About Beyond the Chicken Coop

Beyond the Chicken Coop is a from-scratch cooking site for home cooks who want real recipes that work in everyday kitchens.

Here you'll find family-tested dinners, homemade breads and baked goods, seasonal recipes, and plenty of ideas for preserving what you grow or bring home. The recipes are practical and approachable, whether you're making dinner on a busy weeknight, baking bread on the weekend, or filling jars for the pantry.

My Story

I’m Kathy Berget. I started Beyond the Chicken Coop in 2015 as a hobby while working full time as an elementary school principal and raising three busy teenagers with my husband. I wanted a place to share the recipes I was making for my family and the food we were growing, preserving, and cooking at home.

What started as a small hobby gradually grew into something much bigger. In 2021, I retired early from education to work on Beyond the Chicken Coop full time. Today, the site has more than 700 recipes, all developed with the same goal of helping home cooks make delicious homemade food in their own kitchens.

From-Scratch Cooking for Real Life

Cooking from scratch doesn't mean you have to make every single ingredient yourself.

At Beyond the Chicken Coop, you'll find plenty of recipes made completely from scratch, along with those that use a few convenient ingredients when it makes sense. Store-bought chicken broth or a jar of spaghetti sauce can have a place in a homemade meal.

Some recipes are quick and easy, while others take more time and teach a new skill. You might find a 30-minute dinner one day and homemade croissants or a pressure-canning recipe the next.

The goal isn't to make everything from scratch. It's to help you make more homemade food in a way that works for you. Cooking from scratch is about confidence and flexibility, not rules. You get to decide where to spend your time, and every recipe here is written with that in mind.

Inspired by Life in Rural Idaho

Many of the recipes on Beyond the Chicken Coop are influenced by how we live.

Our large garden provides much of the produce we eat throughout the summer and preserve for the rest of the year. We raise chickens and keep bees, and our family hunts, fishes, forages, and gathers seasonal foods whenever we can.

That means you'll find recipes using garden vegetables, fresh fruit and berries, farm-fresh eggs, wild game, and freshly caught fish, along with plenty of canning, freezing, and preserving recipes.

You don't need to grow or catch your own food to make any of them. The recipes are written so home cooks can make them with ingredients from their own garden, freezer, farmers' market, or grocery store.

Recipes Tested in a Real Home Kitchen

Every recipe on Beyond the Chicken Coop is developed and tested in a home kitchen before it's published.

Recipes include clear instructions, helpful tips, step-by-step photos when they're useful, and the details you need to successfully make the recipe yourself.

The recipes aren't created just to look good in a photograph. They're food we actually cook and eat.

In the news

Many of my recipes have been featured in Parade, Feed Feed, MSN, Foodista, Woman's Day, Red Tricycle, Brit & Co., Yummly, Foodgawker, Buzzfeed, The Pioneer Woman, and more!

You'll also find a great article in Mashed where I've been quoted in an article about selecting and using fresh green beans. And in another article about how to make your fresh eggs last longer. Simply Recipes utilized me as a resource on how to fry eggs.

Check out my recipe for Barley Risotto on Idaho Preferred, which features recipes utilizing food grown in Idaho.

New recipes and seasonal favorites are added regularly to Beyond the Chicken Coop.

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Beyond the Chicken Coop® is a registered trademark.