Barn Series: A Farmer Friendsgiving
Picture this: You sign up to bring the main course and a couple of sides for a Thanksgiving potluck at work. What’s your first move? Do you head to the internet and start googling recipes for roast turkey? Do you pull out a tried-and-true family recipe and head to the grocery store? Do you outsource the whole thing and pick up a pre-made option? When you shop for the ingredients that you need, what priorities are you weighing - price? convenience?
Well, here’s how it went for me at my first Thanksgiving season at Burkett Farm.
I wanted to use as many of our farm’s vegetables as possible to come up with a main and two sides for our team of eight. I wanted to stretch these ingredients as far as I could - making the most impact with the least amount of resources or outside supplies. And I wanted to make it delicious.
First up: the main. We aren’t a turkey farm, so the classic Norman Rockwell roasted bird on the table wasn’t an option. In fact, we don’t raise any animals outside of a small flock of laying chickens; it was looking like a vegetarian menu. But a few weeks ago, Jamie let me know that we had to dispatch two of the roosters in our flock who had reached an age of adolescence and attitude that was causing issues. These roosters were regularly fighting with each other and attacking our hens, which, left unchecked, would surely result in injury to our flock. We attempted to re-home the roosters, but got no takers; most people don’t want to keep roosters for the same reasons we couldn’t.
On a quiet, cloudy Thursday, we gathered behind the deer fence and did the deed, using the opportunity to show some of our staff how to properly kill and process a chicken for consumption. I took the opportunity to claim the birds for this purpose: These roosters would serve as the centerpiece of our meal.
Next up: the sides. I knew butternut squash would play a major role. Ever since I cooked some back in September, I’ve been self-appointed president of the Burkett Farm butternut squash fan club, because I’m certain it’s the best I’ve ever had. I also requested a handful of sweet potatoes from our curing stash, a head of Napa cabbage, some cauliflower (two small heads), and a few spicy black radishes.
Rooster pot pie with Burkett Farm veggies
The result: Two savory pies (one vegetarian, and one with meat) with cauliflower, butternut squash, cabbage, and onion); a platter of roasted sweet potatoes and butternut squash with tahini and sorghum, and cabbage salad with sunflower seeds, herbs, black radish, and parmesan cheese.
What I sourced from beyond the farm: Flour, butter, sugar, salt, yellow onion, parmesan cheese, sunflower seeds, tahini, sorghum, duck fat, oranges, chili flakes, and oil.
Other resources we used:
Labor - certainly I opted in for an intensive preparation method to make our rooster meat as delicious as possible. You can check out the full rooster confit recipe below.
Energy - It was a cloudy, rainy day when we prepared this meal in our demo kitchen, so all of our electrical was running off of our battery back up instead of directly from our solar panels. Using our oven, dishwasher, and other appliances more than usual (just like you would at home) drew a higher energy load than normal from our battery storage.
Some reflections on the experience:
As a cook with a lot of experience developing recipes, it was inspiring to cook with produce from our farm. It was easy to be creative with it in the kitchen, despite the limits of what we had, and I was happy with the results - with ingredients this good, it’s easy to make things taste delicious. Next year, there are things I’ll do differently to source even more from our land.
For example, we grow sunflowers every year; this year, I’ll make sure we harvest some of the seeds for our pantry.
For example, I could have used our honey from our bees instead of sorghum as a natural sweetener.
For example, I’ve added sesame or benne to my wishlist of crops to try growing, allowing us to produce our own tahini or sesame flour or oil.
Another unexpected perspective and lesson learned: approaching energy as one of the “ingredients” to think through. If you were confined to using limited power or water resources to prepare your Thanksgiving meal, how would that change what you prepared? Certainly, next year, energy efficiency will take greater priority in menu planning.
And now, without further ado, a rooster confit recipe.
Rooster Confit
Makes about three pounds confit’d rooster meat
Roosters are notoriously bad birds for eating. They are typically lean, tough, and gamey, and are often slaughtered at an older age than most meat chickens. This was my first time cooking rooster, so I laid in heavily to every cooking technique I know for making meat tender, rich, and juicy - curing, confiting ( a process of cooking meat in fat), and using an immersion circulator water bath, which cooks very slowly and consistently. Was it worth it? I’ll say this: the rooster meat was good (not great). But the rooster stock was excellent, with an incredible depth of flavor. All in all, it was worth the effort to make sure we honored our roosters by letting nothing go to waste.
2 whole roosters, cleaned (neck bones, feet, and gizzards reserved for stock)
1 cup kosher salt
¼ cup sugar
½ teaspoon orange zest
1 garlic clove, sliced
2 bay leaves
1 ½ teaspoons fresh thyme leaves
½ teaspoon chili flakes
4 cups duck fat
If using roosters that have been recently slaughtered, let air-dry, uncovered, in a refrigerator for 2 days.
In a food processor, combine the salt, sugar, orange zest, garlic, bay, thyme, and chili flakes. Pulse until it is well combined and resembles slightly damp sand. This is your cure.
Using a very sharp knife, place one rooster on a cutting board, and remove the legs (keeping the thighs intact). Flip the rooster over, and cut out the back bone (reserve this for stock) by cutting along either side of it. Then flip the bird over again and slice the breast in half down the breast bone plate. (An observation: the bones of roosters were harder to cut through than a typical chicken - perhaps because these roosters were older than most meat chickens are at the time of slaughter. So you’ll need to put some muscle into it). You should have two legs and two breasts per bird.
Gently sprinkle each piece of meat with some of the cure - go light here, as roosters are very lean, and it won’t take much cure to season them. Place the pieces on a wire rack set over a rimmed baking sheet and refrigerate, uncovered, for 24 hours. (I used a curing process instead of a brining process because I wanted to intensify the flavors of this gamier bird.)
Gently rinse each piece of meat of its cure, and pat dry. In a plastic bag for vacuum sealing (or a ziptop bag), place 2-4 pieces of rooster. Then add about one cup of duck fat to each bag. Seal using a vacuum sealer.
Prepare a hot water bath with an immersion circulator set at 150°. Add the vacuum-sealed bags of rooster and let cook for 24 hours. Remove from the water bath and let cool in the bags. If freezing, you can put the bags directly in the freezer - the lack of oxygen and the duck fat make for an excellent preservation environment.
Otherwise, refrigerate the bags for one hour (this will allow the duck fat to resolidify and also separate the fat from the natural juices of the rooster, which make excellent stock). Cut open the bags, and wipe off the meat of excess duck fat. Remove the skin and discard, then pull the meat from the bones.
You can use the meat in soups, stews, pot pies, pastas, and more.