Author: Judith

Who loves barbecue?

Judith

Who doesn’t want to spend time outside in the heat by the grill? Who doesn’t want to heat up your house by using the oven in July? Me…. that’s who?

Here’s one of our new favorite recipes for barbecue. It uses a beef roast and a slow cooker to make tender, shredded meat with that comforting flavor you love. Served on a bun as a sandwich or by itself, it’s an easy alternative to pork. It can also be put together in advance. If there’s any leftover it freezes well. We go traditional with baked beans, coleslaw and macaroni and cheese. How will you serve it?

Shredded Barbecue Beef
Adapted from America’s Test Kitchen
This recipe is easily halved for smaller roasts.

1 – 4 to 5lb boneless beef roast cut into 2 pieces (or 2 smaller roasts equaling approx 4-5lbs)
2 tablespoons chili powder
1 tablespoon paprika – we use half smoked paprika and half regular paprika
2 teaspoons salt
1 cup ketchup
1 and 1/4 cups coffee
1/4 cup dark brown sugar or molasses or sorghum
1 tablespoon yellow mustard
1 tablespoon brown mustard
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 teaspoon hot sauce (we use Louisiana)
½ teaspoon liquid smoke
1 onion, thinly sliced

In the bottom of a slow cooker stir together ketchup, coffee, brown sugar, mustard, cider vinegar, hot sauce and liquid smoke until well mixed.

Place onion slices in the bottom of the slow cooker.

In a small bowl mix together chili powder, paprika and salt. Dry meat with a paper towel and rub spice mixture over it.

Put meat on top of the onions in the bottom of your pot.

Cook on low 7-8 hours or on high 3-4 hours until meat shreds easily with a fork. Shred meat and stir it back into the sauce with the onions. May be served with toasted slider buns or split sandwich rolls.

*For better flavor put together recipe in your slow cooker and refrigerate the insert with your meat and sauce for several days before cooking.

Game-changing Bone Broth Recipe

Judith

Bone broth or stock, whatever you call it, we love having it in our freezer to add flavor and nutrition to soups or cooking liquid for rice or quinoa.

We typically use Ina Garten’s recipe for chicken stock with the addition of a bit of acid to draw the minerals from the bones and cook it for at least 24 hours. Not everyone has the ability or the extra large stock pot to cook 15 lbs of chicken parts for a day.

Enter the lowly chicken carcass – the neck and backbone left over after the bird has been cut into pieces. Bone broth is a great way to use this leftover and your Crock-Pot simplifies the process.

There is something for everyone with these two recipes. The first one shows a typical stock with traditional seasoning. The second removes any excuses for you not to try it because of its simplicity. We may never make stock the same again. Add some chicken feet for additional collagen if you’re really adventurous. 😉

Slow Cooker Chicken Bone Broth, 2 ways

Method #1
In the bottom of a 6-quart slow-cooker, place
1 frozen chicken carcass (approx 2 lbs)*
1 stalk of celery
1 carrot
1 unpeeled yellow onion, cut into quarters
3 cloves of garlic, unpeeled
12 cups water
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon dried thyme
½  teaspoon dried parsley (optional)
1/2 teaspoon dried dill weed (optional)
½ teaspoon black peppercorns (optional)

Cook on low approximately 24 hours. Strain to remove solid pieces, remove fat if desired, and store broth in the freezer for several months or the refrigerator for 2 days. Yields approximately 10 ½ cups.

Method #2

This broth is clearer and lighter yellow in color compared to the broth in method #1.
Place in the bottom of a 6-quart slow cooker,
1 frozen chicken carcass*
1 teaspoon dried thyme
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

Cook on low approximately 24 hours. Fill the pot with water making sure to cover the carcass completely. Strain to remove solid pieces, remove fat if desired, and store broth in the freezer for several months or the refrigerator for 2 days. Yields approximately 12 cups.

*Don’t bother unthawing your chicken carcass. It is easier to handle and works just as well leaving it frozen. 🙂

A note about food safety
It is especially important to keep stock/broth above 140 degrees F or below 42 degrees F to prevent bacterial growth (and potential food poisoning). We do this by cooling the broth quickly in an ice water bath and by bringing it to a boil when reheating.

 

Chili!

Judith 3 Comments

Chili is one of our favorites winter dishes. Comforting and hot, it’s easy to put together for a meal now and to freeze for meals later. This recipe has been my go-to for years. I add cubed butternut squash to cook during the last hour and top it with avocado for additional nutrients. Of course, corn chips or tortilla chips for crunch are tasty too!

