Phyllis, our bearded lady Ameraucana: definitely not for dinner
I love my chickens. I love them even if I am going to eat them: I am just that kind of person. As a child, I always envisioned myself as a veterinarian, or maybe a zookeeper. Life intervened and now I am simply a chicken rancher.
The Eat Local Challenge for October was fun, though I did kind of drop the ball about foodstuff. Call me fickle, but…well I have 15 posts saved in my drafts folder, all about things like chicken and millet and squash and the importance of eating salad (or raw food in general) and I never did get around to posting them. Maybe they will see the light of day here sometime; maybe not. One of the things I mentioned, though, was meat thrift. How many meals can I squeeze out of one chicken? Or, in the instance below, out of half a chicken?
Chickens, though. Being a recent convert to carnivory, and being a general tightwad, it’s not like we binge on flesh around here. In most cultures other than the big-slab-of-critter-on-the-plate U.S., meat is used as a condiment, as a flavoring, and as such gets shoved to a small portion of one’s plate. I take that example as a model. It makes the creature’s sacrifice seem more worthy.
Last Saturday I thawed a chicken half (about 3.5 lbs.) while we worked on the greenhouse. That evening, the child chose a pumpkin to roast and we halved it, scooped out the seeds, and roasted the seeds while the bird was in the oven atop a bed of carrots and celery. (I roast the bird on a large saute pan: I want the drippings, see, and it’s easier done in a pan.) When the bird was roasted, the pumpkin halves went in on their cookie sheet, and I turned the oven down. The roasted seeds went atop the salad.
This was something of a special meal, so I made mashed potatoes and pan-roasted greens too. I lifted the bird off the saute pan and placed it on a platter, covered with tinfoil, to rest before carving. Dang: I didn’t have any white wine to deglaze the pan, so…I improvised by whizzing about a cup of green tomato chutney in the food processor, and used about a quarter cup of that to deglaze the drippings in the pan. I put about a half cup of the potato water in a cup and added about 2 tablespoons of flour to it, stirring well; I added this to the drippings. Over a low heat a nice rich gravy formed. I added more potato water to thin it. The rest of the potato water would be saved to make bread the next day.
We didn’t eat the whole half a chicken. In fact, we ate maybe a third of it: mashed potatoes with gravy, the greens, and a huge salad with those roasted seeds was the majority of what we ate. In point of fact, meat is never the center of our meals. Vegetables are. Anyway, when we cleaned the table after dinner, I pulled some of the meat off the carcass and put all of it, and the cooled, scraped-out pumpkins, into the fridge for tomorrow.
On Sunday morning, then, I made stock with the carcass, made two pie crusts with leaf lard and butter, and made bread with the reserved potato water. I let the stock cook all day: two celery stalks, their leaves, two chopped carrots, thyme, sage, salt and pepper; water to cover. You barely let it boil: one bubble every 10 seconds or so makes a very clear stock. I went about my day from there and later made a leek galette for dinner with a salad and pumpkin pie for dessert. After about 7 hours of cooking, I strained the stock, picked the carcass clean, deposited the bones in the trash, and reserved the stock for later. Bread and pie smell pretty good when they bake together.
Monday’s dinner is somewhat sacrosanct: it’s an office day for me so we always have pasta with tomato sauce. The kid got chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy in her lunch, though.
Tuesday: Election night! Time for some comfort food, so I made biscuits and gravy. Used some of the meat, added milk and flour, sage and red pepper flakes to the sauce. Nothing like it!
Wednesday: chicken tacos! Yum. Some Green Zebra tomatoes on top too, along with my black bean/corn salsa. Lots of lettuce and shallots; no cheese.
Thursday: Pumpkin soup with half of that chicken stock; cornbread, salad.
Friday: Beet risotto with the other half of that chicken stock; braised chard, salad.
So: One half of one chicken, five meals, two child-sized lunches. Not bad for one little birdy. Thanks.
Glad you came to visit!
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fast grow the weeds 
You are a respectful carnivore; that’s an admirable trait.
Wonderful post el. We’re on meal 8 from the turkey I told you about last week. There’s stock in the freezer and a huge pot of turkey noodle soup to round it off. I haven’t been feeling well and the soup really hits the spot. Some turkey, turkey broth and frozen/canned veg from the garden. Hmmmm……I think I’m having some for breakfast! 🙂
What’s leaf lard?
I’ve been weaning the husband away from the slab-o-meat thing for a while, with some success, except for special occasions when we’ll throw a big steak on the grill. But those occasions are fairly few and far between. I’m rather amused that we now feed a family of 5 on a piece of meat that a few years ago my hubby would have eaten by himself. We don’t do as well as you do but generally get 3-4 meals from a chicken. Not bad for 5 of us.
Thanks for making me think about how we use the food that we have.
That’s a great post! Really! I like reading that other people are schmaltz and carcass savers. I’ve never used chicken fat in pastry though- do you use it as a straight sub for butter? I use it to roast potatoes in. Yum!
Personally, I prefer the stock/broth from the carcass to the meat and if I’m feeling low, there is little else (food wise) that is as comforting.
That’s a very pretty chicken; I’m so jealous.
That is indeed a great looking chicken and it sounds like your daughter takes some great lunches to school.I’m jealous.
Thanks, Ms P. I try.
Ah, yes, Ang: we are fully coming into hot soup season! Nothing yummier with noodles, at least according to the kid. And there’s nothing at all wrong with soup for breakfast, IMHO.
Alison: Leaf lard is the rendered fat from around the kidneys of a pig. It’s great stuff for piecrusts, take my word on it.
Judy, yeah, things do change once you stop to think about them…plus, in my opinion, a life based on mindless consumption is going to be a thing of the past. One can hope.
Hiya Nada, well…I use schmaltz for other things but this was just lard from last year’s 1/2 piggy. Onions and spuds in schmaltz is great! The chickies I butchered this weekend had TONS of lovely fat on them; I took it out and saved it in a separate jar to thaw and render later. (I can never do it, or even eat chicken, the same week I butcher them. It’s too overwhelming.) But yes broth is quite vivifying, especially when it’s getting mighty cold on this half of the planet.
Thanks, Ann. She lays blue/green eggs. Poor girl has been attacked by a hawk twice (and both times saved by me) and has always been a bit shy. I am rather surprised she let me get this close to take her picture. Could be because I had food in my other hand.
Hey John. Yep, the kid normally goes to school with dinner leftovers. We’re pretty fortunate she’s a good eater. She even goes to school with salad (with yucky arugula and frisee and endive, go figure) on occasion.
You are my kind of people! This is how I was raised, and how we raised our kids, and how we eat today!
Thanks for a great post!
Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com
Just found your blog, great stuff! I couldn’t agree more about meat eating habits. We can our meat, and often simply use a bit of the meat to make a meaty gravy over potatoes or something. I absolutely love using stock for soups, they are so fulfilling and nutritious made that way. We butcher our own chicken, and will be butchering a cow in a few weeks. We never get used to killing, not in a wishy-washy way, but we don’t think it is a healthy sign to become too callous. We use our meat sparingly, as a protein rich food to supplement our homegrown veggies.