We have stewing hens and beef bones on sale currently, just in time for making homemade soups as the weather cools. Here is how to get it done.
Stewing Hens are our certified organic laying hens harvested after 2 years of laying eggs. Since egg production slows down after two years and it becomes less cost effective to feed those hens, we harvest them for meat and begin raising a new flock of laying hens. (If we didn't do this, we would need to raise the price of the eggs as their efficiency declines.)
The meat of a stewing hen is very dark and solid and may not make a good roast, however it is well suited for making soups or shredding for recipes like enchiladas.
Most everyone knows how to save chicken or turkey bones to make a broth. The process is the same when you make broth from a stewing hen, but you also get a substantial amount of meat to use in the soup or to separate out and use in other recipes.
Another name for cooking chicken in this way is "poaching." Where roasting means cooking meat in dry heat, poaching is cooking in liquid, akin to braising red meat. Braising would involve searing the meat before cooking, but poaching submerges the entire, raw carcass in water to cook slowly with simple seasoning. This allows you to create tender and flexible products (broth and meat) useful in many different recipes.
Here is a nice, basic recipe for cooking a stewing hen. The author, Gina Matsoukas of Running to the Kitchen, also provides great looking recipes for what to make after you finish the poaching process.
Beef Bones
Making beef broth at home is more involved than making chicken broth. You need to roast the bones for flavor and then cook for a longer amount of time, than with chicken. But it is so worth it - the flavor is excellent and much better than store-bought beef broth.
Another benefit is that you are actually making bone broth. Bone broth has high levels of collagen, protein and minerals in the liquid, providing many health benefits.
According to the Weston Price Foundation, it also contains many amino acids we are often low in. Amino acids come only from animal protein. They include arginine, glutamate, hydroxyproline, proline, alanine, glycine, histidine, aspartic acid, lysine, and threonine
"Most of the researchers believe that both proline and glycine should at the very least be considered “conditionally essential” (along with arginine, cysteine, glutamine, serine, taurine and tyrosine), which means that under most conditions, the body cannot make enough of these compounds and must get them from food," according to an article by Kaayla Daniel.
If you want to take on this project, here is an excellent recipe from Recipe Tin Eats with very thorough instructions and explanations.
