Honey Roasted Cornish Game Hens

Honey Roasted Cornish Game Hens are spatchcocked game hens baked with honey and rotisserie seasonings for a tasty, satisfying meal.

Honey Roasted Cornish Game Hens

by Sue Lau | Palatable Pastime

Spatchcocking a chicken really isn’t a difficult thing to do, and I mark this recipe as advanced only because I believe people aren’t familiar with the technique. All it really takes is a pair of kitchen shears and a few minutes to look over my tutorial which is typed up and has lots of pictures (inside my jerk chicken recipe):

How to Spatchcock Chicken

You can do this with any type of bird, even a full size turkey, although like the difference between cutting paper with scissors, and cutting cardboard, the backbone of a turkey is a bit bigger and takes slightly more effort to cut through. But it is something that can be done in a few minutes while the bird is in your sink or basin being rinsed off. Be sure to save the backbone (I collect bones in a freezer bag) to make chicken or turkey stock later with the addition of water, and a few aromatics, such as carrot, celery, onion, and bay or thyme. Simmer that for a few hours to extract all the goodness, then strain out the solids for excellent homemade stock. You can use bones from roasted poultry, or use raw ones and bake them to get a deeper flavor for when you make your stock, but it is not totally necessary. You will get good stock either way. It all depends how much time you want to invest.

This recipe is quite flexible. I write it for one bird, and if you want more, take as many hens as you need, increasing spice mixture to accommodate extra birds.

The seasoning on this is quite nice, and the end effect reminds me of Boston Market chicken, although I am not trying to duplicate that here, since they don’t use Cornish hens, and as well, they cook their birds on a professional rotisserie. But for home purposes, this is quite good.

~Sue

Honey Roasted Cornish Game Hen<strong>s</strong>

Servings: 1-2
Time: 1hr 15mins
Difficulty: advanced
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Ingredients:

1 22-ounce Rock Cornish game hen, spatchcocked (reserve back piece for making chicken broth)
1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt
1/4 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/8 teaspoon onion powder
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
1/8 teaspoon dried thyme
1/8 teaspoon dried rosemary
1/8 teaspoon dried sage
1/8 teaspoon dry mustard powder
1 teaspoon olive oil

Honey glaze:

3 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon melted butter

Method:

Preheat oven to 325F.
Spatchcock hen.
Place hen in a baking pan and rub liberally with spice mixture.
Drizzle with olive oil and bake in a preheated 325 F oven for 30 minutes.
Mix honey glaze.
Take bird out of oven and brush with glaze mixture then return to oven for 30 minutes more or until cooked to 165F on an instant read thermometer, basting once or twice.

From the kitchen of palatablepastime.com

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