After letting it sit for three days, I checked out my chicken mummy. The mixture of salt and bicarb looked like it had absorbed a fair bit of water, and I detected a faint whiff of something rotten. Yes, it was coming along nicely!
Not wanting to gross out my co-workers, I took the bag home. It was raining outside, so I decided the laundry was the best place to open the bag. I put the tray in the bottom of the sink, and opened the bag. I poured the contents into the tray. The smell was revolting – even worse than I expected.
After the smell, the next thing I noticed was the colour of the chicken. The skin was no longer a pale pink – it had turned much darker, while the flesh of the chicken had turned yellow. The skin was dry and leathery.
Observations: the chicken smelled awful, its colour had changed and the skin felt like leather.
Trying not to be sick, I cleared away some of the drying mixture that had crusted on. The mixture of salt and bicarb was doing its job. It was clumping together and felt moist, indicating that it was absorbing the water from the chicken. I removed the sock from the cavity of the carcass. It was actually damp – that’s how much water it had absorbed. I filled a new old sock with drying mixture and put this in the cavity.
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