For those who already have a favorite chili recipe, scroll down for a chili seasoning packet and a simple formula for using it.

Easy, Yummy Chili

In a 6-quart slow cooker combine:
3 lbs ground beef, browned and drained if needed
3 cans of beans, kidney, pinto or black, drained and rinsed
4 cans of diced, no salt added tomatoes
1 tablespoon honey

Mix the following spices together in a bowl then stir into the beef mixture:
1 tablespoon granulated garlic
1 tablespoon granulated onion
2 tablespoons chili powder
2 tablespoons cumin
½ to 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes, less or more to taste
2 teaspoons salt, more or less to taste

Cook in the slow cooker on high 6 hours or on low 12 hours until the tomatoes and beef are similar in color and the ingredients combine to look like chili.

This makes very thick chili. We like to serve it with diced avocado. You can top it with corn chips, tortilla chips, crackers, grated cheese, sour cream, and/or pickled or fresh jalapeno slices for a make your own chili buffet. It also freezes well. Just use it in 3 months for the best taste.

Variation to add butternut squash:
Add 1 additional seasoning packet of spices to the pot at the beginning. Omit the honey. 1 hour before serving if cooking on high power (2 hours before it’s cooking on low power) add one butternut squash that has been peeled and cut into small cubes to the pot. Serve when the squash is fork tender.

For 1 chili seasoning packet (Adapted from the Make a Mix Cookbook)
1 teaspoon granulated garlic
1 teaspoon granulated onion
2 teaspoons chili powder
2 teaspoons cumin
½ to 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes, less or more to taste
¾ teapoons salt (we use no salt tomatoes so that we can control the amount and type of salt – you may need to add more or less to your taste)
1 teaspoon honey

Chili formula, from my friend, Ann Boyd
1 pound of ground beef, browned and drained (if needed)
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 can of beans, rinsed and drained
1 chili seasoning packet
If using more than 3lbs of meat, add an additional seasoning packet for the pot. You may also want to add an additional can of tomatoes for a slightly thinner consistency.

This formula can be used to make chili for a crowd. You may want to add additional diced tomatoes and additional seasoning packets to reach your desired consistency and spice level.

Spring green up is on!

Judith

After a long, cold winter the fields are greening up nicely. They are not quite ready for the cows to begin the grazing rotation because the grass still needs to grow but the color seems to change overnight. Fortunately, we have been able to purchase additional hay for them. They are tired of hay and let Jonathan know it when he checks on them each day, but they could damage the fields if turned in now.

Jonathan sowed fields 4 and 5 with clover, and it is beginning to sprout. The cover crop planted last fall in field 1 is also greening up nicely.

Some of the tree have buds on them. The buttercups are blooming. The honeybees are on the hunt for any available pollen. Theodora still enjoys some of her meals in the yard. It is still a bit chilly for reports to resume from the front porch, but spring is in the air!

Time to Make Chicken Stock

Judith

The weather cooled off considerably so I can turn my attention to making chicken stock and heating up the kitchen with my Grandmother’s old, trusty, avocado green stove. So I will break out the necks, backs, and other miscellaneous chicken parts I have in the freezer and shortly my house will smell like delicious chicken soup.

My “recipe” for stock was adapted from this recipe below but I typically use what I have without getting uptight about the preciseness of measurements. I like to freeze it in 2 cup increments which make it easy to use in recipes later.

One note on food safety…..warm stock can be a breeding ground for bacteria so it is very important for the strained broth to be brought to room temperature quickly and then promptly put in the freezer or the refrigerator. I always make sure that I bring any reheated stock to a boil for a few minutes just to be on the safe side.

If you have any questions, just let me know!

Chicken Stock
(Adapted from Dairy Hollow House Soup and Bread, A Country Inn Cookbook by Crescent Dragonwagon copyright 1992)

4-5 pounds chicken, preferably from 1 stewing hen or the necks, wings, backs, and feet from young hens
2 medium onions, unpeeled and quartered
8 whole cloves
3 ribs celery with leaves, each broken in 2 or 3 big pieces
2 medium carrots, scrubbed and cut in large chunks
2 bay leaves
3 cloves garlic, unpeeled
1 ½ teaspoons salt
6-8 black peppercorns
Large pinch each of dried rosemary, thyme, basil, sage and savory
3-3 ½ quarts water
1-2 tablespoons white or cider vinegar

1. Rinse the hen or chicken parts leaving the skin on but removing any big lumps of fat. Place the chicken pieces in the pot.
2. Stud each onion quarter with a clove. Surround the chicken with the studded onions and add all the other vegetables and seasonings. Pour over all the cold water and vinegar.
3. Bring the liquids gradually to a boil over medium heat then immediately turn down the heat and let simmer, uncovered, skimming any surface foam, for 2 ½ to 3 hours. Stir occasionally. You may replenish the water as it cooks down; otherwise, you will get a lesser amount of stock.
4. Remove the stock from the heat and strain into a clean container. Discard the solids. Let cool, uncovered, 30 minutes. If the weather is warm, speed up the cooling processing by placing it in a sink of cold water. Refrigerate or freeze the cooled stock immediately. You may defat the broth easily after chilling as the fat will form a skim on the surface. Simply remove before using the stock.

