Easy Roast Chicken

Posted on July 10, 2011 by Cindy Wilhelm

Weekends are busy, but if you can steal away 30 minutes at 1pm, to toss a whole chicken or two in the oven, you will have an excellent meal at 6 o’clock when everyone is hungery for supper.

First, turn the oven onto 400 degrees to pre-heat then run to the freezer and grab a chicken or two. I usually do one and a half for four people because then I have an easy meal later in the week and enough leftover chicken for sandwiches, and the oven is on anyway, so why not!

Don’t thaw the chicken, just take it out of the package and place it in roasting pan breasts down, it stays moister with the breasts in the water. I put a little butter on the breasts so it doesn’t stick to the pan.

Most chickens are 4 to 6 pounds, but just remember the rule of 20 minutes of cooking time per pound of chicken, plus one hour because you are not thawing the bird. So a 6-pound frozen chicken will take 3 hours to cook in a hot oven plus an hour to prepare (de-bone and make gravy)

So the frozen chicken or two is in the roasting pan, add;

1 – Inch of water
Small onion – cut into large chunks
1 cup organic chicken Stock*
5 or 6 baby carrots
5 or 6 celery sticks**
1 tblsp minced garlic
1 parsnip if you have it or a handful or frozen turnip chunks, if not, no biggy!
1 tsp. sage
½ tsp. tyme
½ tsp. rosemary
Salt & Pepper

I like those spices, for a nice mild roast chicken, but kick it up with cumin and tarragon if you like. I do, and other times, add in some tomato paste, basil and oregano for a more Italian flavor.

* – I always have leftover chicken gravy or stock in the freezer. At the end of every roast chicken meal, I put it in 8 oz. plastic cups, freeze it, pop it out and store in large ziplock bags.  It always comes in handy and you are not adding extra “stuff” to your food that you didn’t grow or know where it comes from.

** – I always have clean and cut celery sticks, carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli in a bowl in the fridge. If it is clean, cut and ready to dip, the veggies get eaten, if not, you never know they are in your fridge.

Put the lid on, I will use a smaller pan and aluminum foil if I need more space in the oven to cook pies or dessert later, but both work.  After the first hour, turn the oven down to 350 degrees.  I check the chicken once over the three hours of cooking time, just to make sure it is not getting too crispy on the top. I aways cook my chicken until it is tender and falls off the bone.  It is how we like it best.

Once it is done, check with a thermometer, never serve or eat undercooked chicken!

To de-bone the bird, I set the roasting pan on the stove top, get out two big plates, one for meat and one for bones and gunk.  As I pull each piece out of the pan, I put it on the right plate, meat for meat and bones and gunk to the bone and gunk plate.  Once the pan is empty, except for some small pieces and the veggies and herbs you added to roast it, scrape any pieces off the side or bottom. Drain the drippings into a bowl.

I thicken my gravy with a rue. Put the roasting pan on medium heat on the stove top, melt 1 tblsp or two of butter, add 1 or 2 tblsp of flour, depends on the amount of liquid you have. I us an all-purpose wheat-free flour, and it does the trick.

Once the rue changes from a white paste to a warm beige paste, empty the drippings bowl back into the roasting pan.  I also add the water from the potatoes (because you need to have mashed potatoes so you can pour gravy all over them), and cooked veggies, usually from my garden and super yummy! So, now you have NOT lost any nutrients from your veggie water; you don’t just send it down the drain!

So NOW you have some healthy liquid to make into gravy.  Add in the fact that you are eating a pastured chicken, that ate all kinds of grasses; that makes the fat and drippings in the pan almost medicinal!  Mmmmm gravy.

Serve hot, with love and you will enjoy an easy roast chicken dinner! Keep the bones for soup, I usually pop them right into the crock pot before supper, or we wrap them in newspaper to throw them out. The newspaper stops them from smelling in the garbage when it’s hot out side or attracting predaters to your garbage bag when you set it out for collection.

Take Care and care about what’s on your fork, we do!

Good Luck,

Cindy

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Crock Pot Stuffing – Basic Recipe

Posted on July 10, 2011 by Cindy Wilhelm

Ingredients Needed 

1 large onion
5 sticks of celery
1 big loaf of bread (2 loaves if using a gluten free bread)
Salt & Pepper
1 tsp – Sage
1 tsp – Tyme
1 tsp – Rosemary
½ tsp summer savory
3/4 cup Butter
1 Cup chicken or turkey stock or 1 bullion cube*

In a frying pan, drop in a little butter, heat the onion and celery until tender.

