canned chicken

each fall we cull our old hens, hens who are not laying anymore and any miscellaneous roosters. these chickens are not tender, but old and tough, not suitable for regular chicken dinners. since we are a sustainable farm, nothing goes to waste, including these old chickens. instead of feeding them to the dogs, i can them up for the pantry shelves.

i originally had an amish woman can up my first batch of old hens. i did not have a pressure canner and had never canned chicken before. mrs. hochstetler told me it was easy to do and i should not be afraid of doing it myself.

my buddy, debbie, gifted me with a pressure canner one summer a few years back. squee! so i decided to try to can my own chickens.

i washed the chickens and loaded 5 birds into the pressure canner. i cooked them at 10 lbs pressure for about an hour after the pressure gauge began to jiggle. i then let them cool and dumped the lot onto a cookie sheet. my son peter and i picked through the chicken, removing the bones and skin. we packed the shredded chicken, along with the broth into quart jars and placed them back into a cleaned pressure canner. i set the timer for 55 minutes after the gauge began to jiggle. when it was done, i had my own canned chicken! i have also canned raw chicken (raw pack). this works well for legs and thighs. i can them for about 90 minutes at 10 lbs pressure when packing raw.

i use the canned chicken all the time. the chicken is nice and tender, after being pressure cooked and then pressure canned. it's great for when i forget to thaw out something for dinner. the quickest chicken and noodles i have ever made! peter likes the chicken tacos i make with the canned chicken. my market buddy, diane, loves my canned chicken. she told me a story the other day of how much her granddaughter loved the chicken and noodles she made. i have given and sold some canned chicken to some of my regular customers. everyone is hesitant at first, but after they try the chicken, they ask for more. last fall i canned up the extra broth, which i used up way too fast. need to can more broth for next year.

i now have three pressure canners/cookers. i have also canned beef broth using the same method. if you are a female member of our csa's, you will learn how to can chicken during our august work days. like mrs. hochstetler told me, it's easy and oh so rewarding!

my sour dough bread kick

I've been making sour dough bread this winter. yes, i'm almost 46 years old and this is the first time i've ever messed around with it. hard to believe, eh? well, it's true. i love to eat sour dough bread, but have always been somewhat intimidated by it, thinking it was time consuming or too much to fuss with. well nothing beats fresh bread and when my friend lorene gave me some starter AND a book, i decided to give it a try. i'm still a beginner at making sourdough, but the family has enjoyed being my guinea pigs. my starter is maturing now. i want to start a new batch of sour dough starter, also called a "sponge" when i can open the windows this spring. the interesting thing about a true sour dough is that the yeast is "wild caught". i know that many loaves of bread where baked in this house over the past 160 years, so yeast is probably lurking all over the place here. kinda cool thing to think about...free-range yeast or wild caught yeast. i'll blog more about it as my starter matures.

goose: cook it like beef

i have been roasting a goose for christmas for the past several years. i always brine it first, for a tender juicy goose. otherwise, if not brined, i find that goose is usually dry and chewy. although usually good, my cooked goose has never been awesome until this year. what did i do different? i cooked it like a roast beef. our geese range on grass, just like the beef we eat. since our geese eat grass, their meat tastes very close to grass-fed beef. it tastes more like beef than poultry to us.

i brined my goose 18 hours in advance in a maple-brown sugar brine. i stuffed it with wild and white rice, currants, apples, celery, carrots, onions, almonds and fresh herbs. i roasted the goose. breast down, at 425 F for about one hour, drained the fat, turned the goose over and turned the heat down. i cooked our goose for another 1 1/2 hours aat 350 F until the internal temp was 140 F, just like i cook my beef. i let the goose rest for 20 minutes, carved it and ate it for christmas dinner. this was the best goose we've ever had! the meat was pink and almost melted in your mouth. the stuffing came out great too, the rice was soft and the vegetables and nuts crunchy.

goose leftovers were fought over. we love leftover goose sammiches with horseradish, just like we love it on roast beef sandwiches.

local shrimps

in late september or early october, can't remember the exact day, a neighboring farm was emptying their shrimp ponds and selling fresh, fresh, fresh local pond-raised shrimps. last year was their first year for harvest and since we support local ag, we dutifully purchased a few pounds of the fresh shrimpies and brought them home. Again this year, we stopped by on the designated "shrimp sale day" and made another two pound purchase.

the scrimps are actually prawns. they are bred for pond rearing in this type of climate. a harvest is made each fall when the weather starts to turn cold and the water temperature drops. the shrimps are killed in cold water, sometimes right before you eyes if you get their early.

the scrimpies are sold whole at $9 lb. kinda pricy considering you get the whole shrimp. some shrimps are large, other small. you get "ungraded" sizes in each pound. both times we have gotten local whole shrimp i have cut myself on their sharp serated knife-like horns while cleaning them. both times i did not use the stock quick enough and had to feed it to the cats. other than that, they are very tasty. we made a scampie with them. delicious!

overall, i'd have to give the local shrimp experience a 6 out of 10. i love the fact that the shriimp are local. it's kinda neat to have the heads for stock, if i ever do anything with it. the drawbacks are that the shrimp was ungraded for size and there was extra prep time before eating. i will continue to buy a few pounds each year to show support, but make large shrimp purchases elsewhere.