Roasted cornish hens are a fantastic entertaining dish for any size gathering! Perfect for a small holiday dinner when you don’t want a whole turkey.
This post is brought to you in collaboration with Nancy’s.
The holidays are just around the corner! But not everyone always has a huge gathering to attend. While I’m always a big fan of roasting a turkey even if you aren’t having a ton of folks I understand that for many it can be a bit of an intimidating size (and for some even impossible with their oven size).
Enter the roasted cornish hens. Just the right size for a single person per bird so you can easily scale up and down to whatever number of guests you have.
We love soaking our poultry in Nancy’s organic kefir overnight. It gives them a tender juicy flavor and adds a delicious tang.
Cover them completely with kefir, cover tightly and store in the fridge overnight. You can add extra flavoring agents here if you get inspired and want the flavor to come through more strongly but I am a big fan of keeping it simple.
Once they have marinated overnight they get pulled from the marinade and get the holiday treatment. Plenty of apples, onions, cranberries, garlic, seasonings and plenty of fresh herbs.
Roast them for around 40 minutes until they are cooked through and reduce the pan sauces for a delicious serving sauce. Easy, simple and super impressive. Be sure to whip up a few of these Nancy’s vanilla panna cotta’s with blueberry lemon suace for your dinner too! They can be made days ahead of time to help keep your dinner party stress free.
Happy entertaining!
Roasted Cornish Hen Recipe
Roasted cornish hens are a fantastic entertaining dish for any size gathering! Perfect for a small holiday dinner when you don’t want a whole turkey.
Ingredients
- 3-4 cornish game hens
- 2 cups Nancy’s organic kefir
- 3 apples quartered
- 2 onions quartered
- 1 head of garlic peeled
- fresh herbs oregano, thyme, sage etc. all work great
- 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
- 1 tablespoon honey
Instructions
- 1. Soak hens in Nancy's kefir overnight.2. Remove from kefir scraping off most of it into a bowl. Discard kefir.3. Add hens to a roasting pan with apples, onions, garlic, and fresh herbs. Cover with foil4. Roast for 25 minutes at 350 degrees. Remove hens and transfer to a cookie sheet with a drying rack on top of it. Roast hens until the skin is crispy and hens are cooked thoroughly.5. While hens are roasting pour pan juices into a saucepan, add balsamic vinegar and honey and reduce to a sauce.6. Plate everything and serve with sauce. Enjoy!
Nutrition
Disclosure: This post was brought to you in collaboration with Nancy’s Yogurt. We are proud to work with companies we believe in to bring you delicious free content every week!
