Adventures with the ultimate organic free range food.
This is an adaptation of a great chicken breast recipe. It involves slicing a boneless wild turkey breast into roughly half pound pieces, about the size and thickness of a chicken breast, each perfect for one serving. It is fast, easy, and delicious.
This will never win a contest against a well made “from-scratch” stew recipe but it is faster, easier and still pretty darn good.
Think of this as “pulled venison”, a simple but wonderful way to show off one of the least respected cuts. It’s a guaranteed hit, even among folks that aren’t too sure about wild meat.
Works best with wild birds like turkey, pheasant — or even a big mess of quail. PLEASE do not just “breast ’em out” and toss the rest. Those bones and meat are a first-class ticket to great stock!
This is a SPECTACULAR recipe. It takes a significant effort to prepare, but it’s worth it. Works great with pheasant, grouse, etc., but chickens too. Quail and turkey (wild or commerical) will pose challenges due to size, but should be excellent. When someone in my Read More …
When boning out whole processed grocery store chickens, the weight ratio of what you are left with (not counting giblets & neck if included) will be about 52% boneless meat, 20% skin and 28% bones.
So, for instance, to wind up with 12 lbs of bones you may need over 40 lbs of poultry.
Game birds may have different ratios, but not dramatically so. You may just have to keep track – and if you have too little for the size batch you want, you can always supplement with chicken.
Whether wild or store-bought, save the skins| Roasted then crumbled into the stockpot they add tremendous flavor. And for commercial chickens or turkeys, it lets you harvest much of the fat. Of course with wild birds that means you need to do a thorough plucking job… which can be a big hassle.
Normally the limiting factor for the number of “Servings” you are looking for is either the weight of bones you have available, or the capacity of your stock pot.
So fiddle with the pot size below until you come up with a number that is both a) not bigger than your biggest pot and b) not more bones than you expect to use. All of the other ingredients will fall into line.
Some of the boned meat will be called for in the stock recipe. It will be mostly leg meat, wings and if necessary some of the boneless thighs or breasts – depending what you prefer to keep for other purposes.
If starting with whole birds you’re likely to have a lot of boneless meat left over – plan in advance for how you want to use it. When done processing the birds, I salt the extra meat (dry-brining … google it), then vacuum seal in meal-size packages and freeze. It will partially dry-brine as it freezes, then the process completes when thawed for cooking. It’s super convenient – and dry-brined poultry is outstanding (adjust any salt in your recipes to allow for the salt you’ve already put in the meat). It’s more chicken than I normally need to have handy, so I share it with friends, neighbors or relatives.
Some stock recipes (including mine here) call for adding chicken feet for body. I always do that, but you can get a similar result with unflavored gelatin (google is your friend). If you don’t plan to save the wings (you monster!) they add some gelatin/body to your stock. Of course dry-brining and freezing the wings leaves a nice treat within easy reach.
If money is no object, try to get free-range or “pastured” birds. They get much more exercise, which builds up more cartilage and bone structure – which leads to better broth. But they are generally much MUCH more expensive than factory-farmed chickens. Making a big batch can be quite costly.
A delicious and visually exotic dish – but really easy to prepare. It’s getting your hands on high quality fresh mussels which can be a challenge.
Cioppino is a seafood stew invented in the 1800’s by the Italian fishing community that worked the San Francisco bay and nearby Pacific waters. They would pick from whateve was least marketable from their haul and turn it into this
A heavily smoked and highly spiced cajun sausage, typically used as an ingredient for other cajun dishes (like jambalaya, gumbo, or in a crawfish boil).
A super-simple, surprisingly excellent fresh sausage
This is a framework, not a recipe. It does not presume what flavorings you want to use. Plug in your own, or use your favorite commercial mix.
It is based on venison. For game sausage it is usually best to aim for a 70/30 meat to fat ratio.
The additives listed here are all standard, safe products developed specifically to improve the flavor and texture of sausages. Waltons is a convenient source, but similar products are widely available elsewhere. Waltons uses their own custom name for some of them, but if you google for the ingredients all will be revealed.
You should have a smoker setup you are comfortable with because smoking semi-dry cured sausages requires more temperature control than most other smoking jobs.