Apple Dumpling Chicken

Tags

apple cinnamon chicken, apple dumplings, apples and raisins, chicken with fruit, cinnamon raisin, GAPS Diet, ghee, honey glazed chicken, puff pastry wrapped chicken, Thanksgiving dinner

Just before Christmas, my friend Stacy shared with me the method she used to roast her Thanksgiving turkey.

When I made our turkey this year, I stuffed it with apples, pears, oranges, brown sugar, butter, and rosemary! It was so moist and delicious and you could taste the fruit in the meat….also the gravy made from the drippings was some kind of awesome!

I assumed that she remembered from all of my pork with fruit posts that I LOVE meat cooked with fruit, and was very grateful to have her pass this idea on to me.

We had a second Christmas dinner when my dad and his wife came to visit after the holiday had ended.  I used Stacy’s idea to roast a fruity chicken.  Guess what.  Stacy was right.  The whole thing was “some kind of awesome”!

It struck me yesterday, after a wave of discouragement smacked me for temporarily turning my blog into a health nut cooking site, that GAPS food doesn’t have to be boring.  Without cream and whippy chocolate things, and bread to sop everything up with, it is really very mundane, so I decided that I would just have to look harder at the list of foods we are allowed to have and get creative.   After all, the whole purpose of blogging for me is to try to think outside the box.

Then I remembered Stacy’s turkey.  Okay, so I totally stole the idea, no creativity required, but I realized that we can have apples on GAPS.  We can have raisins, cinnamon, honey, and roast meats on GAPS…and there were these two birds sitting in the fridge needing to be made into stock…

Rather than dumping them in a pot to simmer away so that we could eat more and more and more of the brown boiled chicken we’ve had so much of over the last month, I stole the bones from the chickens, ripped them right out of their yeller skins, refusing to eat another wimpy, limp piece of cooked-to-mush chicken, and set to work.  I turned one of the birds into Apple Dumpling Chicken (Get it?  The chicken is the pastry?  When I’m off GAPS I’m going to wrap the entire apple/cinnamon/raisin stuffed bird in an enormous sheet of puff pastry.  I really am.) and marinated the second chicken to use another day.

An hour and a half later, my family and I were sitting down to the most tender, juicy chicken I have ever eaten.  Dark meat, white meat…didn’t matter.  Moist and tasty through and through.  Like Stacy said, the meat picks up the flavor of the fruit, but I think it is so tender because the fruit steams the bird from the inside out and it just melts in your mouth.  Like butta!

Ingredients:

1 whole chicken.  I needed the bones for stock so deboned my bird, but an easier method would be to just leave it whole and stuff the cavities.

4 peeled, cored apples cut into wedges.  Choose apples that keep their shape during the cooking process, if you are using a deboned chicken, so that the whole thing doesn’t fall flat when it’s roasted.

1/4 c. raisins

Himalayan salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Cinnamon

Ghee or butter.  I’m using ghee, coconut oil, and extra virgin olive oil for cooking while we are on GAPS.

3 T raw honey

3 T water

Method:

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Place the chicken in a roasting pan, then rub it down with ghee or butter.

Season it, inside and out, with salt and pepper.

Stuff the cavities with apples and raisins and sprinkle with cinnamon.  Add a few dollops of butter or ghee.  Seal up the bird if necessary, truss if you like.

Roast for 35 minutes.  Reduce the heat to 300 degrees and roast for an additional 30 minutes.

Mix together the honey and water to make a glaze.

Brush the honey/water over the bird.

Increase oven temp. to 400 and allow the bird to brown for 10 minutes.  Baste with the pan drippings and more honey glaze and roast for another 5 to 10 minutes.

Remove from the oven and allow to rest for 15 minutes or so.

Serve sliced with apples and raisins.

Use the “some kind of awesome” pan drippings to lace each serving with apple dumpling goodness.

Traditional Sage Stuffing

Tags

French bread stuffing, giblet stuffing, growing parsley, How to make stuffing, sage dressing, Thanksgiving dinner, Thanksgiving traditions, traditional stuffing, turkey and dressing, using dried sage

I don’t mess much with Thanksgiving dinner.  A couple of times I have put nuts and apples in the dressing and I have tried Martha Stewart’s wine and butter soaked cheesecloth to cover the turkey.  They were great, but no more fancy schmancy ideas for me, thank you very much.  Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes with turkey gravy, pumpkin pie, custard pie, a layered pumpkin pie for Hubby who doesn’t like traditional, cranberry sauce from scratch, plus a can of the jellied stuff for Hubby, corn, Grandma’s summer squash, sometimes green beans, relish tray, rolls with butter, mulled cider, and the newest addition (10 yrs. in a row now) my step mother’s sweet potato casserole with crispy marshmallow topping.  That is all.