Broilers, Round Two

Judith

Well, it’s been a while since we’ve posted anything new, but here it is now! We have successfully finished round two of broilers, which will be the last round for the season. Our feed conversion ratio was 4.38:1, or 4.38lbs of feed for 1lb of dressed meat. There were some hiccups with the feed situation, but I think that we’ll be able to remedy them for the next round. One was the grind for the baby chicks was too coarse and the other was that we think that either the protein was too low, or there was a genetic abnormality with the birds because we had weights ranging from 1lb to 6lbs and they should have all been pretty close to 4.5, but they weren’t. We’ll just chalk this up to experience and try again next year. All in all not a bad round, just not everything we thought it would be.

Got Recipes?

Judith

The chickens are coming this weekend and my idea of preparation is to raid the recipe box.  So I am lining up the chicken recipes that I already know are yummy like whole roasted chicken and several more I want to try such as pretzel coated fried chicken and spatchcock chicken.  The roasted chicken recipe is the recipe that turned me on to whole chicken in the first place and it will be handed out on processing day.  If you have any that you would like to pass along I would like to hear from you.  Please send them my way and I will post them on the website (once I figure out how!).

Death is a Bummer

Judith

We lost a chicken this morning.  Jonathan was moving the pen at dawn and one of them got caught under the edge as he slowly moved the pen to fresh grass.  My husband felt the accident keenly.  That is one of the many things I love about my husband.

When discussing the processing procedure with someone last week they said, “Jonathan does not seem like the type to enjoy that sort of thing.”  To which I replied, “He doesn’t.  He likes to eat.”

Have we gotten so far removed from our food that we forget that death is involved?  Some people do not want their meat to even remotely resemble an animal.  Maybe that is why the demand for boneless, skinless chicken breasts lead to the type of chicken whose legs will not support it once it reaches the optimum weight for processing.

I confess that meat is not one of my favorite things to prepare and I get a little grossed out by the blood.  However, I like the fact that our grass-fed cow smells clean – not like traditional meat from the store.  I like that we knew that this cow had a good life until his one very bad day.  I am looking forward to chicken whose history is known to me and am so grateful that we live in a land of plenty so there is chicken to share.

Death is my least favorite part of the pasture to table process but I am learning the difficult truth that death is as much a part of life as living.  Thankfully nothing is wasted in God’s economy.

Fresh Air, Sunshine and Free Range

Judith

I love fresh air and sunshine.  I guess that is one of the reasons I love to ride in my convertible.  The feel of the breeze on my skin, the wind ruffling my hair and the warmth of the sun are some of the many reasons it is fun to me as well as therapeutic if my attitude needs adjusting.

I think that is also why I really like the pen Jonathan built for the chicks. Three fourths of it is covered so that they can get in out of the rain but one fourth of it is open to the sun.  This morning they played in the sunshine but now during the heat of the day most of them are content to stay in the shade.  The sides are also open to the cross breeze in half of the pen so they can enjoy fresh air or move to the other side if the wind becomes too much for them.

I have heard that sunshine keeps germs at bay and helps animals stay healthy without antibiotics.  It seems like I’ve also heard it stimulates the pituitary gland that helps the chicks grow.  Sounds reasonable to me since the Lord created the sun and makes reference to keeping things in the light.

“But what about allowing them to free range?” some of you may ask.  Free range sounds great in theory but my friend Angie says it best.  “Free range seems to say ‘Come and get me’ to every hawk, owl, fox and weasel around that likes chicken.”  I like chicken, too, so the pen serves as their protection.  Some of the chicks had other ideas this morning while they were escaping from a small hole on the side.  I immediately looked outside to determine the location of our cat, Lucy.  She also likes chicken and birds and mice so I was relieved when Jonathan came home to place them back in safety.

It makes me smile when I look out the kitchen window and know that these chickens have the opportunity to be chickens in safety and peace.  And when the day comes for us to enjoy them in a different state we will know that they enjoyed a good life in the fresh air and sunshine.