When I was a kid, a local farmer came around with a truck full of chickens. My mom would go out a pick one, and the farmer would wring its neck, pluck the feathers and (usually) remove its head. We got the rest. My job was to clean out the innards, still warm.
So you’ve got the chicken lying on its back, and you enter through the ass end. Near the entrance, on either side of the spine, there’s a jelly-like substance that you can easily scrape out with your fingers. What is that substance?
Perhaps my memory is failing, but I think it’s just fat. The kidneys are in that area, but wouldn’t really be jelly-like. The lungs feel something like jelly when you scrape them out, but they are much further up the spine and are bright red.
The bile bag is the biggest reason I wash home-processed chicken. There’s about a hundred reasons to wash store-bought chicken
I don’t think it’s fat. I remove it when I am cleaning quail, and it’s dark reddish brown. I’ve actually never been meaning to ask this question for years.
Ah, if it’s dark colored it won’t be fat - it probably is the kidneys. I don’t recall them being jelly-like, but it’s been a few decades since I regularly killed and gutted chickens.