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Turkey Day with Chicken!

December 8, 2010 1 Comment

We like turkey.  In fact, we like it a lot.  Amanda and I eat turkey regularly throughout the year in the form of grilled or breaded cutlets, tacos, soup, enchiladas with mole, and Amanda’s favorite—turkey burgers!  This being said, a whole turkey yields a lot of meat and although we love Thanksgiving leftovers, when it comes to choosing a bird to roast for Thanksgiving, sometimes a chicken just makes more sense.

This year, Amanda and I spent Thanksgiving on our own, but don’t feel bad—we had a great time!  We found a beautiful campsite on the coast of Oregon near the town of Florence and settled in for a relaxing Thanksgiving at the campsite.  The day before, we joined the last-minute grocery-shopping crowd to get everything we needed or our Thanksgiving meal.

We decided to keep the shopping simple and got a nice whole chicken, ingredients for stuffing, and cranberry juice as an appropriate beverage.  And how do you cook a whole chicken at the campsite, you may ask?  The answer is simple—roast it on a spit!  We also bought plenty of firewood.

Spit roasting over a wood fire is probably the most primal and satisfying way to cook a piece of meat.  The only reason that people don’t roast meat over a fire more often is because it takes a really long time. But every once and a while it is worth the time, and it’s a great excuse to hang around outside all day long by the fire.

Having completed our shopping for food and firewood all we needed for our holiday feast was a roasting spit, and that we were going to build from sticks!  We searched the camp ground for the necessary sticks to create our spit, and we soon found two sturdy Y shaped sticks to support the spit and a flexible h shaped stick to hold the chicken.

With our trusty hatchet we chopped the ends of the Y sticks into spikes and planted them firmly in the ground on either side of our campsite’s fire ring.  We then stripped the bark from a portion the flexible h stick and bent the arm of the branch backwards.  We then inserted the spit into the cavity of the chicken and allowed the arm to spring back, locking the bird in place.

Using some of Amanda’s yarn we secured the chicken by lashing a couple of small sticks sticks onto the spit to hold the spring-arm in place and tied the legs tightly together around the spit to ensure even cooking.  After a quick sprinkle of salt and pepper we were ready to roast!

By this time we had a nice little fire going to cook over.  The wood we had bought was California oak—a hardwood that would create plenty of heat a nice smoky flavor for the chicken.  We let the wood burn down a bit and positioned the skewered chicken on its perch above the fire.

Amanda was happy keep warm by the fire while she read a book and occasionally rotated the chicken.  We even rigged up a stockpot underneath our bird to catch all the juices while simmering a turkey wing to make a stock for our stuffing.  Amanda also used this juice to baste the chicken, keeping it extra moist.

For the stuffing we used pork sausage, bacon, turkey wing stock, meat from the turkey wing, sourdough bread, and all the vegetables and herbs needed to give the stuffing that wonderful holiday aroma!

Sausage-Sourdough Stuffing (Feeds 2 plus leftovers)
1 small Spanish onion, sliced 1 medium Carrot, sliced
2 cloves Garlic, sliced 1 rib Celery, sliced
2 slices Bacon, diced 5 thick slices Sourdough bread, toasted, diced
1/4 lb. Spicy pork sausage meat 2 cups Turkey wing stock
1 ea. Cooked turkey wing meat (from stock), chopped 2 tsp Salt
4 large Button mushrooms, sliced 1 tsp Pepper
-Sweat the onions, garlic, and bacon in a skillet on medium heat until the bacon is rendered and the onions and garlic are soft and slightly browned.
-Add sausage and turkey meat and saute until cooked through and browned.
-Add the mushrooms, carrots, and celery and cook, stirring, until almost soft.
-Add the toasted sourdough bread, turkey wing stock, salt and pepper and stir to combine.  Cover and bake in the skillet in 350d  for in the oven for 35 minutes. Or, cook by the fire, rotating frequently for 50 minutes or until firm in the center and crisp on the edges.  Serve.
Source: ChefsOnTheRoad.com

The chicken took about 5 hours to cook–much longer than we thought, but it was worth every minute!  Amanda and I really got that holiday feeling by being outdoors at a beautiful campground with a fire to keep us warm and cooking! And who knows?  This may just be the start of a new Thanksgiving tradition. Oh, and we had plenty of leftovers, too!

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  1. Doris says:

    Love this! Shows that Boy Scouts know their stuff.

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