Best Five Spice Roasted Guinea Hens Recipes

ROAST GUINEA HEN

Steps:

• Combine all of the marinade ingredients in a bowl. Place the guinea hen in a large, deep bowl, pour the marinade over and inside the hen, cover the bowl, and marinate, refrigerated, overnight, turning occasionally to ensure that all parts of the bird are covered.
• Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Remove the hen from the marinade. Reserve the marinade. Put the hen in a roasting pan and brush with 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Turn the hen breastside down in the pan and roast for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, turn the hen onto its back, decrease the oven temperature to 325 degrees, and roast for 1 hour. While the hen is roasting, place the reserved marinade in a saucepan, bring to a boil, and reduce to approximately 1/4 cup. When the hen has 15 minutes left to cook, pour the reduced marinade over the hen and return it to the oven for its final 15 minutes of cooking. Remove from the oven, and let the hen rest for 10 or 15 minutes before dividing into serving portions.

ROASTED GUINEA HEN

Steps:

• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place the guinea hen in an iron skillet large enough for it to fit or in a heavy roasting dish. (Enameled cast iron is best.) Using your hands, rub 2 teaspoons of the olive oil all over the bird, inside and out. Season again all over with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with thyme leaves. Scatter the garlic cloves around the pan.
• Place in the oven and roast 15 minutes. Drizzle with the remaining olive oil and roast, basting every 10 minutes with pan drippings, until a thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the thigh reads 160 degrees; this should take 40 to 50 minutes.
• Remove the hen from the oven and transfer to a cutting board. Drain excess fat (leaving some!) from the pan and place over medium-high heat. Pour in the chicken broth. Using a wooden spoon, scrape up the pan drippings and bring to a boil. Reduce until the sauce is syrupy. Add salt and pepper to taste. Cut the hen into 6 pieces and pour the juices from the cutting board back into the sauce. Serve on a platter and pass the sauce with a big spoon.

ROASTED GUINEA HENS WITH WHOLE-GRAIN MUSTARD AND HERBS

Steps:

• Cook garlic and potatoes:
• Fill a 3-quart saucepan halfway with water and bring to a boil. Add garlic and simmer 5 minutes. Remove garlic with a slotted spoon and reserve. Add potatoes to water with bay leaf and salt to taste, then simmer, covered, 10 minutes (potatoes will not be fully cooked). Cool potatoes in hot water, uncovered, then drain and peel.
• Make mustard butter and prepare hens while potatoes are cooling:
• Put a 17- by 11-inch roasting pan in middle of oven and preheat oven to 425°F.
• Melt 1 tablespoon butter and set aside. Mash together mustard, chives, remaining 5 tablespoons butter, and salt and pepper to taste. Reserve 1 tablespoon mustard butter for sauce.
• Remove excess fat from cavities and necks, then rinse hens and pat dry. Run your finger between skin and flesh of breast and legs of each hen to loosen skin (outsides of thighs are easier to access from neck end). Push mustard butter under skin and massage skin from outside to spread butter evenly over breast and legs. Season hens inside and out with salt and pepper and put half of herb stems in cavity of each bird. Tie legs together with kitchen string and close cavity with toothpicks.
• Brush melted butter over hens.
• Roast hens:
• Remove roasting pan from oven and add oil, tilting to coat. Put hens in pan, breast sides up, and scatter potatoes and shallots around them. Roast hens, basting every 10 minutes with a brush and turning vegetables, 30 minutes. Scatter reserved garlic and thyme leaves around hens and roast, basting frequently and turning vegetables, until a thermometer inserted in thickest part of a thigh (without touching bone) registers 170°F and vegetables are tender, 20 to 30 minutes more (30 to 40 minutes more for chickens). Discard string and toothpicks from hens and transfer hens to a platter. Surround with vegetables and keep warm, loosely covered, while making sauce.
• Make sauce:
• Skim fat from pan juices and add chicken broth, then deglaze by boiling, scraping up brown bits, until reduced to about 1/2 cup. Pour sauce through a sieve into a sauceboat and stir in reserved tablespoon mustard butter with salt and pepper to taste.
• Chop tarragon and parsley leaves and scatter over hens and vegetables. Serve with sauce.

