Traditional Sunday roast chicken

Right then,

Bought a frozen chicken at Aldi late last week in order to try my first roast. week before we did it German style with Knödel and I just tsrade at this empty bird. This weekend just gone armed with Delia's How to Cook Book Two and a phone hotline to Mum in UK "Muuuurrrrm!" I decided to do the works, roast chicken with apple sage and onion stuffing, rpast potatoes, sprouts, carrots and bread sauce. Man I cannpt recommend the experience highly enough of smelling your own roasting chicken in the oven. However I sank it with a bit...well a lot of red wine which according to my Trittons book of winemaking should never be served with poultry, rather a white wine instead. I learned sveral things, such as never buy a chicken in Aldi as there is no meat on it. Instead the next time I want sa roast I am going to ask in the next village if they ever sell chickens which have been allowed to run round freely and happily before they got deaded. The gravy was a bit tasteless so I shall be using a Hühnerbuoillion cube next time. My Mum said you can make gravy browning by melting sugar in an old teaspoon on a stove which I shall try next time, unless you cdan buy that here.

I have a few questions:

1. How the hell do you carve the bird? My chicken looked like a complete mess on the plate.

2. Where the hell does one get cranberry sauce round here. The German for cranberry is Kranbeere accoriding to the Leo dictionary.

This is all a kind of dry run for Christmas dinner. Last year I watched Gardeners World Christmas Special where they ate their Turkey dinner with veg they had grown entirely themselves. Now that must be satisyfying. Hmmm I must press on with double digging my new veg bed when the weather gets warmer.

Bloody hell Jeremy-your organised anyway, doing a dry run for Xmas!!

Cranberries are available in stores few and far between. Being privileged I can get them at Metro, so give me a shout when you need some and then come and pick them up at a strategic meeting point.
And any good cookbook should tell you how to carve fowl. I'll see about scanning Betty Crocker when I get home.

Cranberry sauce, like the crap back in the US is super super hard, if not impossible to find without Military connections.

Carve? What need to carve it for.. Just pick it up and eat it, a'la caveman style

You not only bought an Aldi chicken, you bought an Aldi frozen chicken.

Sweet mother of jesus, think of your children man.

You need a decent sized chuck if you want to 'carve' it.

Normally I would halve it

(and then eat both halves myself)

I have a feeling Jeremy's been dipping into the homemade red wine a little early today. Don't you normally wait until after midnight to post this stuff?

Anyway you can find cranberry cousins called Preiselbeeren or Moosbeeren here. Oceanspray cranberries are also available at Viktualienmarkt.

He did say he was practicing. So why destroy a good chicken on a newbie eh??

Cranberry sauce is a doddle, as are most berry sauces, sugar water and berries and julienne of orange peel. slow cook and basta. Although I'm sure The Ginger Head Man will have better ideas, and so he should.

Speaking of which, I have last autumns plum wine to bottle soon.

OK, you used the Delia recipe for trad. roast chicken. You cannot really go very far wrong with that to be honest. Does what it says on the tin really.

Cranberries are everywhere at xmas, the bags of Ocean Spray ones. Tenglemann, Reve, everywhere.There have been cranberry suace recipes on TT before, but as gids says, its simple.

The gravy was probably tasteless, because it was a frozen fucking aldi chicken. Hope you've learnt your lesson. I'd find it bloody hard to make an aldi frozen chicken taste good myself, I'll tell ya.
Delia's giblet gravy recipe is OK, but to it I would also add the chicken wings, cut from the bird. Lightly dredge with flour, and fry before adding to the stock. This will get you some nice caramelised bits on the chicken wings, which will add colour to your end gravy. Burning sugar in a spoon will produce a caramelisation obviously, which will add the same colour, but not the same flavour. A few drops of dark soy sauce can also help. Literally a drop or two. You will not notice any soy flavour, but it will colour the sauce enormously.

A little thing I do with roast chicken is to roast it on top of a bed of carrots sliced lengthways, and some onions cut in thick slices. It lifts the bird out of any juices that will collect, and the veg braise in the same juices. They will also caramelise a bit, and when the bird is done, you remove it to rest (under foil for 20 minutes before carving. VERY important. Give the flesh a chance to relax after being exposed tzo so much heat). In the pan with the roasint juice and veg, spoon off excess fat, then put the roasting pan on the hob, bring it up to heat and add your stock, making sure you scrape all aound the roasting tin for bits of burnt tastiness. Put it through a sieve, much better base for a sauce now.