Add the butter and the chicken stock. While it is melting and the stock is thawing OR the if you use a bullion cube, break it up and stir it in along with 1 cup of water, I cut the bread up into cubes and place it in the crock pot.

Once the chicken stock is mixed in and the butter melted, I stir in all the herbs and pour the entire contents over the bread, add salt & pepper to taste and mixed it all together. Then plug in the crock pot and let it heat up, stirring occasionally, it usually takes about 3 hours on low or 1 &1/2 hours on high. The stuffing will be moist and full of flavor.

HOWEVER, if you like to live on the edge and add MORE to your stuffing, I have added the following to this basic recipe over the years with wildly satisfying results! While the onion and celery are cooking in the frying pan add any of the following combinations to spice up your stuffing;

  1. Farmers Pork Sausage (it is mild and salty)
  2. Cranberries & Pine Nuts
  3. Almond Slices and Raisons (or currents)
  4. Dried Cherries and Walnuts
  5. Pecans and Green Apple Slices
  6. Cranberries and Orange Peels

The pine nuts and other nuts take on a roasted flavour from being warmed up in the frying pan beforehand, adding flavour of your stuffing!

You can use this recipe with any poultry, great with chicken, turkey, duck and goose! It can be doubled or tripled and will come out with the same wonderful results, just don’t be shy with the butter!

*I like to use organic bullion cubes, but often I will use leftover gravy from the last time I roasted a chicken or turkey. I freeze leftover gravy or stock in plastic cups, pop them out and put them in a zip lock bag and take out a cup of stock when I need it. You can use ice cube trays as well.

Good Luck & Take Care, Cindy

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Roast Duck – An easy, walk away recipe

Posted on July 8, 2011 by admin

Pre-heat your oven to 300 degrees. (Convection will speed up your cook time so keep and eye on you duck if you are using convection.

Place a rack in your roasting pan to elevate the duck and keep it out of the fat that will come out of the duck.

Add about 2 cups of water; place the duck on the rack.

Score the skin on the duck breast with a knife of poke holes in it with a fork.

Cover with the lid and roast for approximately 30 minutes per pound of duck.   I check on the duck 2 or three times through out the roasting time, baste it a little, but it does well on it’s own.

The duck meat should fall off the bone and be super tender, if it is not, keep roasting until it does.  Place on a plate and strain all the drippings from the duck into a large measuring cup or bowl and place in the refrigerator.

I like to have the duck ready about 2 hours before supper so I can take the meat off the bones. (You can use the bones for soup, just like chicken soup)

Once all the meat is off the bones I put it in the refrigerator to cool and then I re-heat just before supper.  You can cook the duck the night before, and heat everything up when ready.

Duck fat from a grass fed duck is full of wonderful oils and fats.  Duck fat is prized in many countries as tasty and healthy fat.  It is delicate; full of flavor and you will be amazed how beautiful it is to cook with.

Change your oven temp to 350.

Wash and cut your potatoes into bite-sized pieces and place them in Pyrex baking pan or you can use a cookie sheet.

I like Yukon gold or chieftain potatoes, as an organic grower, both do well and tolerate pests.  (They say to estimate a ½ pound of potatoes per person, so that is about a large coffee cup full.

Slice or chop fresh garlic and put it in with the potatoes. Salt & pepper to taste. (I use freshly ground sea salt and tri colour peppercorns.  Fresh ground is so flavourful!)

After about an hour, the duck fat, which almost looks like butter, will float on top of the duck drippings that look like un-thickened gravy.  Skim off and keep the duck fat.  Add one or two tablespoons of duck fat to each pound (2 servings) of the potatoes.

Keep the remaining duck fat to use in baking or cooking, or to spread like butter on toast, it has a wonderful flavor.  Tell your friends from Paris and they will be right over.  In France Duck fat is a prized possession, and can you imagine it spread on a slightly warm, fresh baguette? MMMmmmmmmm, sometimes I just miss bread!

Place the potatoes in the oven at 350, for just over an hour, the edges of the potatoes will get brown and crispy.

