What is the nutritional value (calories, fat, fiber at least) for a whole Cornish game hen. My copy of Master Cook tells me its 1796 calories, which I find hard to believe. I have a lovely recipe that calls for them (I'm happy to remove the skin after its cooked)
Wow! How sad! Ive been thinking about making them soon myself. My family loves them and so do I.
Would it help if we try to take the skin off first????
That calorie number is so high I was shocked!!
I hesitate to add this, because it actually makes no sense, but this is what my Corinne Netzer book says:
Cornish hen, cooked, 3 oz,
dark meat, Perdue, 200/15/0
white meat, Perdue, 170/9/0
roasted, half, 6.5 oz
dark meat, Perdue, 210/15/0
white meat, Perdue, 200/11/0
The only way I can interpret this is that the first values are for 3 oz of MEAT and the second are for 6.5 oz of meat+bones, implying that half of a 13 oz game hen delivers only a tiny bit more than 3 oz of meat. I note that there was no mention of removing skin in this listing.
You could do an experiment: weigh your cooked game hen, strip off all the meat, and weigh that. There is no reason that the meat itself should have very different caloric content than other poultry. If you find that, indeed, a half a game hen weighs about 6.5 oz and gives you about 3 oz meat, then you can trust these numbers and go out and buy some more to make an actual meal for your family.
I like them a lot. I quarter them and eat the leg/thigh portion as one meal, the breast/wings as one meal, and freeze the other two portions for later. That makes them more reasonable point-wise. I fill out the meal with vegetable soup, salad, brown rice or potato, and maybe another vegetable dish. I'm not a high protein eater, though, so the small amount of meat is fine. That's just a basic idea of what I might serve. Sometimes I combine some of those things and make a rice/vegetable dish, for example.
A really low fat way to roast them is to take a lemon, roll it on the counter, stick it with a fork or skewer all over. Then stick the whole lemon inside the game hen. You can also put in a quarter of an onion and some fresh herbs, like thyme. Close the opening with toothpicks. If you want, you can lightly tie the legs so they don't splay when you roast the bird. Put the hens breast side down and roast at 350 for about 30 minutes. Turn the heat up to 400, turn the hens over and finish roasting. It makes a really tender, juicy bird and is self-basting. You don't need to add any fat at all. You can also roast whole chickens that way, but use two lemons per bird. I did this with 2 whole regular sized chickens once and put some frozen baby onions in the pan. They caramelized, without my adding any fat and were really good.
