Recipes and Reviews

I got a good price on chicken drumsticks this weekend so I bought 16 of them figuring I will make enchiladas from them and a few other ingredients from the store and the freezer. This version ended up tasting really good.

This recipe is based on the chicken, shrimp and sausage gumbo in Paul Prudhomme's Seasoned America cookbook. To make my wife happier I drastically reduced the fat used in the recipe from 1/2 c. to 2 t. To keep me happy I increased the amount of seasoning in the recipe to keep it tasting like the original.

I like to use this rich and spicy chicken stock as a base for gumbo.

A lighter version of chicken paprikash.

A new farm showed up at the farmer's market last season that supplies pasture raised chickens. For those of you not familiar with the practice, the chickens are raised outdoors in mobile pens. Instead of eating only grain rations, much of their diet is made up of grass, weeds, worms and bugs. Their grain ration is a supplement to their diet, not their only source of nutrition. They also get a lot more exercise than their mass produced relatives. In other words, they get to grow up and act like chickens. These birds also have a lot more flavor and a better nutrition profile than the supermarket birds.

While I sometimes make a whole smoked or roast chicken for a meal, one of my favorite things do when I'm short on time during the school year, is to toss it in the crock pot to make shredded chicken. Not only does the meat come out incredibly tasty, moist and easy to shred, I also get two quarts of some of the best chicken broth imaginable. I can easily make 4 meals for the two of us out of one bird.