Recipes

Recipes

Heritage, naturally raised meats have unique characteristics that should be understood and accounting for in their cooking. Some of these characteristics - such as the firmer consistency of a free range chicken's legs - mean that you cannot cook these birds in the same manner as a commercial "couch potato" bird. Other characteristics - like the rich natural flavor of Berkshire pork - mean you don't want to over power the meat with strong marinades or sauces as you have to do with bland store bought pork.

Heritage Turkey

Heritage turkeys should be cooked differently as they have a different meat distribution, consistency, and fat content than the commercial birds.

Read this article first - it has a lot of good information about the differences in these birds and how that affects optimum cooking technique.

From William Rubel

One important point: ALWAYS cook your stuffing before putting it in a Heritage bird. Since the birds are cooked hotter and faster the stuffing will not cook completely if its only cooked inside the bird. So cook it outside the bird then stuff the bird and let the juices flavor and warm the stuffing.

My new favorite roast Heritage Turkey recipe:

The cooking temp for this recipe is 400 - 450 degrees and you cook the bird appx 1 hour per 7 lbs.

Rinse bird - place in roaster. Put appx 1 inch of water at the bottom of the roasting pan.

Roast at 450 degrees for 45 minutes (or half the estimated cooking time) - check on the bird. As the skin just starts to get golden cover the bird with tin foil.

Reduce heat to 400 degrees and cook to 130 degrees in the thigh. At the same time cook your stuffing in a separate pan in the oven.

When the bird reaches 130 degrees in the thigh stuff it with the cooked stuffing. Return the bird to the oven covered with the tin foil and complete cooking till it reaches 140 to 160 degrees in the thigh. (William Rubel suggests the 140 degrees. 160 degrees is the absolute max I would cook to.)

You can add "flavor" by putting herbs in the water. When the bird is done cooking most of the water will be steamed away and what will remain is enough drippings to make gravy. (Without the water the bird will not have enough of its own drippings to make the appropriate amount of gravy!)

Heritage Chicken

Recipes coming soon!

Heritage Pork

Recipes coming soon!

Heritage Lamb

Recipes coming soon!

My recipe "to do" list:

* Four Meal Chicken

* Bacon chops