CURRENTLY SERVING:

Cat Santamauro preps you with specialty Thanksgiving recipe number 2. Game Hen for a smaller party that don’t need Big Bird, ‘natch.

 

Game Hen

So, it’s Thanksgiving and you have nowhere to go. First order of business, Chinese takeout and a Road Rules marathon. On the other hand, you want the whole kit-n-kaboodle. You have been bombarded with so many holiday images of a golden turkey and all the trimmings, you can practically taste it in your sleep. But it is very hard to justify cooking a huge turkey for such a small audience. So I suggest a mini-bird. It isn’t turkey, but lets not stand on ceremony here, neither is takeout. They cook quickly and beautifully, and if you do have guests coming over it’s a unique and elegant way of preparing an old favorite.

The Bird

Ingredients:

• Two Cornish Game Hen cleaned of gizzards and rinsed (most of the time they already have the gizzards removed when you buys them so just rinse and pat dry)
• 1 tablespoon Butter
• ½ teaspoon Pepper
• ½ teaspoon salt

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 450
2. If you’re using stuffing, place loosely inside the cavity and tie the legs together with twine
3. Arrange birds on a greased roasting pan and rub skin with butter. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
4. Bake for 30 min.
5. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees, and continue roasting until an instant-read thermometer inserted into thickest part of thighs (avoiding bone) registers 170 degrees, 15 to 20 minutes more.
6. Let rest about 10 min
7. Serve and enjoy.

Cornbread Apple Stuffing

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup unsalted butter
• 1 pounds Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, chopped
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 4 cups crumbled day-old corn bread
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup frozen apple cider boiled down to ¼ cup, cooled
• ¼ cup canned low-salt chicken broth
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon crumbled dried sage leaves
• Pinch of cinnamon
• Pinch of nutmeg
• ¼ cup toasted pecans

Directions

1. On medium high heat, melt butter in a large saucepan.
2. Add apples and onion and cook until very soft stirring often about 10 – 12 minutes.
3. Remove from heat and add crumbled cornbread.
4. In a separate bowl whisk eggs, cider, broth, salt, pepper, sage, cinnamon and nutmeg.
5. Mix with cornbread mixture. Add pecans.

Cooking Options

You have two choices, you can cook the stuffing in the bird or in a separate dish. Either way is completely acceptable. Personally, I like cooking in a separate dish because it gets a delicious crust on top whereas cooking in the bird can often leave it soggy. Because game hens are much smaller than a turkey (if you didn’t notice) they aren’t in the oven long enough to cook completely so you will partially cook it in a separate pan for part of it and then transfer in in to the bird. If you decided to cook the stuffing inside, you might have leftover and in that case you get to have both. Huzzah!

Directions:
Heat the oven to 350. Butter a 9×9 pan. Add stuffing, cover with buttered foil and bake for 40 min
Cooking in the Bird
Clean the cavity of hen and make sure there are no gizzard or anything like that. Loosely fill with stuffing and tie the drumsticks together.

Cooking Separately
Remove foil and cook for an additional 20 min.

– Cat Santamauro

catFood is one girl’s mission to teach people the art of simple food with big flavor. She loves cheese, crafts, and her Kitchen-Aid mixer. She can often be found around fresh produce and curing the common cold with Matzo Ball Soup.