Friday, September 29, 2006

Mummifying a chicken...


I have quite a science project on my kitchen counter--it's really creeping out my sister. We're mummifying a chicken! The first step is to wash and dry it very thoroughly, then cover it in spices. After that we filled the cavity with salt, and put it in a large ziploc bag filled with salt. The salt draws out the moisture.

The instructions I'm using recommend changing the salt once a week, but the first week, the bag filled with moisture after a couple days, and so it got an extra salt change. Once a week, I am rinsing all the salt off and weighing the chicken (the instructions say to weigh it, and this is the only way I can see to get the old salt off). The results are in this spreadsheet. Then I dry it, add some more spices, refill the cavity with salt, and put in a new salt-filled bag.

I wasn't sure what to expect, but so far it doesn't stink-- it just smells mildly of the spices we used. Unfortunately, I seem to be more interested in this than the kids, but my oldest wants to keep doing it, as long as I do the dirty work, LOL!

3 comments:

momto5minnies said...

Gosh that does seem wierd, but I know that Scott would think that was way cool. I am sure the girls are excited about it.

UPDATES ...

momto5minnies said...

SO .... what is happening to that chicken.

Curious minds want to know!

E. Crain said...

Here, I've updated the spreadsheet. It only lost a tiny amount of weight over 2 weeks-- I think it's almost done.

I'll take some more pics in another week.