- Season
- Available all year in Czech supermarkets and butchers, chilled or frozen. Demand rises in autumn and winter, when slepičí vývar (hen broth) is made most often.
- Price
- Low
- Nutrition per 100 g
- 171 kcal
- 19 g protein
- 11 g fat
- 0 g carbs
Whole hen, giblets removed
Meat
Whole hen, giblets removed
Slepice celá, bez drobů is a whole, plucked and eviscerated boiling hen: an older laying hen at the end of its laying life, sold without its giblets (neck, heart, liver and gizzard). Czech shops keep it apart from kuře, the young broiler chicken.
In practice
How to store
- On the counter
Do not keep raw hen at room temperature. Take it straight home and refrigerate it. Cooked broth should cool quickly, ideally within about two hours, before it goes into the fridge. Standing a covered pot in cold water speeds this up.
- In the fridge
Keep the raw hen at 0–4 °C in its packaging, on the lowest shelf so juices cannot drip onto other food. Cook it by the use-by date (spotřebujte do) on the pack, and use it as soon as possible once a vacuum pack is opened. Thaw frozen hens in the fridge, which takes about 24 hours for a 1–1.5 kg bird. Cooked meat and broth keep for about 3 days in a closed container.
- In the freezer
Raw hens keep well at −18 °C. Follow the date on frozen packs (minimální trvanlivost), and use home-frozen birds within about 9–12 months for best quality. Broth freezes very well for about 3 months, in portions or as ice cubes. Pulled cooked meat keeps for 2–3 months. Never refreeze a hen that has been thawed raw unless you cook it first.
How to choose
Look for the word slepice on the label. Kuře, kuřecí or brojler means a young chicken, which makes a lighter broth. Check whether the bird is chilled (chlazená) or frozen (mražená). Note the country of origin: Czech-farmed hens are widely sold, and Hungarian and other EU imports are common too. A good hen has skin that is creamy to yellow, intact and without large tears or dark bruises. The fat is yellow and firm, and the body has no off or sour smell. Chilled packs should not contain much cloudy liquid. Frozen birds should be frozen hard, with no thick ice crystals or pale, dried patches that suggest freezer burn. Czech hens usually weigh about 1–1.5 kg, enough for a pot of broth serving 6–8 people. Weight varies naturally, so retailers often price per kilogram. Remember that the giblets are not included. If you want gizzards or hearts for the soup, buy slepičí or kuřecí droby separately.
What to swap in
Best swap
A free-range or farm chicken (farmářské kuře), or a mix of chicken wings, backs and necks (kuřecí skelet). These give a good broth but a lighter, less concentrated one. Use extra bones and a shorter simmer of about 1.5–2 hours.
In a pinch
An ordinary supermarket broiler (kuře) or chicken thighs on the bone. Expect a milder, thinner broth and softer meat, and reduce the cooking time to about 1–1.5 hours so the meat does not fall apart into threads.
Preparation
Do not wash the raw bird under the tap. Splashing spreads bacteria such as Campylobacter and Salmonella around the sink. Simmering will kill them. Take the hen out of its packaging and pat it dry with paper towels if needed. Check the cavity and pull out any leftover pieces of lung or quills. Then wash your hands, board and knives thoroughly. For the classic Czech broth, start the hen in cold water so the meat releases its flavour gradually. Bring it slowly almost to the boil and skim off the grey foam. Then lower the heat until the surface only just trembles. A fast boil makes the broth cloudy and drives off aroma. Add salt, whole black pepper, allspice and a bay leaf, plus a halved onion charred on the hob. After the first hour or two, add the root vegetables: carrot, parsley root, celeriac, and often a piece of kohlrabi or leek. A hen needs about 3–4 hours, sometimes longer, until the meat comes easily off the bone. Pressure cooking cuts this to roughly 60–90 minutes. Strain the broth, pick the meat from the bones, and serve it with fine noodles, liver dumplings (játrové knedlíčky) or semolina dumplings, fresh vegetables and chopped parsley. Hen and broth must be cooked through, to at least 75 °C in the thickest part of the meat, before serving.
Don't toss it
Use every part. Chill the strained broth overnight and lift off the yellow fat. Czech cooks traditionally keep this slepičí sádlo for frying onions or making roux (jíška). The skin and leftover meat pulled from the bones can go into slepičí rizoto (hen risotto in the Czech style, made with rice and peas), pancake fillings or a hen salad. The cooked root vegetables can be diced back into the soup or mashed with potatoes. If you want an even stronger broth, simmer the picked carcass a second time with fresh vegetables.
In the kitchen
Cooking
Long, gentle, moist cooking suits a hen best. Slow simmering for broth and soup is the main Czech use, and the cooked meat then goes into other dishes. Braising or stewing is the basis of slepice na paprice: the jointed hen is browned and cooked slowly with onion, sweet paprika and stock, and finished with sour cream and flour, then served with bread dumplings or pasta. Pressure cooking and slow cookers both work well. Hens can also be roasted, but should first be simmered or braised covered until tender, then finished uncovered in a hot oven (around 200 °C) to colour the skin. Quick methods such as grilling, pan-frying or straight high-heat roasting leave the meat tough and are not suitable.
