how do you tell if you are eating a rooster or a chicken?!
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A frying/broiler chicken can be either hen or rooster but they are young and they are sold as a fryer because of their age and weight. Anything older or larger than a fryer/broiler chicken has to have a label stating what it is. Here is a very good chart telling you the difference:
* Broiler-fryer a young, tender chicken about 7 weeks old which weighs 2 1/2 to 4 1/2 pounds when eviscerated. Cook by any method.
* Rock Cornish Game Hen - a small broiler-fryer weighing between 1 and 2 pounds. Usually stuffed and roasted whole.
* Roaster - an older chicken about 3 to 5 months old which weighs 5 to 7 pounds. It yields more meat per pound than a broiler-fryer. Usually roasted whole.
* Capon - Male chickens about 16 weeks to 8 months old which are surgically unsexed. They weigh about 4 to 7 pounds and have generous quantities of tender, light meat. Usually roasted.
* Stewing/Baking Hen - a mature laying hen 10 months to 1 1/2 years old. Since the meat is less tender than young chickens, it's best used in moist cooking such as stewing.
* Cock or rooster - a mature male chicken with coarse skin and tough, dark meat. Requires long, moist cooking.
http://www.fsis.usda.gov/factsheets/chic…
The only time what you purchase as chicken in any grocery store would be anything other than a hen (female), would be if you bought a capon. A capon is an unsexed male chicken (called a cockerel, not a rooster). These are usually available around the holidays and are usually significantly more expensive than other chickens because the neutering makes the bird more meaty and tender.
Roasters, broilers, fryers, etc are all hens, and the names indicate the age at which they were butchered. Generally speaking, the younger birds are designated as broiler/fryers because they're more tender and lend themselves well to the fast, high heat methods of cooking. Roasters are larger and meatier and do better with a longer, slower method of cooking. Stewing hens are the eldest, and are the most flavorful, best used for stewing and making chicken stock.
Rock Cornish Game Hens can be either male or female, but they're actually bred differently than chickens, to ensure they produce purely white meat.
With the supermarket chicken we get today, there's really no telling. But it would be a good guess that it's more likely a capon than a hen. A capon is an adolescent rooster. Hens lay eggs, which we eat also, so I think we're probably eating more young roosters than hens.
he is dry
she is tender