2010 Cooking Club Week 45: Indulgent Roast Chicken

The Sweeper

Indulgent Roast Chicken - split into two posts to include images.

Roasting a chicken is one of the easiest things you can possibly do, but the reward is fantastic. There are, however, as many ways to roast, and flavour, a chicken as you can possibly imagine. This recipe is both a summer and winter favourite in our house, because you can alter it to suit the weather and still feel like licking the plate afterwards. The most important note about this recipe is the chicken itself. It should at the very, very least be a free range bird, preferably a free range, organic chicken. The difference is phenomenal – factory-farmed birds look plump but cook dry, and the butter in this recipe will make the pan contents a greasy, watery mess on a factory farmed bird, instead of a rich, chickeny marvellousness to moisten your bread.

The last thing about this recipe is the carbohydrate – this recipe is rich, so I don’t do the endless sides of buttery mash and roast spuds. Instead, the chicken is cooked and served with a sweet Vienna loaf, the vegetables it’s roasted with, and a side of steamed green beans. Naturally if you want to go the mash and roast spuds route rock on, but with what I’m about to show you you’ll end dinner feeling full and satisfied, but not fit to explode if you move.

NB: While my oven DOES have a fan assist option, I prefer to cook this bread and chicken dish WITHOUT the fan. I use an oven thermometer to ensure I have the temperatures I want – if you don’t have the facility to switch off your fan and so on, use your knowledge of your own oven to adjust times accordingly.

The first thing to do is mix the bread, because the dough takes a while to prove. You can be preparing the herb butter and the roasting pan for the chicken while the bread is on its first prove.

We’ll start with the Vienna Loaf

1 lb / 450g strong white bread flour
1 level teaspoon salt
1 1/2 oz / 45g butter
1/2 pint tepid milk
1/2 oz fresh yeast or 1 1/2 level teaspoons dried yeast and 1 level teaspoon caster/superfine sugar
1 egg beaten
a little extra beaten egg or milk for glazing

Method

Sift the flour and salt into a bowl.

Melt the butter in the milk – don’t allow this to overheat – this is vital. You want to warm the milk enough to melt the butter and no further.

In a separate bowl, mix the yeast and the sugar.

Add the melted butter in warm milk to the yeast mixture – again make sure this isn’t too hot or it’ll kill your yeast. Then add the beaten egg to this mix. You’ll now have a sort of brown-beige liquid.

Next, mix your liquid into your sifted flour and salt, and mix until it becomes a dough. Then knead the dough for about 10 minutes, or until it’s elastic. I’m lucky enough to own a Kenwood Chef, so the mixing element of this for me is done by a dough hook. (And might I add, it’s a bloody miracle machine.)



When the dough is elastic, leave it to prove until it doubles in size.





This takes the best part of an hour in a warm place. Use this time to prepare your herb butter.

Once the dough has proved, knead it again, knocking some of the air out of it, but don’t over work it. You’re not trying to pummel it back to an airless heap – though this dough remains quite elastic so you’d be hard pressed to try. Shape the dough into the finished loaf shape you want – I usually use a simple oval. Cut two diagonal slits on the surface of the loaf. Place onto a greased baking tray and again leave in a warm place to prove. This time around takes closer to half an hour to 45 mins in a warm place, but you can use this time to prepare your chicken.



Preheat your oven as hot as it can go – preferably 220 degrees Celsius. Before putting the loaf in the oven, wash with milk or beaten egg for a glaze, then transfer to the oven in one swift move, alongside your chicken, and cook the bread on high for 15 minutes.



When you turn the oven down to 180 degrees, the bread can stay in for a further 20-25 minutes. Keep an eye on the loaf and remove when golden brown and hollow when knocked on – leave on a wire rack to cool for the remainder of the chicken cooking time.



Preparing the herb butter and the roasting tray

The idea behind this is to make a highly flavoursome herb butter that you massage all over the chicken, between the skin and the meat, before putting it into the oven. Do this prep during your first prove on the loaf.

The ingredients are basically:

Herbs to your taste
A head of garlic
A lemon
Butter – about 125g, at room temperature
Assorted vegetables for the roasting tray – carrots, onions, celery, garlic

First, select your herbs. I’ve raided my garden for all of these – herbs are basically the world’s tastiest weeds, and they really aren’t difficult to grow. You can use any herbs you want – as many or as few in terms of distinct flavours. I would avoid mint, basil and coriander, but everything else is a go. For this recipe I’m using marjoram, thyem, sage, that's curly parsley at the back, then oregano and rosemary.



