Monday 22 December 2014
Roast chicken
It was the winter solstice last yesterday so to celebrate the end of the old solar year we slaughtered one of our surplus cockerels and roasted him for dinner. As you can see, we covered the bird with some of our Tamworth bacon. We also stuffed him with sage and onion stuffing, made from fresh sage picked straight from the herb garden.
This is how the bird looked just out of the oven. Roasting time was 20 minutes per 450g including weight of stuffing plus a further 20 minutes. Temperature was 200C.
The cockerel was a cream legbar which is a breed used for egg laying rather than for the table. It therefore did not have a great deal of meat on it. It was therefore more like the chickens eaten before the 1950s. Then mass produced chickens started to hit the supermarket shelves. The new breeds grow rapidly and put on huge amounts of meat in a lifespan of only about 6 weeks. The bird we ate yesterday was 6 months old. We have 4 more to use up, and 6 drakes.
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3 comments:
well done, its great to see some-one making good use of there surplus cockerals, there is to manyof find a good home brigade out there. How did the taste compare to supermarket birds.
Next year we start raising birds for the table, we have just done our first pigs, now that is a llot of meat.
The biggest difference I noticed with the meat was the texture. The supermarket meat tends to be more crumbly and disintegrates easily. The meat from the cockerel didn't fall apart.
Glad to see you've kept pigs. Next year, if we can find a plot of land, we hope to keep pigs as well.
I am Vegan, but really appreciate your site and absolutely love your postings on YouTube...just recently discovered! You're very inspirational indeed! Looking forward to viewing all the videos. Thanks so much for posting! Blessings x Colette
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