I’ve never used a recipe for my stuffing so had to work hard to pay attention to what I put into it, making precise measurements so it could be blogged.  I make it a day ahead of time and, though I know they say not to do it, I stuff the bird and neck cavity with a good bit of it and bake the rest in a casserole dish, adding stock as it cooks.   I not only test the temperature of the bird to see when it’s reached the proper internal temperature, but I always check the temperature of the stuffing inside the bird too.  It is always to the proper temperature and no one has ever gotten sick, so I’m sticking with tradition on that one.  It is the best, the stuffing with the turkey juices baked all through it.  The casserole full never tastes as good and the texture is all wrong.  I ran into that problem today trying to take a picture of the finished dressing.  It tasted great, looked fine on the plate after I broiled it to give it some color, but it is so different from what tomorrow’s finished result will be when it is scooped out of the bird, that I think I will add an additional picture to this blog post after Thanksgiving.

I get up very early on Thanksgiving mornings, one of my favorite traditions, and while everyone is sleeping I stuff the bird.  Then I rub him down real good with butter and salt and pepper him.  He gets a nice puffy tent of foil before going in a 350 degree oven.  After an hour or so I turn it down to 250 and have my coffee or slip back under the warm covers with my husband.  Depending on the size of the bird, he roasts for 6 to 8 hours.  The last hour or so, I turn the temperature back up to 350 and let him brown while basting every few minutes.  We watch the Macy’s Day Thanksgiving Day Parade, the annual dog show, and  Miracle on 34th Street while I make mashed potatoes, gravy and throw the quick and easy dishes in the oven to finish.  Pies are done the day before, as well as the sweet potato casserole prepared, cranberry sauce made and chilled.  I love every bit of it.  I just can never get over the fact that I cook, literally for days in advance, getting this one meal ready and it’s all over in ten or fifteen minutes.  I suppose I’m not the only one that feels that way, but still, I wait all year for my favorite week of cooking.  It is the day before Thanksgiving around 4 p.m.  The stuffing is made.  I still have pies, sweet potato casserole, and cranberry sauce to make and I haven’t even thought about what to make for dinner.  Chaos.  I love it!!

Ingredients:

4 to 6 cloves of garlic, minced

4 c. celery, small dice

3 c. onion, small dice

3/4 c. chopped fresh Italian Flat Leaf Parsley

1/2 c. butter

3 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

2 tsp. dried sage

5 cups turkey stock

20 cups day old French Bread, I made mine and used 1 1/2 baguettes and 2 batards in the stuffing

Method:

Prep all ingredients.

My garden has been wilted by repeated frosts.  I love it that only heavy snows hurt my parsley and I will have it for most of the winter.  Isn’t that purty?

Melt the butter in the bottom of a large stock pot over medium heat.

Saute the garlic till translucent.  Add the onions and cook them until translucent as well.  Stir in the celery and parsley, sage, salt, and pepper.

Cook, stirring frequently, until all the vegetables are translucent.  Add the stock and simmer for 10 minutes or so.

Stir in the bread.

Variations:  You can add more bread if you like drier dressing or more stock if you like it more moist.  Some people add eggs to firm it up.  I leave them out.  You can also adjust the salt and pepper at the end of the process to your taste.  Also, I used dried sage.  Fresh sage will lend a different flavor and require different amounts as will the addition of other herbs.  Sometimes I add the cooked carrots, celery, and onions from my turkey stock which makes the stuffing really moist.  Cooked giblets or turkey pieces can also be added.  I chose to keep this year’s plain and simple.

 

How To Make Stock

Tags

beef stock, bouquet garni, how to make stock, mirepoix, pilaf, risotto, seafood stock, Thanksgiving dinner, turkey stock, vegetable stock

I don’t think I’ve bought a can of stock or broth since my first born was a new born and there was no time for anything but dumping a few of them in a pot with baked chicken breasts, pasta, and some vegetables for a quick batch of chicken noodle soup.   It’s just too easy and economical to make my own.  I don’t know why more people don’t “stock” their freezers.  It just sits there on the stove steeping for a few hours, then you strain and freeze it.  Of course you can’t leave the house while it’s doing its thing, but you can read or watch a couple of movies, garden…whatever.  The end result, depending on the size of your stock pot, is several quarts of stock that can be used in sauces and soups, stuffing, polenta, pilaf, risotto…

A convenient way to store it is by using the common practice of freezing it in ice cube trays then popping the cubes into a freezer bag.  Then you can pull out what you need without having to thaw an excess amount.

