Favorite Rooster Recipes: Coq au Vin

What follows is my latest incarnation of Coq au Vin (or Rooster Stewed in Wine). Coq au Vin is a simple and delicious chicken stew that can be as complicated as you like. It does take advance prep to marinate and (if you’re using a rooster) plenty of time to stew.

Except for the mushrooms, everything on this plate came from our homestead: rooster, onions, shallots, garlic, thyme, potatoes, goat milk (for the mashed potatoes) and chard. So good. So good.

Now I know most of you who are not raising your own chickens will not be able to obtain a rooster. I don’t think store bought chicken has enough “ooh la la” to handle Coq au Vin, but if you’ve never had rooster, then you won’t know what you’re missing. You just won’t need to stew it as long.

I came across a wonderful website detailing one man’s quest for an authentic Coq au Vin recipe. Unfortunately I couldn’t locate it again to post the link here. He wrote that “traditonally” a 2-3 year old rooster would be used. We almost never have a rooster that old. Usually we’re butchering at 5-8 months. However, I have to add that it’s easy to get caught up in the details of modern retellings of “peasant” type cuisine. My own peasant-style cooking dictates that whatever I have on hand is what goes in the recipe. That said, I love to include mushrooms in Coq au Vin if I have them or can coordinate my grocery shopping with butchering day. – Jen

Coq Au Vin

(This version is loosely adapted from looking at recipes from the Epicurious website and previous experience making Coq au Vin).

Ingredients:

For the marinade:

1 rooster, cut into 6-8 pieces (I usually keep the wings for making stock.)

1 bottle of wine (This permutation used a ho-hum Blackstone Merlot, but people can get really fussy about the wine they use. Ho hum.)

4 cloves garlic, smashed

4 shallots, smashed (Optional. I don’t always have shallots on hand, but we had a great crop this year.)

3 bay leaves

For the stew:

6 slices bacon (I used up an end of salt pork from our home-butchered pig.)

3 medium onions, chopped into 1/2 to 1 inch pieces

4 cloves garlic, chopped

Handful shallots, chopped (Our shallots from the garden were smallish.)

1 pound mushrooms, sliced (I used cremini.)

Bacon grease or olive oil

6 stems fresh thyme

2-3 cups reduced or regular stock or more wine to cover (I use homemade unsalted condensed stock. Adjust salt accordingly if you’re using store bought stock.)

sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper

For those of you butchering your own rooster: After butchering, I separate the rooster into drumsticks, thighs, four breast pieces and put them in water in a glass tupperware dish and then keep covered in the fridge for at least two days. I put the back, neck and wings into the stock pot and cover generously with water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer off and on for two days. (this is my lazy stock: simmer until I have to go out, then turn off and leave on the stove, then turn back on when I get back inside. At night I just put it outside to keep cool, then start er back up in the am. After a few days, I strain out the meat and bones, and then reduce by half.) For this particular gastronomic event, the rooster was soaking in water for four days before I got around to making the stew.

1 day ahead: Marinate the Rooster:

Soak the rooster pieces, garlic, bay leaves and shallots in wine to cover, overnight, up to two days. Usually I add thyme leaves here, but this particular time I prepped the dish late at night and didn’t feel like going out in the garden. Plus it was raining. Also, many recipes will call for chopped onions and carrots to go in the marinade. I like doing this too, but was too lazy this time.

To Make the Stew:

1. In a 3 quart minimum heavy pot (I use a Le Creuset, but you could use any stainless steel), cook bacon until browned.  Remove to a plate. If there is not enough fat from the bacon, add bacon grease or olive oil, heat and brown the rooster pieces. Sometimes I just leave the bacon in. Remove to a plate when browned.

2. Add bacon grease or olive oil as needed in order to saute onions. Saute onions with sea salt till tender, add garlic and shallots and saute for a minute or so. Add thyme. If the pot gets dry I just throw in some wine. Add the mushrooms and saute for several minutes. Add rooster pieces, marinade and additional liquid to cover to the rooster pieces. I add wine if I have a bottle open. This time I used two cups of condensed home-made stock, salt free. Add freshly cracked black pepper to taste. I used probably just over a half-teaspoon.

3. Cover the pot, bring contents to a simmer, reduce heat and simmer, cover ajar, until the rooster is tender, 2-5 hours, depending on your stove and the rooster. I only had to simmer a few hours till he was falling off the bone. At this point, I take off the lid and simmer more vigorously to reduce liquid. This step will depend on how much gravy you want with your stew. We like a lot to pour over mashed potatoes, so I don’t reduce too much. I also don’t add flour at any stage, because I like the natural gravy that long stewing creates.

