» The Problem with Raising Chickens

The Problem with Raising Chickens

“What’s for dinner?”

“Chicken”

“What kind?”

“Cooked.”

Approximately two nights a week, that is the conversation in our house. And most of the time I’m not intentionally being vague, I just don’t know what I want to do for dinner.

I am a little hindered by the fact that I’m almost always cooking a whole bird. Very seldom do I cook a meal of chicken breasts, let alone boneless, skinless chicken breasts. After all, it’s a biological fact that there’s no chickens that are made up entirely of breast meat. And I found out the first year we raised birds that if I part out too many of them, we use the breast meat first and are left with a lot of dark meat as we near the end of our freezer storage.

A lot of dark meat.

So, dinner last night was, you guessed it, chicken. What kind? I didn’t know. One idea was shot down because it was too spicy. Another bit the dust because I didn’t want to fry. “What about…” …nope, don’t have the ingredients.

I googled “chicken for dinner” and eventually came to this recipe that hit the trifecta:

1) It sounded good

2) I had the ingredients, and

3) It would work for a whole chicken.

So last night’s dinner for this chicken-raising family was Orange Hoisin Chicken. It was a good, delicious choice.

Orange Hoisin Chicken

1 chicken, cut into parts
2 T olive oil
1/4 c orange juice concentrate (the frozen stuff in a can)
1/2 c honey
1/4 c soy sauce
1/4 c hoisin sauce
2 t dried ginger
4 cloves garlic, crushed
2 T sesame oil
2 T rice wine vinegar

Heat olive oil in frying pan. When hot, add chicken skin down a few pieces at a time. Cook on med-high heat until skin is dark golden brown on both sides. Place skin-side-up in 9″ x 13″ baking pan. Repeat until all the chicken has been browned.

Mix remaining ingredients except rice wine vinegar together and pour over chicken.

Bake at 375 degrees until chicken is cooked through. (Use a thermometer!)

Set chicken on serving platter. Pour sauce into small sauce pan; add rice wine vinegar. Boil to reduce until thickened. The sauce is delicious served over rice.

Enjoy!

Served our family of 7.

Tags: chicken, dinner, recipe

Recipes | greengrassliving | April 7, 2010 10:23 pm

1 Comment

By Sally Helland, April 21, 2010 @ 6:38 pm

I’m so glad to find your blog and website! Last year was our first year to butcher. We butchered the 28 extra roosters that were in our straight run of dual purpose chicks. I too am having to find recipes that use whole birds. I do often boil several birds, make broth and then freeze the cooked meat for quick soups and casseroles! I am so interested in your feed, but I live in Olalla,(just across the Narrows bridge from Tacoma)on our family farm of 23 acres. I’m not sure how I could get feed regularly. We are getting more chicks in a couple of weeks and will have more layers, plus some actual meat birds. We have 19 head of cows too. Some day I want to add turkeys and maybe pigs. All in good time! I can’t wait to read the rest of your blog.

Sally