RECIPE: Tender Roast Poultry

With Mother's and Father's Day approaching, nothing says "I love and appreciate you!" like a home cooked meal! Here's our favorite recipe for juicy, flavorful chicken and turkey!

INGREDIENTS

1 Chicken OR Turkey

Unsalted Butter*

Celery, cut in half horizontally**

2 Tbsp Poultry Seasoning***

Salt and Pepper to taste

*1/2 stick for chicken, whole stick for turkey

**Use 2 stalks celery for chicken, 4 for turkey

***Seasoning of your choice

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Unwrap bird, place breast up in a roasting pan, and remove giblets/neck from body cavity, Fill cavity with butter and celery. Thoroughly rub seasoning into the bird's skin, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place uncovered roasting pan in oven for approximately 20 minutes per pound plus an additional 20 minutes (A 3lb chicken would take about 1 hr 20 mins), or until an internal temperature of 180 degrees is reached. (Store bought turkey generally has a small plug indicator that pops up when the appropriate temp is achieved.) Baste bird with pan juices every 30 minutes during cooking.

Let roasted bird stand for 15 minutes before carving.

Having a spring event? Here are some great side dish selections:

Dill Deviled Eggs

Pizza Pasta Salad

RECIPE: Home Canned Bone Broth (AKA Stock)

Coincidentally, I started on this large batch of broth on the eve of Earth Day, a time when there is quite a lot of discussion about food waste and sustainable agriculture. Here's a great way to cut down on waste, and get delicious soup stock in the process!

Let me start by saying there are exact recipes to follow out there on the internet for bone broth. This is not one of those! Over the winter, I collected up scraps from roasted birds and chopped veggies in gallon freezer bags and threw them in the chest freezer until I got enough to fill a 23 qt pot...

There is quite a bit of information out there online concerning the health benefits of bone broth. It makes an excellent medicinal base for soups during cold and flu season, and it's delicious! Making your own is definitely worth the effort!

Ingredients

3 gallon freezer bags of misc. poultry or beef bones
1 gallon freezer bag carrot, celery and onion scraps *

8 cloves Garlic

1 tsp. Thyme

1 tsp. Rosemary

1 tsp. Basil

1/8 tsp. Cayenne

Salt and Pepper to taste

* I used carrot peelings and tops, celery leaves and root ends, onion tops and bottoms. Onion portion should be equal to no more than one medium onion.

Put bones, veggies and garlic in a large stock pot. Pour enough water into the stock pot to just cover the bones and vegetable scraps. Bring bones to a boil. Turn heat down til the pot is just at a simmer, and continue to simmer for 12 hours. Add herbs and spices and simmer for an additional 30 minutes.

Let the broth cool til able to be safely handled and strain broth using a fine mesh strainer or colander to remove bones and vegetable scraps. Some tiny bits of meat and herbs may not be strained out, that's fine. You may want to let it cool enough to remove solidified fats from the surface if you are using beef bones.

Reheat the broth just to a boil, and fill sterilized canning jars leaving 1" head space. Process the jars of broth at 11 pounds of pressure for 20 minutes for pints, and 25 minutes for quarts. A 3/4 full 23 qt stock pot of bones and veggie scraps made 9 quarts of broth.

Duckies!

Saturday afternoon, after our 4H meeting, we stopped off at Tractor Supply... and picked up 2 more residents, Pekin Ducks!

This is our first time raising ducklings. They are quite a bit messier than the chickens, they love to slop around their water! They're still pretty shy, but we're working on that. In a few days or so, we'll be able to let them go for a little swim in the bathroom sink. Ducks are sold "straight run" meaning we do not know if they are male or female just yet. . Regardless, I want to name them Duckie and Andie after the characters in Pretty in Pink! 

It's a good thing we bought our chicks when we did, they were already sold out of the Ameraucanas and Jersey Giants at Family Home and Farm. Here's a short clip of everyone this afternoon. The chicks are getting wings already! Duckies are getting a few little tail tufts: