Chicken topper

[Shule]

We decided to try a wonderberry glaze on our Christmas Eve chicken dinner. Here's what happened:

I blended up some frozen wonderberries. They thawed out. I put a heaping spoonful of tarragon powder (homegrown) on the chicken breasts as they thawed on the pans. I melted some butter and mixed it with the wonderberries, along with salt, lots of granulated garlic, and some black pepper.

The resulting substance was probably much too thick to call a glaze. It was a paste. Anyway, I should have mixed the tarragon with it instead of adding it to the chicken first, because when I painted the chicken with it, the tarragon came off (even though it had stuck to the chicken firmly previously). We refrigerated it for a while before we cooked it for some reason.

Anyway, it was cooked for a long time on 350° F., covered for part of that time, and uncovered the rest.

The result was, it was very good. It went very well in a Christmas Eve dinner. I was happy.

Anyway, one thing that was really cool was the way the wonderberry paste looked when I mixed the molten butter with it and looked at it under a light. It gleamed a lot. You could tell there were anthocyanins in it.

We have a lot of tarragon, fortunately. I think it tastes (and smells) better if you turn it into powder and use lots of it. Growing it in more sun may or may not help.

Merry Christmas Eve!

[Shule]

Oh, and on a related note, we discovered that mixing canned blackberries and canned peaches together makes for a great cobbler filling, especially with whipped topping.

[worth1]

Purple chicken?

[MissS]

From the title of the thread, I was thinking that you had a chicken as a topper for your Christmas tree and was wondering why you were writing about it. LOL

I'm glad that your Christmas Eve dinner came out so well Shule.

Wishing you a Merry Christmas!

[DriftlessRoots]

What MissS said. I was hoping for a picture of it.

I've got wonderberries on my to-grow list for 2025 so I may try a version of your glaze.

[MissS]

image.png

[Shule]

Here's some of the refrigerated leftovers with the wonderberry garlic butter paste (with salt and pepper):

IMG_20241225_104927050.jpg

@worth1
It was purple before cooking, it's this color now.

[Shule]

I think powdered tarragon was the chicken seasoning of my childhood that I had been missing as an adult until recently. It definitely tastes familiar.

[Shule]

What MissS said. I was hoping for a picture of it.

I've got wonderberries on my to-grow list for 2025 so I may try a version of your glaze.

Awesome. Be careful not to try to make a wonderberry pie or wonderberry preserves, unless you add other berries. On their own in cooking, they're really more of a savory thing.

[Shule]

@DriftlessRoots
Oh, and also make sure it's Solanum burbankii you get rather than one of the other Nightshades known as wonderberries (such as Solanum nigrum). Some people think Solanum burbankii is Solanum retroflexum, but I'm not 100% convinced, yet. It would be cool to try Solanum retroflexum to see if it's the same as what I grow. I got mine from tradewindsfruit.com. I have zillions of seeds from previous years (none from this year or last, though; they volunteer like weeds once they get established for a few years).

While you can start them like tomatoes (ish; tomatoes germinate more reliably than wonderberries that way), it's probably a lot easier to direct seed them. The seeds can potentially survive in the soil for at least two or three years; so, you don't have to plant them right before you want them to sprout. I usually just put fruits where I want plants next year, now, but I have zillions of older seeds.

[DriftlessRoots]

@DriftlessRoots
Oh, and also make sure it's Solanum burbankii you get rather than one of the other Nightshades known as wonderberries (such as Solanum nigrum). Some people think Solanum burbankii is Solanum retroflexum, but I'm not 100% convinced, yet. It would be cool to try Solanum retroflexum to see if it's the same as what I grow. I got mine from tradewindsfruit.com. I have zillions of seeds from previous years (none from this year or last, though; they volunteer like weeds once they get established for a few years).

While you can start them like tomatoes (ish; tomatoes germinate more reliably than wonderberries that way), it's probably a lot easier to direct seed them. The seeds can potentially survive in the soil for at least two or three years; so, you don't have to plant them right before you want them to sprout. I usually just put fruits where I want plants next year, now, but I have zillions of older seeds.

Just checked and the packet says they are burbankii. I like doing fruit with pork so maybe I’ll make a glaze for grilling some chops.