Carving, you'll need pictures really. Hard to explain in writing.

Oooh roast chicken, one of my favourites... The simplest advice for producing a good roast chicken is to start with a quality bird. I usually do a version of the recipe in Roast Chicken and Other Stories which uses fresh thyme, a lemon, some garlic cloves and lots of butter to gently flavour the chicken and keep it from drying out while cooking. I always buy my chicken from Wild und Gefluegel Poerrer on Viktualienmarkt. They cost ~10 euro for a big, fresh, chicken with giblets and are great.

In a nutshell you:
1. Remove chicken from fridge an hour or two before cooking. Heat the oven hot (220C). Boil giblets for stock.
2. Soften half a pack of butter, not so it melts, just so it's easy to smear over the chicken.
3. Smear the butter thickly all over the chicken.
4. Squeeze the lemon juice over the chicken and sprinkle with salt & pepper, add whole garlic cloves unpeeled but cracked to the pan
5. Stuff the lemon halves in the chicken with the thyme, put some thyme under the chicken in the pan.
6. Roast hot for about 15 mins, then turn the oven down to 180C. Keep an eye to make sure the butter doesn't burn (go black) in the pan. If you see this happening add a small amount of water.
7. Cook until ready. Baste regularly with the juices. Cover with foil if the top starts to burn/dry out.

To carve for two remove the breasts whole, as chicken steaks with the golden skin in tact. You need a good quality, sharp, non-serrated knife and you:
1. Across the top of the chicken from front to back is a hard, cartiledge like, rib. Cut gently following the line of this rib down one side from the cavity end to the back.
2. At some point when nearly done you will find the wish bone. Separate the top of this bone from the rib and get your finger or a fork or something under the V of it and pull out of the chicken upwards and backwards to remove it. This makes removing the entire breast easy.
3. Follow down the line of the rib cage from top to bottom until the entire breast comes free. Usually needs a bit of hacking around the leg but it's easy.
4. Repeat on the other side.

Chickens were carefully designed to be easy to carve like this, once the wishbone has been removed. Thoughtful, really.

Serve with a cold Riesling white wine, best from Alsace as you want one with hints of lemon, not a sweet German type.

PS. Veg (roots like potatoes, parsnips etc.) roasted in goose fat are ideal to go with your chicken, with some leeks, spinach, sprouts, broccoli, carrots...

to brown the gravy you can buy the dark 'Sossenbinder' which thickens the gravy and gives it the colour.

Nooo! No chemicals in roast chicken! Take an onion or two, peel them, and cut them in half and put them cut down in the roasting pan. This will add colour and a slight onion flavour to the gravy.

Hey Jeremy, unfortunately I do not have the cooking skills of DR and my carving skills were once described as a legendary mess on a plate. Last time though, I googled" carve a chicken video" and I have to say the video was really a great help, even though I had to consult it about six times, and at least my cooked chicken looked like something out of the cookbooks. Unfortunately it did not taste as good as it should because somehow I cooked it upside down; I cooked it breast side down in the roasting pan

The most important thing is to find a free range chicken. You can find French free range in some D supermarkets.

Roast it for 20 mins a pound + 20mins at about 180C depending on your oven.

When you have eaten genuine free range you will never eat anything else. I refuse to eat factory chicken.

ONLY EAT FREE RANGE MEAT.

If you really have to eat it with a red wine to accompany, then try a spätburgunder from the pfalz. There is a good choice in Karstadt/Kaufhof etc.

Wow thank you for all this advice. Will now modify my method from this info. You must bear in mind I still have me L plates on in cookery!

Eleanor Rigby: I wrote all that with my boy fast asleep on my arm this afternoon! Bit of a break from him breaking stuff and putting horrible things in his mouth.

Oh, you can add an American touch by shoving a beer can up its arse. Still have not tried that one as all my beer comes in bottles and I cannot find a recipe for Beer Bottle up the arse Chicken

I once saw a monkey put a beer bottle up it's own arse.
Aaah. Thailand.