At Thanksgiving time, I buy an extra turkey that’s small in size and make my stock a couple of days ahead of time, using an 8 qt. stock pot.  My finished stock goes into the stuffing and gravy.

 

I was taught that there are 5 basic rules for making a clear stock:

1.  Use cold water, not hot, to start your stock.

2.  Do not stir a stock while it is cooking.

3.  Never cover a pot of stock while it is cooking.

4.  Skim the congealed foam from the surface of the stock as it rises to the top.

5.  Never boil stock as it cooks.

 

There are also 4 basic components to making a meat stock.

1.  Cold water.

2.  Bones with or without meat.  When making beef or lamb stock, a richer flavor is achieved if the bones being used are roasted in a hot oven until browned.

3.  Mirepoix-  carrots, onions, celery.  The ratio is:  1/2 of the mirepoix should be onions, 1/4 should be celery, 1/4 carrots.

4.  Bouquet Garni– herbs and spices used to flavor the stock.

Note: A stock never contains salt.  Salted stock is called broth.  Onion skins give poultry stocks a yellow hue.

 

Stock cooking times:

Poultry stocks need to cook for at least 4 hours.

Beef and lamb stocks require 8 or more hours to achieve the greatest flavor.

Fish and shellfish stocks can be used within 3o minutes.

Vegetable stocks have more flavor if the vegetables are roasted before being used to make stock.

 

The method I use for making stock:

1.  I fill half of my pot with bones and meat when making poultry stocks.

2.  Cold water follows.  I typically fill my stock pot over the meat and bones to within 3 or 4 inches of the top of the pot.

3.  I place in my bouquet garni.  If you like you can make a sachet with the herbs and spices using cheesecloth, but I just put them right in and strain the whole batch of stock at the end of the cooking time.

4.  Add the vegetables.

5.  Heat the water just until you begin to see movement.  Reduce the heat until very little or no movement is noticeable.  I basically poach my stock ingredients.

6.  Skim off the “scum” from the surface of the liquid as the stock begins to cook.  This foamy substance is made of congealed blood, albumin, and impurities that will make the finished stock cloudy if it’s allowed to remain.  The scum will rise over a period of time.

7.  Allow the ingredients to “steep” like a big batch of tea for the hours recommended for the type of stock being made.

 

Turkey or Chicken Stock

Turkey legs, wings, back bones, etc.

Cold water

Mirepoix-  1/2 onions, 1/4 celery, 1/4 carrots

10 cloves of garlic halved

1 tsp. peppercorns

5 or 6 bay leaves

A handful of fresh Flat Leaf Parsley

Oregano

Sage

 

Cornbread Stuffing

Tags

corn pone, cornbread, cornbread turkey stuffing, French bread stuffing, sweet cornbread, Thanksgiving dinner, turkey and dressing, turkey stuffing

I have to admit.  This was my first.  I made it months and months and months ago.  Like a dork, I forgot to write down how much cornbread I had used in the recipe and haven’t been able to post it.  Like an even bigger dork, I didn’t notice that I had taken a photo of my measuring cup full of cornbread.  4 cups, right there in the picture.

Though I prefer stuffing made with French bread, the French bread being the thing I’m supposed to be making right now for my Thanksgiving stuffing while I sit blogging, I do love cornbread stuffing.  It just doesn’t belong in my Thanksgiving turkey.  For those who are die hards, I thought it would be a good time to post the recipe I came up with to go along with a roast chicken I made those months and months and months ago.

I usually make Sweet Southern Cornbread for my family.  We don’t like the dry corn pone stuff.  It’s way too sweet for a stuffing though, since it’s more like a yellow cake.  For this recipe I used one right off the back of my self-rising corn meal bag.  It was ideal.  So dry it could hardly be eaten without slatherings of butter, almost tasteless and lacking any sweetness whatsoever.  It made a very good stuffing but the rest went into Raspberry Cornbread Pudding, which was born out of necessity.  It was either create a dish with all of that dry cornbread or toss it to the chickens.   I would have thrown the pudding to them if my boys hadn’t liked it so much.

Ingredients:

3 T rendered lard or bacon drippings

1 clove of garlic, minced

1 1/2 c. celery, small dice

2 c. yellow onions, small dice

4 c. cornbread, crumbled

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. dried parsley

1/2 tsp. dried sage

3 c. chicken stock

Salt and Pepper to taste

Method:

Heat oven to 350 degrees F.

Saute garlic in fat until translucent.  Add onion and sweat.  Add celery and cook until translucent.

Season with salt and herbs.  Add one cup stock.  Simmer slowly for ten minutes or so.  Add cornbread.

Stir in remaining stock.  Season to taste.  Spoon into a casserole dish and bake for one hour.