POT-ROASTED GUINEA FOWL WITH SAGE, CELERY AND BLOOD ORANGE

Steps:

• Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
• Remove any excess fat from the cavity of each guinea fowl. Wash thoroughly inside and out and pat dry with paper towels. Rub the cavity with a little salt. Cut off the two ends of the oranges, stand them on end and carefully slice off the skin (once you have removed one piece of skin you can see where the flesh meets the skin). Slice the oranges into five or six rounds each. Remove the tougher outside ribs of the celery until you reach the white, dense bulb and slice across thinly.
• Put in a bowl, mix in the thyme and a small pinch of salt and pepper, then stuff the cavity of each guinea fowl with this filling. Pull the skin at the front of each guinea fowl's cavity forward, to cover the filling, and tightly tie/truss up.
• Heat a thick-bottomed pan and add the olive oil and the guinea fowl, the skin of which has been rubbed in sea salt and pepper. Cook until lightly golden on all sides, then add the garlic, butter and sage and cook for 3-4 minutes until golden brown. Add the wine at intervals, enough to keep the pan slightly moist at all times. Place in the oven for 45 minutes, checking every 10-15 minutes and just topping up the wine as necessary. The guinea fowl will be roasted and partially steamed.
• When cooked, carefully remove from the oven and place upside down on a dish, allowing all the juices and moisture to relax back into the breast meat for at least 5 minutes. While your meat is resting, make the gravy.
• Remove all the fat from the roasting pan and place the pan on gentle heat. In the bottom of the pan will be your cooked, soft, sweet, whole garlic cloves and some gorgeous sticky stuff--when this gets hot, scoop out the stuffing from the guinea fowl cavity and add to the pan with about 2/3 cup of wine. As the wine boils and steams, scrape all the goodness with a spoon from the bottom of the pan into the liquor. When it has all dissolved, leave to simmer gently. Squash the cooked garlic out of their skins with a spoon (discard the skins); this will also thicken the gravy slightly, as well as give it flavor. Pour any of the juices that have drained out of the rested birds into the pan with the gravy, simmer and season to taste. Serve the guinea fowl with roast potatoes and any simply cooked green vegetable--spinach, kale, bok choy or broccoli.

ROASTED GUINEA FOWL WITH CHAPELURE DE LEGUMES AND APPLE CIDER SAUCE

Steps:

• Preheat the oven to 150 degrees F.
• To make the vegetable flakes, set a mandoline over a large bowl. Slice 1 fennel bulb paper-thin, then slice 1 onion, 1/2 of the celery root, and 1 of the apples to the same thickness. Switch to a vegetable peeler, and working over the same bowl, peel 1 carrot into thin ribbons. Mix the vegetables and spread them evenly on a baking sheet. Place the sheet in the oven to dry the vegetables until completely brittle, about 2 1/2 hours. (If you have an oven with a convection function, this will shorten the drying time to 1 hour.)
• Transfer the vegetables to the work bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal blade and pulse until reduced to flakes. Store, covered, at room temperature. This can be done 1 day ahead.
• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
• To prepare the birds, halve the remaining fennel, onion, carrot, and celery root, then cut them again into several small wedges. Place them in a large baking dish along with the potatoes and garlic. Generously season with salt and pepper. Drizzle with 3 tablespoons of the olive oil and mix to coat.
• Season the guinea fowl with salt and pepper inside and out. Stuff the cavities with whole sprigs of thyme. Rub them all over with the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Place the birds on the bed of vegetables. Roast, uncovered, for 45 minutes, basting occasionally with pan juices.
• Cut the remaining apple into several wedges and add it to the roasting pan. Continue roasting and basting until the skin on the birds turns golden brown, another 20 minutes. Remove the birds from the oven, sprinkle them generously with dried vegetable flakes, then continue to roast until the juices run clear, another 10 minutes. Transfer the birds and roasted vegetables to a serving platter. Cover loosely with foil and let rest while preparing the sauce.
• To make the pan sauce, pour the pan juices into a small saucepan. Skim and discard as much fat off the top as possible. Over medium-low heat, deglaze the roasting pan with the cider and simmer for 5 minutes, scraping the bottom of the roasting pan to loosen the browned bits. Add the hot cider from the roasting pan to the pan juices, and over high heat, reduce the liquid by half. Stir in the butter, season with salt and pepper, and pour it into a sauce boat. Sprinkle the birds and the vegetables with persillade. Carve the guinea fowl at the table and serve with the cider sauce.