What is the yearning of a modern parent? A quick and easy delicious supper? Some great wine at the end of a very long week? Fewer dishes and more children that listen? Am I writing a wish list for Christmas? No, Not quite, but I am preparing for it anyway!
I have figured out, thanks to Jamie Oliver and Ina Paarman, but mostly thanks to my mom and some of my own ingenuity, the perfect, easy, fall-off-the-bone Roast chicken recipe. The trick is, to feed it bacon and get it drunk!
You get to skip all the hard stuff, like making traditional stuffing or chopping 10 huge onions and crying like you just watched Bambi, or making actual roast potatoes, but it will taste and smell like the best roast chicken you've ever had and it's a great precursor to all of the festive goodies we'll all be making soon!
PS You can totally make this for Christmas!
Ingredients
1 Whole Chicken (no giblets for this recipe)
1 250g pack of bacon
A generous amount of Crack (let your ancestors guide you)
Crushed garlic (store bought and in a tub is fine)
Fresh herbs: Rosemary is especially great for chicken. I was short this time so I just used a whole lot of dried mixed herbs.
Cajun spice
Carrots
Green Peppers
Small pickling size onions
Potatoes
Olive Oil
Butter
Tin Foil (I didn't have any so I used another baking dish)
WINE. Lots. of WINE
Method
If your chicken is frozen, you'll need to defrost it by placing it in a sealed plastic bag in warm water for a few hours. About 4-5 is sufficient. Don't rush defrosting chicken. It makes it tough.
When You're ready and your chicken is defrosted, start prepping your veggies. You can also preheat your oven at this stage to 180 degrees Celsius.
The Idea with the small onions, is that all that's required of you is to peel, top and tail them! No dicing or chopping required. you can just throw them in whole!
With the green peppers, I just cut out the centres and chopped them into large chunks.
Carrots and potatoes? Don't even peel them. Do give them a rinse though, unless you like eating sand. Roughly chop them too and throw them into the pan with all your other veggies.
Back to your chicken, rinse it out, and let all the water drip out. Then place it on a board or large dish while you stuff it silly. So, You'll get your bacon and your crushed garlic ready now. I hope you bought a big tub because you're going to need lots of it! Start with one piece of bacon and then half a handful of garlic. Repeat until you've finished the packet of bacon.
Place your chicken on top of the veggies and top with butter, crack, cajun spice and herbs.
Evenly pour around 500ml of wine into the baking dish and cover the whole thing in tin foil. Bake for two hours.
Remove chicken from the oven. As you can see, I had too much wine and I put the oven on the wrong setting. I had the grill function on (whoops) but luckily it did not burn the chicken... too badly...
Ideally, you would have done this with foil, so I'll direct you now as if you had. Remove the foil and move the chicken into a separate baking dish while you grill the veggies to give them some colour and that lovely roast texture. Don't overdo it because you still need to brown the chicken!
When your veggies are looking good, You can add the chicken back into the pan (always make sure the pan is placed in the lower-middle section of the oven to prevent the chicken or veggies browning to quickly or burning).
You can add another lashing of butter to each side of the chicken as you let it brown. If you followed instructions, your chicken will actually become harder to turn as it falls off the bone. This is not an issue, really. It's not fabulous for photos, but when it gets like that, the breast meat actually tastes as moist and tender as the thighs and THAT is the magic of slow cooking your chicken in wine and garlic.
There isn't even any need for gravy as you will have a glorious combination of butter, chicken juices and veggie stock at the bottom of your pan that you can just spoon over as you dish.
And there you have it!
Born-Up-A -Tree!!