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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!

Beehives – Top Entrances

Jonathan Smith

We are using top entrances on out beehives. Conventionally, langstroth hives (modern hives), have a bottom board and a spacer that allows the hive to set up just enough to make an entrance. We remove this space above the bottom board and put it at the top. This keeps us from having to keep the grass cut as short so fewer cuts during the year, or less time required. This also gets the entrance further from the ground. Further from the ground means that the skunks have a much more difficult time reaching the bees. Skunks will camp in front of a hive and scratch around the entrance to get bees to come out and then eat them and can put a hurting on a hive’s population.  Here’s a terrible picture of hive #6.  Next time I’ll try to take a picture with the sun at my back 🙂

Honeybee Hive

Nuclear Hives

Jonathan Smith

Well, they’re actually nucleus hives, or nucs for short; they’re not radioactive or anything.  These are small hives that we have been experimenting with this year.  They are housed in a hive that holds 5 frames, or half the number of frames of our regular hive body.  This means less space to heat and cool and defend.  We set these guys up and let them make their own queen and work on building their hive.  This gives us a kind of insurance policy.  So without a nuc, if we were to loose a queen in a large hive there would be three options to choose from:

1 Do nothing.  The hive would likely die and we would loose any honey/pollen/nectar that was stored due to robbing.

2 Order a queen.  She would take a few days to get here and take a couple of days to start laying, so for about $30 we would only have about 5-7 days of no production of new bees.

3 Let them make their own queen.  This takes some manipulation time on the beekeeper’s part, but is doable.  It takes a hive about 30 days from starting to raise a queen ’till she starts laying, then another 25 days or so until the eggs she laid start hatching.

With a nuc handy, as soon as I realize there’s no queen in a large hive, I can use the queen from the nuc and put her in the hive that’s missing one and get them right back on track.  While it may not seem like a huge difference in choices, if your honey flow is only 30 days long like it is some spring seasons, you can’t afford to miss any days of production or you could miss out on honey for the entire year!

This is how we use our nucs as another tool in our management practices.

Spring chickens are finished

Jonathan Smith

We have completed our raising and harvest of our spring batch of chickens.  They averaged 5 lbs and we were very pleased with the way they turned out.  We used a new hatchery as well as a new pen design and thankfully it all worked out great!

If you’re interested in pasture raised, organically fed chickens, contact us and we’ll get you set up!

Open House and Farm

Jonathan Smith

Dear Friends,

I learned recently from Southern Living that the word “porch” can also be used as a verb. Most of the pictures sent in the farm updates are views from our front porch. This Saturday, May 31st, from 6pm – 9pm we invite you to visit the farm to “porch” with us for our 2nd annual open farm/house.

You may want to bring your supper to have on the porch. We recommend the BBQ sandwich from Burnett’s, the Marathon gas station at Exit 31 (pickles on the sandwich with mild sauce on the side).

You may want to do chores with Jonathan around 7pm. You can help water and move chickens. You can meet the roosters, Rocky, Prince and Pierre, to decide which is the most handsome. You can gather eggs from the ladies. You can learn how to tell the difference between Spot and Speck and help move all the cows to new pasture. Or you can see the infrastructure that makes all of this easier.

You may want to do none of the above and simply rock the time away watching the world go by. Time melts away on the porch.

The real show begins around 8:30 when the lightening bugs begin to make their appearance. Because we do not use chemicals on our fields their numbers create a magical show difficult to describe.

We have a special on our grass fed/finished beef – buy 3 packages of ground beef or pre-made hamburger patties and get 1 free. Fresh eggs will also be available to purchase.

Rain or shine we will be here and hope to see you this Saturday!

Judith & Jonathan

Critter!

Jonathan Smith

There was a yellow-bellied slider (turtle) traveling from one pond to another sometime last year that I got some pictures of, but yesterday it was a different turtle traveling the same path. This time was an alligator snapping turtle. He was a pretty big one, the biggest I’ve ever been this close to. I dropped a quarter on his back and took some pictures, then after two attempts to get my quarter back I decided I liked all my appendages attached and let him keep the quarter.alligator snapping turtle