Hugh's Chicken Run (Merged Discussion)

Jue_xx

Thanks, you're probably right - thinking back I probably did get carried away, but one item which cost me almost double the price than usual was eggs - after watching Jamies programme on Friday night I just HAD to buy free range this time! £2.47 for a dozen! Bloomin' Jamie Oliver!

Hope we notice a difference in the taste!

But as for the other £42.53, well....

~Chameleon~

Jue_xx wrote: »

Hope we notice a difference in the taste!

You certainly should do! The yolks will be far richer and a deep yellow colour and the shells will be much tougher too, unlike battery eggs which are pale, watery and tasteless with shells so flimsy you could crush them in your hand

jen_jen_2

SNAP ! - thats my resolution too, one meal per week from scratch!!

hope it goes well, i like the idea of Hugh's Rissotto, when the free rangers are in the shops i think i'll give it a whirl!!

geordie_joe

~Chameleon~ wrote: »

The yolks will be far richer and a deep yellow colour

Hang on, I thought chicken egg yolks were naturally pale and you have to feed the chickens dye to make the yolk a deeper colour?

Lotus-eater

geordie_joe wrote: »

Hang on, I thought chicken egg yolks were naturally pale and you have to feed the chickens dye to make the yolk a deeper colour?

Are you serious?

Taking that you are, the yellow yolks come from a natural diet, I can't remember exactly what atm, but I think grass has alot to do with it.

geordie_joe

I'm a single man, and making meals from scratch for me usually consists of steaming a few veg and cooking some meat. I do sometimes try other stuff involving recipes, but mostly it's meat and two veg.

One thing I do is buy a load of veg then freeze it in individual portions. Carrot, onions, swede etc. I just peel them and par boil the carrots/swedes etc, and put them in little bags. Onions don't need par boiling. Then it's just a case of taking a bag of carrots and swede from the freezer and chucking them in the steamer with the spuds.

I also buy chops and chicken breasts in big packs, 6 or 8 per pack. I then put them in individual bags and freeze them. You have to buy fresh ones that are suitable for freezing, but it works out cheaper and is much more convenient.

Recently I read, on here or in OS about making oven chips and wedgies. Tried it yesterday and they turned out great. So now I'm going to start making my own frozen chips and wedgies.

My only problem is my freezer isn't big enough!

toasterman

competitionscafe wrote: »

Could you not take turns with your housemates cooking for all of you (or 2 or 3 of you)? There are lots of meals that take less than half an hour to prepare from start to finish (pasta, couscous, pilaffs) but time is a factor for other meals, yes - I am lucky in that I really enjoy cooking but even then I sometimes wonder why I spend 1 or 2 hours cooking something when it's only for myself - but that does give me the next day or two 'off' as I always make enough for 3 or 4 portions or sometimes up to 8 and then freeze lots of homemade 'ready meals' for when I can't be bothered to cook or don't have time if going out etc...

Well we don't really eat the same things to be honest. We're not friends as such - just people who live together because..well.. we can't afford to live separately. Found each other through a generic flatsearch site. Plus I'm a really bad cook, and a really fussy eater.
Really its more like a collection of flats who share a kitchen.
And our fridge and freezer aren't big enough to freeze anything really - both normally packed out with all our separate dietary wants. I need to move to a place with less people.

Jue_xx wrote:

I made it my New Year's Resolution this year to do "proper" cooking instead of being the Queen-Of-Heating-Things-Up, as I want to know exactly what I am feeding my family (tying in very nicely with the Jamie Oliver programme), and I have to say I'm really enjoying it and haven't found the cooking much more time consuming. I now spend an hour or so on Friday evenings browing recipe web sites and books and plan our week's meals in advance then go shopping for the ingredients on the Saturday morning.

Now that's planning. I never really know what I want. I started trying to learn to cook a while ago. The aim was to do two new things I've never had before, per week. I got a bit bored, and researching recipes and things was taking a lot of time. I guess I just eat to live.

geordie_joe

Lotus-eater wrote: »

Are you serious?

Taking that you are, the yellow yolks come from a natural diet, I can't remember exactly what atm, but I think grass has alot to do with it.

You may be right, but I remember being told that chickens have to be fed dye to make their egg yolks yellow.

Thinking about it now, if you are right and it is grass, or some other natural food such as corn that makes the yolk yellow then battery chickens would not have these in their diet and would need it artificially added.

It's possible that when I got told hens need dye I thought they meant "normal" hens like we used to keep in the sixties and they were actually meaning battery hens.

I do remember that the yolks from our hens were orange not yellow.

geordie_joe

Something has just struck me, when did hens become chickens?

For years we kept hens, but when one was killed and roasted it became "chicken"? My dad reared hens, killed them. my mother cooked them and presented them to us as chicken!

Also, off topic I know, but when did tangerines become satsumas?

~Chameleon~

geordie_joe wrote: »

Something has just struck me, when did hens become chickens?

For years we kept hens, but when one was killed and roasted it became "chicken"? My dad reared hens, killed them. my mother cooked them and presented them to us as chicken!

Also, off topic I know, but when did tangerines become satsumas?

LOL!!!!

I think tangerines and satsumas might be different fruit, but could well be wrong! I guess it's no different to calling sheep lamb is it? Ok, I know they probably are still lambs when slaughtered but I still call mutton lamb even though it's sheep

Confused yet? :rotfl:

Btw, yes the yolks will be more of an orangey colour - aka deep yellow