Goes well with
- Carrot
- Parsley Root
- Celeriac
- Onion
- Kohlrabi
- Leek
- Allspice
- Bay Leaf
- Black Peppercorns
- Lovage
- Fresh Parsley
- Mace or Nutmeg
- Fine Egg Noodles
- Liver Dumplings
- Sweet Paprika
- Sour Cream
- Bread Dumplings
- Rice
What it is
Slepice celá, bez drobů is a whole, plucked and eviscerated boiling hen: an older laying hen at the end of its laying life, sold without its giblets (neck, heart, liver and gizzard). Czech shops keep it apart from kuře, the young broiler chicken. It is a different product with a different use. A hen's meat is firmer and darker, its skin and fat are yellower, and its bones and connective tissue are well developed. It is too tough to roast quickly like a chicken, but it gives a much stronger flavour when simmered for a long time. In Czech kitchens it is bought mainly for slepičí vývar (clear hen broth) and slepičí polévka (hen soup with noodles and root vegetables), and for slepice na paprice (hen in paprika cream sauce). Under EU poultry marketing rules the trade name is "hen" or "boiling fowl" (Czech: slepice). It refers to a laying hen whose breastbone tip has hardened (it is rigid rather than flexible), which shows the bird is mature. Czech retail hens usually weigh about 1–1.5 kg, and some heavier imported birds reach 2–2.5 kg. They are sold vacuum-packed or in film, either chilled (at up to 4 °C) or frozen.
How it tastes
A hen tastes much stronger than a supermarket chicken. It is deeply savoury and meaty, with a rich, slightly gamy edge, and the yellow fat brings a full, rounded flavour. After hours of simmering it gives a golden broth with plenty of body that sets to a light jelly when chilled. The meat stays firmer and more fibrous than chicken even when fully cooked. It is good pulled into soup or sauce but less suited to serving in neat slices.
Common questions
What is the difference between slepice and kuře?
How long does a hen take to cook for broth?
Can I roast a boiling hen?
What does 'bez drobů' mean?
Why is my hen broth cloudy?
Should I wash a raw hen before cooking?
Deep dive
3 min read
Varieties
Chilled hen (slepice chlazená)
: sold whole and without giblets, vacuum-packed or film-wrapped, at up to 4 °C. Czech-farmed and imported birds, often Hungarian, are both common.
Frozen hen (slepice mražená)
: the most widely sold form, usually 1–1.5 kg, kept at −18 °C. It is often the cheapest way to make a large pot of broth.
Hen with giblets (slepice s droby)
: the same bird with the neck, heart, liver and gizzard packed in the cavity. Less common in supermarkets today, but still found at butchers and farm shops.
Farm or home-raised hen (domácí slepice)
: a bird from a small or backyard flock, sometimes sold at farmers' markets or directly by farmers. It is often older and leaner than commercial birds and needs even longer cooking, but many Czech cooks value it most highly for broth.
Relatives (different products)
: Kuře (broiler chicken) is a young bird, typically slaughtered at about 5–7 weeks. It is tender, quick to cook and mild, and it is the everyday roasting chicken. A kohout (cockerel or rooster) is an adult male bird, also suited to stewing. Kapoun (capon) is a castrated cockerel, rare in Czech shops. Packs of chicken bones or carcasses for stock (kuřecí skelety) are cheap broth ingredients but contain little meat.
History
Keeping hens for eggs was part of almost every Czech rural household, and a bird that stopped laying went into the soup pot. That is why slepičí polévka became the standard Sunday and festive starter in Czech cooking and is still considered a household staple. Traditional cookbooks and older cooks recommend an older hen over a young chicken, saying it gives the broth more strength. Slepice na paprice, a dish shared with Hungarian and Slovak cooking, is another long-established way of using a mature bird. Today most hens sold in Czech shops come from commercial egg-laying flocks rather than household yards.
Science
A hen is older than a broiler and has used its muscles longer. Its meat therefore contains more connective tissue, mainly collagen, and that collagen is more heavily cross-linked. This makes the meat tough when cooked quickly. Long, moist heat slowly turns collagen into gelatine, which loosens the fibres. The gelatine also dissolves into the liquid, giving hen broth its body and making it set when cold. Older muscle also builds up more flavour compounds and is darker, and a hen's yellow fat (coloured by carotenoid pigments from feed) adds flavour and colour to the broth. Keeping the pot just below the boil stops proteins and fat from emulsifying into the liquid, so the broth stays clear. Skimming the early foam, which is coagulated soluble protein, helps as well.
Sourcing and ethics
Boiling hens are a by-product of egg production. Commercial laying hens are slaughtered when their laying rate falls, often after about a year or more of laying. Using them as food rather than for lower-value purposes makes fuller use of each animal. Their welfare depends on the system they were kept in. In the EU, unenriched battery cages have been banned since 2012 under Directive 1999/74/EC. Czech law has also adopted a phase-out of cage farming of laying hens, which takes full effect in 2027. Hens from free-range (volný výběh), barn (podestýlka) or organic (bio) flocks can be identified through producer or retailer information. As with all poultry, origin labelling on the pack shows where the bird was raised and slaughtered. Buying Czech-origin birds shortens transport distances.