Thursday, February 2, 2012

My Florida Locally Sourced Slow Cook Chicken

Recently, I was in Central Florida for an event called AgriTunity, and got inspired to make a dish using ingredients from that area.

When I arrived home I adapted a slow-cook recipe, and centered it around a pasture-raised chicken I got from Cowart Ranch in Sumterville, Florida.

Danny Cowart, the rancher, told me I needed to cook the bird "Low and Slow," because it was raised with lots of exercise and was very lean. If I cooked it any other way, it would be too tough to eat, he said.



I also got some Melton Machinery Museum 100 percent Pure Sugar Cane Syrup, made by Steve Melton in Dade City. It tasted like a very mild molasses because when he harvested his sugar cane he did it without burning it.

The recipe called for many ingredients, some were foreign like soy sauce, ginger, snow peas, and pineapple juice. While others were local, like brown sugar (Belle Glade, FL), bell pepper (Boynton Beach, FL), and garlic (CA). I substituted a tablespoon of cane syrup for brown sugar. And cooked the bird for eight long slow hours at the lowest setting of the cooker.

The end result was the delicious, partially local Florida sourced, dish shown below.


I have another dish in mind for the Dade City sugar cane syrup. So come back in a short while for more Florida locally sourced dishes.

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