Preserving Abundance Virtual Fest: Bonus Content!

Are you looking for the Preserving Abundance class page? Go here!

Thank you for being a part of the Preserving Abundance Virtual Festival on May 1-2, 2020!

A few of our festival presenters wanted to share some extra, bonus content with you, which you’ll find below and will stay up on this site for you to reference again in the future.

Using Pulp from Making Nut Milks and Juices

Alexandra Mackey from Free Foods ATL (@freefoodsatl) has compiled some great recipes for using up pulp:

A list of a bunch of ideas for using juice pulp

Chocolate hemp seed and almond pulp

Juice pulp circles

Juice pulp crackers

Almond pulp recipes

Kraut-Chi

During the virtual Florida Fermentation Fest, I built a helpful handout all about making kraut-chi. If you’d like to see it, it’s available at this link.

No Waste Chicken Dinner

Chef Daniel Holliday wasn’t able to join us live, but wanted to contribute a very special (and delicious) dinner recipe for you! To reach Chef Holliday, email them at hungry.like.the.me@gmail.com

Greetings friends, and many thanks for sharing a bit of your time and attention with me today. I’d like to share with you one of my all time favorite dishes. It’s inexpensive, wholesome, filling, and infinitely adaptable, and best of all it’s zero waste! I know it sounds too good to be true, but I am a firm believer in the power of simplicity and there are few things as delicious as roast chicken and potatoes. 

One of the things to keep in mind here is that this isn’t a recipe. There are no measured amounts, there are very few rules and there are no wrong answers. I’ll be demonstrating with some fairly straightforward ingredients, but once you understand the techniques involved, they can be applied to almost any variation of protein, veg, and starch.

Stuff You’re Gonna Need: 

  • Deep roasting pan. I use a cast iron pan, anything with deep walls that holds heat well will do ya fine.
  • Oil, salt, pepper. The good stuff. 
  • Vinegar. Doesn’t matter what kind, I tend to stick with apple cider but whatever you have will work. 
  • Potatoes – I’m using reds, but use what you got handy
  • Veg – I’m sticking with a basic Mirepoix (2pts onion, 1pt celery, 1pt carrot. Ish) but get wild
  • A whole chicken, sans feathers and such. Set the gizzards aside from gravy if you’re feeling frisky. 

Stuff You Can Add

  • Lemons, oranges, limes – Citrus really brightens up the dish, I love a few lemon slices stuffed into the cavity.
  • Fresh herbs – Great for both in the bird and in the veg. You can used dried if you want, but why bother? 
  • Butter – Nuff said

Go ahead and preheat that oven to 400, then we’ll start in on our base. Chop up your potatoes, put in the pan. 

Chop up your onions and other veg. Large side of bitesize is what we’re going for, too small and they’ll start to scorch, too big and they won’t be fun to eat. 

Set some of it aside for later. 

Toss the other half of your veg in the bottom of your pan with the potatoes and coat it all with a little bit of oil and a healthy amount of salt. This is a good time to toss in some fresh herbs if you’ve got em. 

Now get a hold of your chicken and clean out the cavity of any giblets and other bits, then we’re going to salt it well. Very well. Wear gloves for this part, and I like to pour a little salt into a different container to cut down the risk of cross contamination. 

Then you’re gonna take that extra veg and stuff it all inside. If you have a little citrus or some herbs, they can go inside too. The more the merrier, really. 

If you have the means and ability to truss your bird, by all means, but I like to keep it easy and spear it with a bamboo skewer. This isn’t vital, but it does keep things looking tidy. 

Take your gloved hand and gently separate the skin from the breast meat. Stuff that pocket full of softened butter. Extra points if you use a compound butter. You don’t have to do this step, but it makes your bird extra delicious and that fat will help during the cooking process. 

BUTTER

Throw a good coat of salt on every outside surface of your bird and then we’re ready for the most crucial step. Take your bird, and plop it right on top of your veggie and potato bed.

Kick your oven up to 425 and place the whole shebang on a middle rack. 

As the chicken cooks, it’s juices (and that BUTTER) are going to drip down into the pan, where they will start to confit the potatoes and veg, giving them a delightfully creamy and rich texture. Let that ride for about 45 minutes and give it a check. Pierce the space where the leg meets the body with a knife and check the juices. If they run clear, you’re looking good. If you’re a thermometer person, and you should be, go ahead and check the temps of both the breast and thigh meat. Every oven is different so yours might be ready to go, but it will likely need more time. On average this whole dish takes about an hour and a half, but everything from the pan you use to the size of your bird to what phase the moon is in will affect your cook time, so use your best judgement. Try not to poison anyone. 

Success! Let it all rest for about ten minutes, then carve it up and serve on top of a bed of beautifully roasted potatoes and veg. The drippings left in the pan can be used to make a gravy if you so desire. But what do we do with all these leftover bits? We’re gonna make soup!

Any leftover meat should be pulled from the bones and set aside. Take the rest of the carcass, veg and all, and plunk it in a pot. If you have some leftover fresh veg, throw it on in. I like a few peppercorns as well. The biggest thing is to not add salt to your stock; We’re going to be reducing this pretty far and we don’t want our final product to be too salty. Add just enough water to cover and pop it on a burner. 

Turn that burner up to medium heat and let the whole thing come up to a simmer, then back down to as low as you can get it. On my stovetop I know that a 2 setting is the right temp, but you’ll have to experiment to find your sweet spot. What we’re looking for here is a mellow simmer where bubbles break the surface every 10 seconds or so. We definitely don’t want this to boil. Now we add our secret weapon: Vinegar. About a capful per quart. 

The acidity in the vinegar is going to go to work on the bones, extracting all the gelatinous goodness and breaking down any connective tissues and whatnot. This is going to give your stock a richness and body that surpasses what normal chicken stock can do. Let that go as long as possible, overnight is best. When tomorrow comes, strain your delicious stock into a container and set aside. All the bones and cooked veg and whatnot? We’re going to put that in our compost! Because they’ve been processed the bones and other tissues that we normally keep out of our compost have been sufficiently broken down that they won’t putrefy like meat products normally do. The boost of iron and calcium to your garden will make a huge improvement to the quality of your soil, and we’re closing our food cycles! All that picked chicken meat and stock will make a lovely soup, and you just made two (or more) days worth of meals for less than a twenty and didn’t waste a single bit. Go you! I’m so proud. Now go forth, experiment, learn, and grow. And please feel free to reach out and let me know how it worked for you!