The Essential Roast Chicken

This recipe has been moving and changing over time. It's an amalgam of a number of other recipes and it guarantees beautiful, fragrant, plump and crispy chicken. But prepared to give it a lot of love. And butter. Did I say butter? And after that, how about some butter? More butter please!

This used to be a favourite of my Antipodean (boo hoo) mates Ollie and V, who often came for dinner. V's favourite desert was my Fallen Angel Cake, which involved a virtuously fat free, light as air angelfood cake smothered in a gorgeous, velvety (fatteriffic) warm lemon curd (well you have to do something with the 13 leftover egg yolks from the angelfood cake).

Alas, I digress.

Purchase a chook big enough to feed your supper guests and leave leftovers for picking at later - who could say no to a cold roast chook and mayonnaise sandwich for lunch?

I typically use 500 grams per guest, plus an additional little bit. The recipe here is for a 3 kilo chicken, but could be modified by subtracting (or adding) 20 minutes per 500 grams. Your chook should, in an ideal world, be cornfed and organic, but this recipe will transport even the palest, saddest battery hen to the culinary heavens, and you along with it.

Enough for 6 (including my husband, which is saying quite a lot)

Ingredients

• 3 kilo chicken
• 3 medium onions
• 6 cloves of garlic
• butter
• homemade chicken stock
• white wine
• A dry spice rub made of whatever you like (typically I use, in decending order of proportion, good dark paprika, sea salt, cayenne, ground white pepper, onion powder, garlic powder).

Rinse and pat the chicken dry with paper towel. Cut the onions into wedges, separate the wedges into single or double layers and stuff the wedges up the chicken's bottom. Any leftover onion can go in the bottom of the roasting pan.

sliding your fingers between the skin and meat of the breast, loosen the skin from the flesh. Slice pats from the butter and slip the slices between the skin and the breast. Use more butter if you've got a cheaper chook -depending on the quality and size of the bird, I sometimes use up to a cup of butter!

Rub the dry spice all over the chook's skin. Top and bottom.

Skewer the chicken's bottom closed (ouch) and truss up its wee leggies. Either tuck the wing tips under its back, or skewer them to the body with the tip resting in the crease between the leg and body.

Put the darling in a roasting pan with a rack.

Pour sufficient quantities of white wine and home made stock in the pan and throw in the garlic cloves. I tend to use rather more stock than wine, about 3 cups stock to 1 cup wine.

Bung the whole lot in the oven at 200 celcius for 2.5 hours.

Be prepared to baste this birdie every 30 minutes. Settle down in the kitchen with a good book (like Larousse) and a glass or three of wine and baste away. If your stock runs low, add a bit more, or some water, or wine, or whatever.

Drink more wine.

When the bird comes out of the oven, let it sit, with foil tented over it, while you reduce the pan drippings for gravy. If you've used quite a lot of butter, you'll want to skim that off first or the gravy will be far too rich.

Use a fork to mash the nice roasty cloves that were at the bottom of the pan into the drippings and strain the drippings before reducing. If you need to add a little flour or cornstarch to thicken, feel free to do so, but not too much, a nice fluid jus is always more flavourful and attractive than a stogdy, too-thick gravy.

If you must have thicker gravy, reserve some of the butter and fat you strained off so that you can make a proper roux for thickening.  None of this shaking flour and water up in an old margerine container.

Before untrussing and carving this beauty, use two carving forks to hold it upright over the gravy pan to allow the juice to drip out of its bottom. If you've not been shirking your basting duties, there will be plenty of nice, oniony juice there.

Untruss, deskewer and carve the chook up. Arrange it on a platter with the roasted onions extracted from its nether regions. They should be just about caramelised.

Serve this delightful beast with Devine, Sublime Garlicky Mashed Potatoes and a fresh, tangy salad. Oh. and lots of good wine. Preferably a gentle pinot noir.

Be sure you're not wearing a belt.

Comments

[jro]

I love Canadians, you have the best sense of humour. Thanks for the chook recipe and the obvious fondness you have for your Aussie mates. I am going to use this one for Christmas lunch in the Antipodean summer - but I am sure it will be delicious