us the production volume. We run pigs in groupings of 35-50. A Smithfield confinement facility might house 5,000 hogs in a bigger-than-football-field-sized facility. The stench is unbearable. By spreading these pigs out across the landscape in small groups we get the same scale without any of the ecological, immunological, or animal welfare dysfunction. This could even be said of farming in general. People see the massive corn, soybean, and alfalfa farms in the mid-west and wonder how we would possibly survive without those massive, single-species outfits. The fact is they aren't even producing food. Half the soybeans are exported to other countries; those markets are drying up rapidly with competition from other countries like Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil. Nearly half the corn goes to taxpayer-subsidized ethanol. The alfalfa goes to Japan and Saudi Arabia to feed racehorses. By and large, all that production isn't even food. The fact is we don't need to produce all those commodities and even if we needed it all for food, we could do it in a more spread out, diversified platform. America has 35 million acres in lawns. We have 36 million acres housing and feeding recreational horses. All of this could be turned into duplicative production, like acorns for oak trees. My point is this: scale as commonly understood in modern American lexicon is completely anti-ecological. The real mechanism for scale is duplication. A more democratized production creating volume through multiplicative nodes is the way nature works. This is why farms like Polyface, with spread out infrastructure in repeated modules offers multiple advantages. Polyface can't feed the world by itself, and we have no desire to build an empire trying to. But thousands of Polyfaces can feed the world. Indeed, they're the only way to do it for the next 500 years. This is one reason why we invest heavily in germinating new young farmers. Our stewardship and apprenticeship programs are all about this kind of duplication. In fact, Aug. 21-22 we're hosting the Stockman Grass Farmer's Launching Young Farmers conference where we'll feature 8 of our graduates who were 20 years old, no money, no land, and at 40 are full-time farming without government subsidies. If you ever dreamed of bootstrapping a farming career, you should come. We still have room. It will be the most profound agricultural conference in America this year. Information is on our website on the education tab. For most of you, the fact that you keep us in business to duplicate production and the farmers who will carry these principles forward, indicates your heart investing in an authentic food and farming model. Thank you for making it all possible.

How To: The Chicken Dance

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