Place the drippings from the duck, (brown in colour) in a saucepan and bring it to a boil so you can thicken it.  We use a rue, or cornstarch, but your normal gravy thickening method will do.

Rue Method -Add a tablespoon of duck fat and 2 tablespoons of flour, heat on medium heat until the four starts to turn to a warm brown colour.  Add the duck drippings, turn the burner up to high and whisk quickly until it thickens.

Cornstarch Method – Start with the drippings in the sauce pan, turn to high and bring to a boil, in a coffee cup, place 2 table spoons of cornstarch, add a quarter cup of water, it should be a thick mixture.  Mix well and while whisking the drippings, pour the cornstarch mixture in all at once, then shut off the burner, or take the pan off the heat before your gravy turns into a solid!

Heat the duck meat up quickly in the microwave (I heat up only what we will eat that night).

Serve with the gravy and nicely roasted and garlicy potatoes.  I like to have a fresh salad or peas, something green to go with, it looks nice on the plate.  Tea biscuits are lovely to soak up the gravy.

If you have never had duck, it is so full of flavour, the meat is darker, but you will enjoy it.  Just by adding salt and pepper during the roasting process, you will bring out a wonderful , natural flavour in the meat.

We had this for supper recently and I can not tell you how wonderful it was.  I hope you enjoy.

The left over duck can be made into a casserole with pasta, or add some spicy sausage, green onions, bread and cranberries and the remaining gravy to make a duck pudding casserole, or just re-heat the next time the same way.

Good Luck and I hope you enjoy your duck experience.
Take Care, and Care about what’s on your fork, we do!
Cindy

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Parmesan & Pastured Pork Chops

Posted on July 8, 2011 by admin

I like pork chops with a creamy mushroom sauce and my husband likes pork chops one way, baked with paprika and salt and pepper.  So I thought I would try to please the both of us the other night and I made a combination of our favourites and added parmesan cheese to the mix, because who does not like cheese, and it goes well with mushrooms and paprika.

It’s a one pan easy bake process!

I pulled 4 of our Dragonfly Garden Farm pastured pork chops right from the freezer.  I know you are not supposed to do this, but I quickly pried them apart with a knife and placed them into the glass-baking dish.  (I used a butter knife and did not stab or cut myself in the process so it was all just fine, but don’t do it, thaw the chops first OK!)

I drizzled them with Olive Oil about 3 tablespoons just so they would not stick to the pan. I added ¼ cup of 1% milk and a splash of table cream, because we had it and it was almost about to expire.  Organic milk does not keep past the expiry date. You hit that date and it’s done!  Thank goodness too, milk should expire at a reasonable time!

I added some green onions.  I harvest them from my garden, clean and slice them up, freeze them on a baking pan and put them in the freezer in a ziplock or mason jar and then just grab a handful when I need them – a great way to keep green onions, chives, parsley and peppers. I do the same with strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and peaches and use them for smoothies or baking!

I sprinkled on some chives and parsley from the freezer, added a generous amount of paprika, it’s Mike’s favorite, and salt and pepper.  I dropped on some white button mushroom and then a generous sprinkle of Parmesan cheese, the good kind, you find in the cooler section, not on the shelf in the grocery store, and popped it into the oven at 350 for about an hour.  I flipped the pork chops twice to make sure they were cooking evenly and didn’t stick.

I baked in a separate glass baking dish, fresh potatoes, carrots, zucchini and beets from the garden in some olive oil and salt and pepper. They took about an hour as well.  I had some wonderful cucumber fresh from the garden, so I made a cucumber salad too.

Life is that good!  The pastured pork chops were full of flavor, the milk made them fall off the bone tender and the paprika, mushroom and parmesan combination was spectacular!

If I had a husband who was less picky, I would have taken the baking pan and added some more milk to clean all the dripping out of the bottom.  Then pour the milk, drippings and mushrooms into a pot and brought it to a boil with some garlic, pepper, and parsley and thickened it to make a wonderful alfredo-style sauce.  I would have drizzled it over the chops ! Yum!

But he wouldn’t eat it and I was tired and it was late so I didn’t do it.  But I guarantee it would have been good! Try it and let me know, K.

Take Care and care about what’s on your fork, we do!
Cindy

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