Wash them, pat dry and pull off stalks and anything wilted or inedible, including critters if these are from your garden.



Chop the herbs finely and gently on a wooden board – you want a fine cut, but don’t pummel the bejesus out of them so the board goes green – when you do that, you’ve simply flavoured your chopping board and the best part of the herbs is gone.



The next step is to finely chop your garlic – a tip is to throw a few cloves into a mortar and pestle with some coarse salt. Then pummel – the salt helps to puree the garlic.



Once the garlic and salt are pureed, stir in your soft butter – I do all this in the mortar and pestle, but if you don’t have one, you can simply chop your garlic as finely as possible on a board, then transfer it with some salt to a bowl, and add butter in the bowl.

Then grate the zest of one lemon into the garlic butter mix. (IMPORTANT NOTE: if I want to make this as a substantial summer dish and serve it with a jewelled rice, I grate in the zest of one orange instead. Never underestimate the punch citrus zest packs in a dish – it’s formidable and completely changes the flavours!)



Once you’ve mixed the garlic, herbs, butter, salt and lemon zest, stir in the chopped herbs. Mix it all up until you have a thick but pliable consistency.



Then leave to sit while you prepare the chicken and the roasting dish.



I peel and chop a variety of vegetables to cover the base of the roasting dish in a single layer. These have a number of uses – you can eat them, yes, but also they hold the chicken off the base of the dish without using a rack, and they impart incredible flavour to the juices that run off, and you can either make them a part of your gravy later, or simply mop around them with the bread. In some cases you can smear the soft, cooked veg over your bread with some chicken (particularly excellent with the roast cloves of garlic). In this roasting dish, I’ve chopped the lemon I zested and added that, plus onions, celery, carrots and at least one whole head of garlic cloves, skin on.



DO NOT ADD ANY OIL TO THIS ROASTING DISH. If you have a metal roasting pan, wipe it with olive oil if you absolutely have to, but the butter melts on the chicken in the first few minutes in the oven and quickly rolls into these vegetables to lubricate the pan.

With your roasting tray ready, and your herb butter ready, you’re now ready to prepare your chicken.

The Sweeper

Preparing the Chicken

You can do this step during the second prove of your bread.

I honestly believe people are too terrified of chicken. There appears to be a mass hysteria around the potential it has to make you sick. Well, for this recipe you need to get up close and personal with your chicken, so if you have chicken phobia this won’t be for you!

First, unpack your chicken. I believe you need to wash and pick over this chicken – if you’re terrified of splattering salmonella around your kitchen, simply fill your sink with cold water and immerse the chicken in the water. Stack a pile of kitchen towel on the side (or a teacloth if you’re happy that the washing machine can deal with whatever unforgiving poisons a chicken contains). Immerse the chicken and pick it over, removing any feather shafts and giving the body cavity a good rinse out. Most chickens have fat attached to the extra skin at the gaping end of the body cavity – cut some of this skin and all of the fat away, leaving the cavity open – you really don’t need the extra fat that this will provide as it melts in the heat of the oven if you leave it on the bird. Take the chicken out of the sink, holding it up so it drains, and then thoroughly dry it, inside and out.



Sit it on your work surface, with the neck and wings facing towards you. Gently ease your thumbs and fingers between the skin and the breast meat of the chicken, being careful not to tear the skin. Loosen as much of the skin as you can reach from this end of the chicken.

Then turn it around so you are facing the legs and the cavity. There is a thin film of flesh that connects the rib cage to the backbone – if you can get your fingers between that flesh and the skin, you can loosen the skin all the way onto the legs. When you’ve done as much as you can to loosen as much skin as you can, it’s time to pack in the herb butter.

Start loading the herb butter, a tablespoonful at a time, at the neck end. You can deposit a spoonful of the butter and herb mix at the neck and then gently massage it through the skin you have loosened. Push the butter around from the outside, pressing through the skin to use the mixture itself to part any remaining skin from the flesh, and massage it over the bird as evenly and thoroughly as possible. You can feed a few spoons under the skin from the cavity end to ensure you butter the legs as well.

If you’re careful, you should still have quite a clean-skinned chicken with an even layer of herb butter between the skin and the flesh. Sit the herb-butter chicken on the vegetables in the roasting tray, and as a last step liberally sprinkle the skin with good sea salt.



Put the chicken in the oven at the same time as the bread, at its highest setting, about 220 degrees, for 15 minutes. You can put the chicken and the bread in the oven simultaneously at the same heat and turn it down for both items at the same time.