4. Serve with mashed potatoes (I keep them lumpy and simple -not too much butter or milk to compete with the rich gravy. Definitely no cheese!) and steam-sauteed greens. A favorite is kale or collards, but we served chard last night since we expected a frost, and the chickens have been getting out and having their way with it. Red wine accompanied the meal. And for dessert, of course, homemade apple pie with the last apples from our trees. Bon appetit!

Share this post:

Eggs for Sale

Enjoy the incomparable taste of eggs grown from a backyard flock. These are no anemic store bought eggs. Our happy hens freely range with our goats, dining on grains, goat milk, bugs and weeds so their yolks are deep yellow to orange. The eggshells range in color from dark brown to pale pink. Gorgeous! $3.00 per dozen. Email us at orders@sunstoneherbs.com

Eggs for Sale

Favorite Rooster Recipes: Corfu Rooster

Every now and then, a rooster must be dispatched from the farm. Often I’ll see ads for free roosters to a good home –not to be eaten, but the likelihood of finding a home that does not involve a freezer or cock-fighting setup is slim. Putting the rooster in the stew pot is a time-honored way of living sustainably on the land, making use of all our resources.

Here are some of my favorite recipes, but you can use any chicken stew recipe. Your rooster will have so much more flavor than a grocery store chicken, organic or not, that you will finally understand why many old-timers (my 96 year old grandmother included) or foreigners complain that our chicken is tasteless.

The first think you have to do is age your rooster after you butcher. If you cook your rooster right away, it will be tough, tough, tough, no matter how long you stew. The meat will be chewier than grocery store chicken which is so flabby you can cut it with a fork, but remember this bird has been running around your yard, chasing off hawks and finding grubs for your hens. To age your bird, let the meat rest in the refrigerator for two to four days. I usually wait two or three days. Aging it in a bring also helps. If you only have 24 hours to age the bird, then definitely age it in a brine, or wine, or buttermilk, depending on your recipe.

Notice how dark yellow the fat is on these roosters which spent their lives running around outdoors, eating grass, bugs and other good stuff.

My favorite recipes include Coq au Vin, Chicken Paprikash, a Corfu dish Pastisatha (my new favorite), Ajiaco (a delicious Columbian-style chicken stew), and good old boiled chicken to use in pot pies, enchiladas, etc.

I’ll add recipes for all my favorites, but here is the Corfu Rooster recipe to start. I originally found this from Gourmet magazine. A reader requested the recipe after vacationing on Corfu. If you use a grocery store hen, the recipe won’t have the outstanding flavor of a rooster, but it will still be good, and you won’t have to cook it nearly as long. I serve this with mashed or roasted potatoes and steam-sautéed greens. – Jen

Corfu Rooster
Serving size depends on the bird

1 rooster, cut into pieces
7 garlic cloves, smashed
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
3 tablespoon olive oil or lard
1 tablespoon tomato paste (or use some tomatoes)
2 tablespoons red-wine vinegar (or cider vinegar)
2 medium onions, halved and thinly sliced
3 ½ cups water
½ cup dry white wine (or vermouth or other booze)
1 teaspoon sugar

Pat chicken dry.

Stir together cinnamon, salt, pepper and sprinkle over chicken.

Heat oil in a skillet and brown chicken in two batches on all sides, transfer to a plate
meanwhile, stir tomato paste and vinegar.

Add more oil to skillet if necessary and sauté onions till golden; about 6 minutes.

Stir in tomato mixture and simmer 1 minute. Stir in water, wine sugar and simmer uncovered, ~5 minutes.

Add chicken to pot and simmer, covered, until tender (1-3 hours, depending on how tough your rooster is).

Transfer cook chicken to a platter and boil sauce, uncovered, till reduced to about 2 ½ cups (about 10 minutes). Season with salt!

Goodbye, Gerry Girl

Old girl Gerry (named after my aunt Geraldine) died before sunrise this morning. She was the last hen remaining from our original clutch of 25 that we received in the mail from McMurray Hatchery 5 years ago. (Yes, we took her with us cross-country from New York to New Mexico). Over the years she provided us with many delicious eggs and lots of baby chicks who inherited her gentle demeanor. We’ll miss her. -Tree

Jen's brother John took this photo of Gerry last year and won 2nd place in a pet photo contest sponsored by Albuquerque's IQ newspaper. Our cat Vida is in the background.

