How to cook banties?

[Rin]

I'm having two Mille fleur banty hens put down sometime this week. One of them seems to be showing severe laying issues - not fully developed eggs as well as eggs in eggs and possible organ failure with white frothy poops and since theres only two possible culprits I decided I'd rather put them both down instead of waiting for them to eventually ID themselves.

Problem is, I don't want to waste them. I want to make a meal of them - regardless of how small. But most recipes online are for bigger birds like cornish X's and are bound to dry out the meat of something small like a banty or call for way more ingredients than required.

What do you do when cooking your banties or at least can you point me in the right direction to find recipes for myself?

Another note is I /might/ skin them instead of pluck them to preserve their beautiful mottled pelts. So if I cook them tha'd make it even harder to keep them from drying out.

 

[WhiteMountainsRanch]

You can cover with tin foil, or cook inside turkey cooking bags, baste and reduce the heat! Also meat thermometers work great!

 

[Rin]

Quote:
Oooh <3 sounds yummy :9 Tin foil option sounds right to me and how much do you usually reduce by? I have a favourite recipe I actually used for duck (I used it on Cayuga but it was meant for Peking so it really dried the heck out of it) it was 4 hrs of 300 degrees and then 15 mins of blasting it at 400 - for the second Cayuga I reduced it to 2 hrs of 300 and 13 mins of the 400 blasting and it still dried out(on the surface! It was soooo juicy under the skin/exposed meat on both birds). If I just save neck feathers/skin and pluck the rest what times/temps would you of used instead to do the "blast" approach on a banty?

I'm not paranoid enough for a meat therm. either tbh. Anytime I tried to use them I wound up burning the birds to beyond edible trying to get an appropriate read.

 

[LindsayB]

I butchered our cornish x meat birds at 4 weeks and they were really small. Pretty much a cornish game hen like you would buy at the store. We wrapped them in bacon and put them on the grill. They were SO GOOD!!

 

[schellie69]

I have cooked mine in a crock pot with plenty of broth they stay juice and yummy. I have also done the Cornish hens in bacon and baked in oven can't remember how long just checked the middle when no longer pink took them out and yummy.

 

[Barred Rocks forever]

i could be wrong but its possible you could do the same recipies as people do on pigeon and quail ? you can look them up on foodnetwork.com

 

[Rin]

put both of them down today, one had big black spots on their liver while the other apparently had an egg break inside - her organs were painted with yolk She wasn't showing anything was wrong at all! But her breast was notably smaller and her craw was completely empty as opposed to the one with the funky liver who had a craw almost the size of a baseball(twice the size of a golfball)

oh well, I spatchcocked both of them because I couldn't get even a pinky in there to remove the organs so just removed their spine totally so I could and removed their breastbones with mild difficulty.

Will being spatchcocked ruin them for possibly being glazed with the glaze from the duck recipe I like so much?

 

[RareBreedFancier]

YUM!!! Thanks for the link, I've been planing to buy a whole duckling to try (I've never tasted duck) but would have just cooked it by weight like a chicken. I have bookmarked that page so I can find it easily again.

I don't think them being spatchcocked would make any difference with the glazing, it's only going to reduce cooking time and your already going to be doing that.

I think I'm going to have to try that recipe with the chicken in my freezer in the next few days!

 

[Rin]

Quote:
I loooove it, it really did make the skin on them so crispy crunchy delish - I even saved some glaze to try it out on a meatie. Humorously, those ducks were also my first time having duck

Hmm, should I reduce it to just an hour at 300? or not even. I'm still a bit novice on determining this sort of thing by weight.

 

[stormylady]

I don't have any banties but If I was to process them I would probably boil them up like you would for chicken Noodles , debone and put in some kind of chicken casserole it would make the little bit of meat go much farther, just an Idea though.