Heirloom chicken recipes

I've had a lot to learn about growing our own meat chickens, especially once I brought our heirloom birds to the kitchen.  If your recipes are based on storebought meat, chances are they start with a line like "Take two chicken breasts and...."  Here are some tips and recipes I've developed over the last two years that help you enjoy and respect your homegrown chickens' meat.

The easiest way to make use of the whole bird is to roast your chicken, then stew up the bones.  One of our small layer-breed broilers (less than two pounds) can turn into four to six meals if we first roast the chicken with vegetables, then use the carcass as the base for a delicious soup.  You can read my in depth description of roasting a chicken in my 99 cent ebook, or can see the recipe I developed mine from here.

Heirloom chickens have a lot more leg than breast, so it's useful to know some recipes just for the legs.  If you're buying storebought meat on a budget, chicken leg recipes are even more helpful since legs are often one of the cheapest cuts of meat.  This garlic and thyme chicken leg recipe is my new easy and delicious way to use up chicken legs.

Finally, if you're serious about making your flock self-sufficient, you'll often end up with old layers who are too tough to chew.  Traditional chefs love these chickens for their richer flavor, which can be stewed out by cooking for a long time at low heat.  The resultant soup is phenomenal!

How have you found cooking with real chickens to be different from cooking with storebought meat?  Do you have any heirloom chicken recipes to share?