Moms Group Visits Sunstone

Jen and I opened our homestead to the Ebb and Flow Moms group this morning. About 10 moms and their children – all toddlers – visited with our piggies, goats and chickens. The pigs especially loved the attention.

Everyone got a sip of fresh goat's milk

Another Reason to Know Where Your Food is Coming From and How It Was Raised

Nicholas Kristof ’s op-ed piece in today’s NY Times is a wake-up call to anyone who consumes animal products. From the article:

Five out of 90 samples of retail pork in Louisiana tested positive for MRSA — an antibiotic-resistant staph infection — according to a peer-reviewed study published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology last year. And a recent study of retail meats in the Washington, D.C., area found MRSA in one pork sample, out of 300…

… Yet the central problem here isn’t pigs, it’s humans. Unlike Europe and even South Korea, the United States still bows to agribusiness interests by permitting the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in animal feed. That’s unconscionable.

The peer-reviewed Medical Clinics of North America concluded last year that antibiotics in livestock feed were “a major component” in the rise in antibiotic resistance. The article said that more antibiotics were fed to animals in North Carolina alone than were administered to the nation’s entire human population.

Read the entire piece here.

How to Deal With A Stubbornly Broody Hen

We’ve had it with Crazy. She went broody three times over the summer. We let her hatch and raise the first two clutches, but broke her of the last spell which was peculiar to begin with. Instead of building a clutch of eggs she just sat in the nesting box for hours on end. I’d pull her out each morning and place her on the ground. She’d hiss at me (the best way to describe her angry vampire-like protests) and then flare out her wings and run like a nut to the feeder.

Two weeks ago she went broody again! In the middle of winter!! Rather than put her in the stew pot, we decided to purchase six 5-day old chicks from the feed store and stick them under her just as it was getting dark. We were prepared to raise the chicks ourselves if she rejected them, but no need. She immediately got that dopey new mother look on her face and began softly to coo to them.

Here are two photos taken this afternoon. There are 2 black sex links, 2 red sex links and 2 aracunas. We wanted to get some barred rocks, but the ones available were already three weeks old. Next time… -Tree

Crazy and her store bought chicks

Taking a walk with mama

Piggie Bellyrub

The barking in the background is Tessie wondering when she is going to get her bellyrub.

Betty Is On The Mend

It’s been almost 3 weeks since two dogs got through our perimeter fencing and into the goat pen and attacked Betty, our only goat without horns. Unlike most US goat-keepers, we don’t believe in dehorning goats. Betty was born “polled,” a genetic trait passed down by the buck.

The attack occurred around 5 in the morning. Our dogs woke us up, but John, who lives in the casita near the goat pen, heard Betty bleating and got outside first. He said the two attackers scrambled over the 52-inch cattle panels and then over the 6-foot cedar fence that encloses the back of our property.

Betty had been knocked down and was in shock and unable to move so John and I carried her to our porch to assess the damage. She had puncture wounds in her udder and deep ones in her right front leg which seemed to cause her the most pain. Her skin was torn in several places on her right flank. I cleaned off the wounds I could see with a warm yarrow infusion (it was dark and we were working with a flashlight) and then milked her out since her udder was leaking where the dogs had bitten her. The bleeding had stopped, which was a good sign, and I was able to walk her over to the carport where we keep the hay. She started to eat the hay – another good sign – so I covered her with a blanket (treat for shock) and stayed close. After a bit she settled down next to me and put her head in my lap. It was about 18 degrees and another 2 hours until the vet’s office opened so I wrapped another blanket around the both of us.

The vet used clippers to remove Betty’s hair and expose all of the wounds. She cleaned them well and then gave Betty a tetanus shot, Banamine for the pain and an antibiotic. She showed us how to give the injections intramuscularly and sent us home with 3 more doses of the painkiller and a week’s supply of antibiotics. She told us to keep the wounds clean with a warm Betadine solution – which we did, but also used a yarrow infusion to promote healing – and to keep the bottom wound on her flank open so that the others could drain.

We kept Betty separated from Desi and Tosca for a week much to her dismay. She’s now back in the pen with her goatie girls and is doing well. -Tree

Betty 2 days after dog attack

Puncture wounds in leg looking better

Puncture wounds in udder on the mend

We’ve Got Pigs!

Maggie and Tessie meet the new pigs

Wilbur

Wilma and Wilbur