The way we do cranberry sauce in my family is as follows: (and I can confirm cranberries at Viktualienmarkt)

Follow the instructions on the packet (boil in sugar water till the berries pop)
Put the goop through an applesauce maker (or fine sieve) to get the skins out
Add chopped walnuts, raisins, small cubes of celery to taste
Cool in the fridge

Seriously lecker

(much better than a friend from back home who´s family puts in mini-marshmallows, whipped cream, jell-o, and shredded carrots---more of a dessert, really)

HP Sauce as the best additive, a must for most meals.

my uncle told me the can in the chicken thing--isn´t there danger of getting the color from the can into the chicken meat? Or am I paranoid?

p.s. I have only once roasted a chicken. During college. The top was touching the heating element and caught on fire. I was scarred for life (kind of like my grandmother, whose first pressure cooker exploded all over the kitchen). Unfortunately, unlike my grandmother, I never got back on the horse. Don´t have anyone to share the food with me anyway - not worth the effort and the dishes

Noooooooooooooooooooo!

Never think like that. I hate to cook for me alone, despise it in fact, but sometimes, thats the way it is. I have found how to make it super awesome.

Go out, spend lavish amounts of money on super awesome ingredients.
Quickly stop at Zur Brezen. Get minorly drunk.
Go home.
Put on italian sounding music.
Start just cooking shit man

Its awesome. You become all zen man, and like, at one with the kitchen. How much oregano to use? I'll tell ya - as much as you need for that nice awesome bit in the middle of that song with andrea bocelli singing. Thats how much you need man.

God i wish i was as happy in life as you dr, but i guess a cracking bird and culinary skills to rival our Jamie do help . . .

Oven temps vary bigtime..so practice...use middle of oven (resist fan oven) in any case..try lower temps than usually recommended..high can dry the beast out...keep upside down until last 20 mins and cover bottom (?) and legs with foil with foil..lightly covered..shove remains of squeezed lemon (post G&T0 up bottom plus a few herbs...chickies like tarragon..and a bit of garlic..crushed..(then t/o and leave to brown/crisp skin) advice on veg base good..wheatbeer probably excellent with...and of course buy a decent bird...not an old Lidl battery bird! ...organic does not guarantee good flavour..P.s. start bird off at room temp not straight from fridge...finally stick something between leg and body..if juices run clear it's done...let rest and use juice that drains off in gravy..buy beast with giblets as well..

as an afterthought...sod cranberries..there are much better red fruits but if you must make it with orange juice...and if you want stuffing partially cook the onions before mixing dont overfill cavity and keep some on outside for crisping but add later as it can overcook

So, I usually flip the bird (heh) over once or twice and change the temperature a few times but the last bird I roasted I used this recipe: Thomas Keller roast chicken recipe

Idea: salt, let it sit, bung it in a surprisingly hot oven for awhile, take out and rest, eat. No basting, no flipping, to nothing.

It was perfect. I thought the breast would be dry as sawdust but it wasn't at all. And the skin was incredible -- like crispy salty chickeny crack cocaine. It was cooked all the way through. I feel like a total sucker for having done so much complicated shit before.

Key: If you want to feed more people roast two birds, not one bigger one. You want the red meat to cook through before the white meat starts to dry out. Don't use a frozen bird, the better quality birds really do have better flavor, and don't throw it cold into the oven, let it come to room temp first.

For those who want to learn how to carve a bird:
Carving a Turkey 101


This technique works for any fowl¹, although you really don't normally slice up a chicken breast. Watch the second presentation trick for removing the entire breast rather than slicing. It's not as showy for the table but it makes serving much easier.

¹I originally wrote "bird" rather than "fowl" but it read rather serial-killerish.

woof.

agree!!! Ever bought a fresh chicken ? tastes much much better and much healthier! I normaly buy my chicken at karstadt, costs between 6 and 10 euro but worth it!

Noooooooooooooooooooooo!

Nasty nasty nasty.

What you *actually* do is take the chicken out of the pan, deglaze with a slug of red wine, add in some vegetable water or stock, reduce if necessary, remove any excess fat and sieve some flour on the top. Bring to boil until it thickens, season and and serve.

"Sossenbinder" is the stuff of the devil, yuckyuckyuck.

Good lord woman, doesnt Jamie Oliver mean anything to you?

andy M

I have actually done wine-bottle-up-its-ass-duck, but I was making Peking duck at the time, which perhaps doesnt count.

andy M

o yea, beer can chicken rocks!!

another way we like to make it is just get that brathuhn gewürz and cover the chicken with that and then stick it on one of those chicken pan thingies (not sure what they are called, but they then roast upright...like with beer can chicken) and cook it nice n slow... better than wies'n chicken