As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
Once again, this post is for the people who donate and the poor, so you rich people go preen somewhere on your sofa with your pate as this is nothing you need to know.
But do know if you continue you, that you have just signed a binding Spiritual contract, which will appear at your hearing before the Great White Throne Judgment of Jesus the Christ, where you will answer for stealing from a poor orphan girl, stealing from the Holy Ghost in Inspired blog posts and you agree that this sin is an abomination for which there is not any forgiveness.
Now my children, I have written of this previously, but Stephanie wrote about her Christmas cooking and this has been on my mind ever since to try and help the poor people make a chicken last for around 3 meals.
I can not say enough good about the Presto line of big steam pressure cookers. I have 3 of them. The last was marked down to 10 dollars, smells like a musty basement, but this gem is under 16 quarts so it is a bit smaller. I have featured it here in it is a Montgomery Wards cooker canner, and this thing really delights me, as Lo's cooker broke the handle on me at Christmas. That one is cantankerous, but this Wards behaves.
What I do with this in cooking our ranch raised chicken is I have cut a metal coffee can to about 1/3rd of the height, drilled holes in it to leave pressure out, and I sit it in the bottom like a trivet. On this I put aluminum foil and lay the whole bird on it.
I fill it to the top of the coffee can trivet with water, and bring the steam up to 15 pounds. I cook everything to 15 pounds and in 90 minutes I have one dead bird, meaning it is fallen off the joints, not just the bones with the meat.
Now comes the real story of the chicken, as what is produced is not broth, but when it cools off to 40 degrees, it is a jelly. This is pure protein and as you can see in the above, this high energy food provides a cake pan full of this super broth.
With this I make chicken soup, dumplings, pilafs, gravy etc... It is the essence of fantastic meals.
I will use half in a recipe, spike it with concentrated bullion for flavoring and that is who we can stretch one chicken to about 30 meals.
Granted some of that grocery poultry is not fit for eating as in the brier patch we get the shit that rich people refuse to buy and is shipped out here stoked with chems. Oddly we have an Ohio supplier which took over the distribution and they have really good poultry. They are head up their ass on other things in brand names which no one wants, but for this it is pretty good as I will purchase chicken thighs if they are cheap for fried chicken. The Puntz used to get them, but after the mother messed up her intestines, it is mostly a high grade cat food where kitty gets more expensive eats than I do, but she has stopped the liquid shits now which makes her not so ornery any more.
I realize that most people do not have access to beef bones, but you can do the same thing with them too for high protein concentrate. With beef though I would bake them first for flavor and then hissy pot the marrow out of them.
The bones are where the flavor is and in this way, we get meat, and then after that is satisfied, the meat is meat gravy, soup etc... to stretch the bird out.
I love these cookers when I discovered upon cooking a pair of giant Canadian geese which I slow cooked, baked for like 16 hours in two processes and the meat would not come off the bone, that I put it into a Presto and in 3 hours it gave up the ghost. The meat was still tough, but it could be eaten.
With the protein broth though this is where the Presto shines in creating a food extension product. I would that more people would use these things, but I see them sitting around regular, and while I have stopped buying them, sometimes they are a deal that is too good to pass up. I actually thought about my brother for this one, but he stopped talking to me, and in that he talked himself out of the chance of a cooking device which is what you really need in a big cooker.
I do not like the new stainless steel canner cookers. The heavy aluminum wraps around meat and just makes it give up the ghost in even cooking. There is something comforting on things this big and heavy and that is what these Wisconsin cookers are in being comforting.
Ebay prices on them have hit the roof now, but in my stores here I still find them sitting around a couple of times a year. I actually picked up an old 40 four quart which is my favorite Presto model for around 3 bucks, just for the weight which is like 25 bucks, but the thing is this one is so tight and behaves so well, that I simply have to use it.
That one I use a wild rice / oriental blend rice with some beef bullion and it a very pleasant addition to any meal.
There are ways though to make a chicken last and to have delightful food in these high price times. I am finding that TL and I only need about 12 of our big chickens a year. Remember I butchered those three before Christmas and I just cooked #2, so in meals we ate on that one chicken half of our meals for 6 weeks. It is to the point now that we have too much food which is a blessing to have with these Presto cookers.
The only thing is the big girls take longer to come up to steam than the 4 quarts. Once they get that 20 minutes in though they will hold heat for quite some time in cooking, even with the fire off.
With that, Nuff Said
agtG
