Monday, March 9, 2009

The Joy of Cooking...A Whole Damn Chicken

Any chef worth their salt must have a copy of the Joy of Cooking on the shelf. The older, the better. The classic copies may have impractical recipes like goose liver påte, and are missing some more contemporary dishes, but for the basics you just can't compete. Like info on how to skin a rabbit ("English hares are mostly darn meat, but the American farmed are nearly all white and can substitute for chicken")
It also has instructions for chicken assuming you might buy it without it even being plucked! Well, I bought a whole chicken as it was 3$ per pound, compared to 8$ for boneless breast. I'm not afraid of a little slaughtering, but I needed the little tidbits of info, like "remove the small glands in the rib cage". The presumably cleaned chicken did in fact still have said glands, and they were not in the bag of gizzards. I'm bothered BTW with the sealed gizzard bag, how do I know if they came from the same bird?
I decided against making gizzard gravy, I have no interest in eating liver, it's a poison filter people! But after a little clean up, some trussing and spices it's much more palatable eh? I decided against stuffing as it takes longer to cook that way, and I don't have a meat thermometer to test with.
The finishing touch to this big Sunday meal is stuffing how ever, acorn squash stuffing actually, but the shells were to weak to make a fancy display of it like the last time.

I think this chicken will feed my boy for at least a week, and I'll make chicken soup for the freezer beside. My next adventure? I'm looking for a rabbit for Easter...(I am one sick puppy)

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