With the chickens Heath had prepared before, simply managing to pluck them completely had generally been good enough. After all, chicken feathers were not all like the ones on feather dusters that many people pictured, large and easy to pull out. Chickens also had tiny, down-like feathers. Although those could be scalded with hot water and then singed with a blowtorch, that created a problem: the roots of the feathers would remain in the skin. That was fine for fried chicken and the like, but if the chicken was boiled, black feathers embedded in white skin would put a considerable dent in anyone's appetite.
This was probably a phenomenon peculiar to modern society. These days, an orange affected by pests or disease often could not be sold at its original price, and seeing rice weevils in rice would make people lose their appetite. If it happened in a restaurant, they would even ask the owner to come out and deal with it. In the past, however, people could not afford to be picky. Simply staying alive had been good enough. In the memories of Xiuhui that Heath had seen, any insects she found in the delicacies she had once eaten could count as an extra helping.
But that was also a sign of social progress. Without it, reaching this point would have been difficult. The Golden Chicken before him had a similar problem. Although Heath had removed most of its feathers, some troublesome ones still remained.
The good news, however, was that the Golden Chicken's skin was poisonous too, so it had to be removed, and there was no need to worry about that problem. The bad news was that removing all the skin was not so easy either. Heath had to put in some effort before he finally managed