This initial high heat cooking quickly melts the butter but also seals the chicken. After 15 minutes turn the oven right down to 180 degrees – open the door for a minute if you have to, to ensure the temperature does drop. Then cook the chicken for a further 40 minutes at 180 degrees.
After the 40 minutes elapses, there should be lots of juices and buttery loveliness in the roasting tin with your vegetables. Take the roasting tin out of the oven, closing the door to retain the heat, and baste your chicken with the juices. Flip the vegetables around to mix it up and get maximum flavour into the juices. Then return the tray to the oven for whatever duration is required based on the weight of your chicken.

We get quite small chickens in Australia, so I usually cook for 70 minutes in total but you might want to cook for longer if your chook was enormous.

Remember to take the bread out of the oven when it’s cooked, and allow it to cool, and while the chicken is finishing in the oven you can (a) clean up the kitchen and (b) prepare your green beans. I just top and tail the beans, and steam them for about six to eight minutes in a bamboo steamer over a pot of boiling water.



Plating and serving

The finished bread and the finished chicken can either be brought to the table or plated. With a whole chicken like this, serving is easier if you remove the chicken from the roasting dish, allowing juices to drain from it, and sit it on a board to carve. I take both legs off and cut them into thigh and drumstick, then halve the chicken through the breastbone. You can then carve each half into two or three pieces – depending whether or not you take the wings off as separate serves.



Then lay the pieces back in the tray and take to the table for serving if you’re letting people help themselves.



If you’re plating up, take a couple of spoonfuls of vegetables and the juices of the tray and sit them on the plate. Balance chicken pieces on top, and green beans; add thick pieces of bread and drizzle some of the pan juices over the bread.



If anyone wants seconds, cut the loaf into chunks and bring the pan to the table, and let people go dip-crazy...

The Sweeper

Mods - apologies for the GINORMOUS pictures. I tried resizing through photobucket, but whatever size I make the images they appear as screen-hoggers in this thread. Please do feel free to resize them (and let me know how you did it?!)

brian ireland

The Sweeper wrote: »

Mods - apologies for the GINORMOUS pictures. I tried resizing through photobucket, but whatever size I make the images they appear as screen-hoggers in this thread. Please do feel free to resize them (and let me know how you did it?!)

Nice 1 I will try to cook this during the week

Have a mess with this for resizing photos & this for posting them.

catho_monster

YUM!
I've been making something similar for years, based on a Jamie Oliver recipe I think. I stuff the cavity choc a bloc with lemons, at least the one that I zested and maybe more. It steams the meat full of lemon juices and also makes the buttery goodness all over your veg lemony as well. But I do love lemon.
These pics are just gorgeous. Can't wait to try it with the bread.

pampootie

*looks in the oven at the poor chicken that was thrown in a while ago with only a drizzle of oil and some salt on it*

*looks at The Sweepers pictures*

**cries**

Beanstalk

Christ almighty that makes me hungry.

unkel

Wonderful post, thanks a mill for sharing!

Your home grown herbs look the business! You're saying the chickens in Oz aren't big, what size is the bird in your pic? Looks like only about 1.3 or 1.4kg?

The Sweeper

That's the biggest one I could find, about 1.3kgs. They average about 1.2-1.3kgs, down to 1.1kgs if you want but really difficult to locally source a larger free range or organic bird for me.

Mr Magnolia

Finger lickin' good. Really enjoyed it, thanks for that The Sweeper, the bread was lovely and dense. Another one for the repertoire!

Little Alex

We made this this evening too! It's a real Sunday dish, isn't it?

The bread was fabulous.

The lemoniness of the chicken and the veg was really unusual and delish, too!

Well done on going to the trouble of putting up so many pics too, Sweeper. That's always good to see.

CombatCow

The "Vienna Loaf" looks fantastic, I'll give this recipe a try at the weekend, thanks for sharing

Faith

I made a lazyman's version of the chicken tonight. Due to time and money constraints, I used a shop-bought garlic butter. I couldn't quite get the butter the whole way under the skin, but I covered about 75% of the chicken. It made a really lovely, moist chicken. The only mis-step as far as I was concerned was covering the skin with salt - it meant I couldn't munch on the skin on it's own! Not a lot of juices were actually released during the cooking, which meant it didn't get basted much.

The only reason I didn't make the bread was because I'm trying to avoid bread, but I'd say it fabulous together!