Ask a chef

[CanuckBock]

Heel low:

Heh heh heh...I too bought one of those UNbreakable shovels...all stainless and glittery--paid a pretty penny for it. Had to make a trip back to the city and was kinda perturbed with their customer service when they questioned why I was returning it. I could easily bend the shovel nose and I mean EASY...I wanted to see it gone because it was an accident waiting to happen to cripple me up by! Lean on it, see the nose fold, me go down, go big boom...not happy at all.

Seems chicken and pork is cheap cheep cheapy at the grocery this week...so made a big ol' pot of chicken noodle soup...

​

Besides the broth from eight chicken legs and half the meat, I added a can of small shrimp to mix it up...carrots, corn off cob, onions, celery, peas, sliced water chestnuts to add crunch and chow mein noodles to add interest. Add some buttered bread and you got yourself some comfort food on a fall type evening.

​

Brought home the BIG barbecue we ordered in; 125,000 BTU's with room enough on it to cook fifty 4" burgers and a smoker tube to add chips to--whole new thingy for us to learn about--what wood chips go with which foods and such. We do hope to be making meals on this BQ for a bit this fall. Snow fall in the mountains west of us, so more or less pushing the outdoor cooking timeframe. Last year, Calgary saw snow fall the first week of Sept...so not too unexpected. Time to make mighty meals and buckle in for winter hibernation...er not!

Rick just called me to say he'll be hauling in two boxes of gravel for another few of our dig another hole, fill it in projects we hope to see completed...food, glorious food = energy to do this work with!

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada

 

[Akrnaf2]

Tara if you add a biff bone with marrow, or some beef joints with nice cartridge, or some ox tail, and Always add a parsly or selery roots! It will upgrade you soup to the sky!

 

[CanuckBock]

Tara if you add a biff bone with marrow, or some beef joints with nice cartridge, or some ox tail, and Always add a parsly or selery roots! It will upgrade you soup to the sky!

Lovely parsnips...mine never get enough time to get all that big in the garden...takes a long time for parsnip seed to germinate...some are able to leave it overwinter to grow bigger the next spring...our ground can freeze 10 to 15, 20 feet down...frozen parsnip does not survive too well.
I always try to have celery, fresh mushrooms and green onions at home for cooking...I start to panic that I need to go shopping for groceries when any one of the three are missing!

I don't think a soup is a soup without celery in it...my husband taught me that. Bay leaves too...the parsley/carrot/celery plants from the Umbelliferae or Apiaceae family make excellent soups and stews.

Here is a beef stew I did up in 2014 that has two kinds of parsley family vegetables...parsnips AND celery.

2014 - my green beans, my homegrown onion, carrots, and funny shaped potatoes​

Rick favours turnip or rutabaga in a stew--cut up small...root vegetables of all kinds go in a stew ever so nice! I do laugh because my father's father refused to eat turnip in the new country...saying it was "pig fodder or feed!" Probably because it would have been a food easy to grow in the old country and my husband's father refused to eat some things too...like cabbage...lowly vegetables that make stews and soups, in my opinion, BEST EVER!



So you do not mind using beef bones and marrow to make a chicken soup?

I use beef in a beef soup, and chicken in chicken soup, fish in a fish chowder...the cartilage in the chicken joints/knuckles of the legs gives me a nice jelly! I have heard that some will roast bones before making soup stock and that imparts an even greater flavour to the soup broth. Might explain why we EVER so much love turkey soup...the bones are not roasted by themselves, but roasted turkey dinner bones sure impart a different flavour than when you start out with RAW meat for soup stock.

I boiled the chicken soup stock down too much OR I had too many chicken legs in the size of the stock pot...I got this jelly chicken soup stock.

​

I added water to the soup I made because the soup stock was almost like Jello and I was wanting to cook the vegetables IN the broth for the soup and have some broth left over for dipping the bread in too!

I make soup stock every week to add to my dog's meals. The temptation to steal from the dogs' broth gets greater and greater the colder the weather gets.

September 14, 2014 - two years ago...snows came and ended my veg garden!​

​

Benny, you hit the nail on the head as usual...

One of my all time favourites is oxtail soup! My father is from Northern Europe and he was the one in the family that made pig's headcheese, used pig's feet when he could not find pig's head at the butcher's. Oh my...oxtail imparts a flavour not many other soup broths have. I am sure you either adore it or hate it. I love it! I keep checking at the grocery and oxtail is a very price thing to buy...I find that strange, but sometimes I could buy a nice beef steak for a package of oxtail for soup...so not made it in a very very long time!

My father cooked up all sorts of what some would call "garbage" meats like chicken feet and heads (I would eat feet, the heads...no such luck...I don't like food that stares back at me to remind me I have living ones I am trying to keep alive here!). I have mentioned this before but when his parents came over here from Europe to escape the war...they were amazed at how North Americans wanted their meat well trimmed of any fat. In the old country, any meat that had fat on it was treasured.

Have to go get my rock raking arms ready for the gravel that is arriving soon.

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada

 

[Akrnaf2]

Ox tail is fabulous!
You can do from it very nice stew, or a slow cooking Rago with red wine and some fresh maltaliata pasta IT IS WONDERFUL!
No part in the animal is garbage! We eat EVERYTHING! We have 3-4 different stews from the head meat alone! From the lungs, liver, large intestine and the stomach we have WONDERFUL dishes! And so on .....

Tara the neck of turkeys, especially the male turkey, make wonderful soup!
Also the sheep neck is very good in soup!
And belive me mixing different meats can make some very nice surprises!

 

[perchie.girl]

Ox tail is fabulous!
You can do from it very nice stew, or a slow cooking Rago with red wine and some fresh maltaliata pasta IT IS WONDERFUL!
No part in the animal is garbage! We eat EVERYTHING! We have 3-4 different stews from the head meat alone! From the lungs, liver, large intestine and the stomach we have WONDERFUL dishes! And so on .....

Tara the neck of turkeys, especially the male turkey, make wonderful soup!
Also the sheep neck is very good in soup!
And belive me mixing different meats can make some very nice surprises!

I use smoked necks in beans... OH yummy.

deb

 

[Akrnaf2]

Turkey necks?

 

[Akrnaf2]

I dont let my butcher to cut for me the turkey necks, he use the ax or the saw to cut it and that leaves bone fragments in the meat, and that is no bueno !
So I buy it all and cut a surround cut with a knife the meat and then snap it with my hands, it broke in between the vertebrae, no bone fragments!

 

[perchie.girl]

Turkey necks?

sorry Pork.... but any smoked neck would do like lamb or beef.... Turkey would be good but too delicate to serve up with the dish...

We like chewing on the bones and cartilage as part of the meal.

deb

 

[perchie.girl]

I dont let my butcher to cut for me the turkey necks, he use the ax or the saw to cut it and that leaves bone fragments in the meat, and that is no bueno !
So I buy it all and cut a surround cut with a knife the meat and then snap it with my hands, it broke in between the vertebrae, no bone fragments!

good point Turkey necks for us come packed in the body cavity along with the liver and heart. I dont even know if its the ones that belong to the turkey.... I try not to think about it.... sigh.

deb

 

[DwayneNLiz]

good point Turkey necks for us come packed in the body cavity along with the liver and heart. I dont even know if its the ones that belong to the turkey.... I try not to think about it.... sigh.

deb

unless you process your own, i really doubt it belonged to that body