Whatever happened to pharaoh chicken?

Passover, Passover…I’m ready for a break from my prep. So I’m going to update you on a fun longer-term project we’ve been doing.

Remember how we’re making a mummy? Well, we’re still at it. It’s been almost two months, and we’ve been changing the salt mix about once a week. After the first week, it looked like this:

We unpacked the salt in the middle, brushed it off, added more salt and put him back in the bag. There was a little bit of a smell, but not too much – like chicken starting to go off. And it started to look like it was losing some weight from the lost water, but not shriveling up too much.

The next week, it looked like this:

We had to brush and pick the salt off, because it got kind of crusted on. And there was still that mildly “off” smell, but not bad.

Pharaoh Chicken is now coming up on 8 weeks old, and although we changed the salt mixture nearly every week, is still shedding water and looking the same. He’s been staying in our porch, and it’s been cool for most of the time (except for a few 80 degree days). I was surprised by how similar he looks to his original self. He’s a little smaller, lighter, and most definitely saltier. He’s getting pretty close to done now, though — talk about an interesting project!

When he’s done drying, the plan is to wrap him in linen strips and put him into a decorated sarcophagus (in its previous life, it used to be a shoe box).

Has anyone else done this? How did it go, and when was it done?

Permanent link to this article: https://organizedjewishhome.com/2012/03/29/whatever-happened-to-pharaoh-chicken/

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