Chicken
Roast chicken
A classic family meal that almost nobody dislikes.
Sprinkle with salt and pepper, place in the middle of a medium/hot oven (gas mark 5), turn once after an
hour. A glass of white wine or water stops meat juices burning to the bottom of the pan. A medium sized
bird should cook in 2 hours, turn once at half time. For crispy skin turn the heat to maximum for the last
10 minutes. A larger bird may need longer- if in doubt, pull a leg away from the body and slit the skin with
a knife-if juices run pink, turn the heat up and give it longer. Serve with potatoes, peas, French beans,
carrots, etc according to preference and season. Make gravy from pan juices, giblet stock and a glass of
wine (see gravy notes in Beef and Christmas chapters).
I often serve bacon wrapped chipolatas (skirted sausages) with a roast chicken, see Christmas chapter.
Hurry hint If you are short of time, cut up the chicken for quicker cooking, using the cleaver. Cut the wings
off first, then the legs, and cut these in half at the joint, then cut the breast in half through the bone
crossways, this will give you 10 portions. Cook on the bone with salt and pepper, Teriyaki marinade,
balsamic vinegar and olive oil, or rosemary and garlic. Cooks in 40 minutes at mark 6.
Stuffing For a basic stuffing, take 4 slices of bread (ideally slightly stale) and tear/chop/grind these up
with an egg, salt and pepper, a finely chopped onion and half a dozen fresh sage leaves chopped up.
Add chopped liver and heart from the giblets if you have any, and/or a rasher or 2 of finely chopped
unsmoked bacon or the meat from 1 or 2 raw sausages. Mash to the correct consistency adding water as
required and either form into balls and cook separately or place inside the chicken before cooking.
Chicken butchery and making stock
It’s cheaper to buy whole chickens and joint them yourself. I sometimes buy 2 or 3 chickens and have a
session in the kitchen sorting out several tasty and economical meals at once, with the help of the
freezer. Start with the bird breast up, use the sharp filleting knife slice through the skin just to one side of
the breast bone. Peel back the breast fillet as you slice between meat and bone carefully until it’s all out.
Now remove the legs. Cut between leg and body, pulling the leg to one side, you will then see better
where to cut to get most of the meat off attached to the leg. Dislocate the hip joint with a twist and pull.
Chicken legs can be used whole, or halved to give a drumstick and thigh portion per leg. A few strokes of
the sharp knife and the wings come off too. You should now have 2 each of thighs, drumsticks, wings and
breast fillets, which should look something like the plate of jointed chicken pieces pictured below. Get the
rest of the meat off with a short bladed paring knife or put it all in for stock. To make chicken stock, useful
for so many recipes, crack the larger bones on a polythene chopping block using a cleaver or the back of
a heavy cook’s knife, put everything except big lumps of fat (discard them) into a heavy pan or pressure
cooker, add enough water to just cover. Add a quartered onion, roughly chopped carrot, 2 bay leaves
and a dozen black peppercorns, plus a little celery, ginger and garlic if you like. Simmer very gently for 40
minutes or so. Strain and allow to cool. It should go semi-solid like jelly. It will keep a week or so in the
fridge if not used, or freeze in clearly labelled and retrievable 250ml portions.
Chicken breast
This sweet, lean white meat cooks quickly, any way you like, with any seasoning you could name. I like to
bone out whole chickens as described above, but you can buy ready prepared breast fillets, which is
easier, if dearer.
Fried If large, slice each fillet in half to give 2 flat fillets for faster cooking, otherwise fry whole. Season
and fry in butter or olive oil for 5 minutes a side. Mushrooms, sliced onions or peppers can be done in the
same frying pan alongside the chicken. Serve with chips, tinned sweetcorn, frozen peas, rice or buttered
pasta.
Grilled season simply with salt, pepper, or marinade for 20 minutes before grilling. Suggested marinades
include sherry and soy sauce, Teriyaki sauce, honey and mustard, lemon juice and chilli, olive oil and
rosemary-the list is endless. Grill for 6 or 7 minutes a side; serve as per fried chicken or sliced in a fresh
granary bread sandwich.
Chicken Kiev A classic garlic lover’s dish. Slit the fillet open sideways at a slight angle, insert garlic
butter (which you can make out of crushed garlic and butter unless you come up with a better idea), with
some chopped chives, parsley or other fresh herbs you prefer. Bake for half an hour in a hot oven mark
6. Cover with aluminium foil (or wrap with unsmoked streaky bacon) to stop it drying out.
Tandoori chicken cut the meat, bone in or bone out-you decide-into 3-4 cm chunks and marinade for
an hour in tandoori sauce and yoghourt (see Indian chapter), then bake for 30 minutes in a hot oven
before serving with rice or Nan bread.
That sounds a bit pathetic, like 'buy a jar and follow the instructions', but I KNOW that very many men
haven't even got that far, there certainly was a time when I hadn't, and I remember the horrors of self
catering hall of residence at university in 1975. And anyway, what's wrong with following the instructions
on the jar? The Pataks range of curry pastes are really, really good.
Chicken stir fry Slice about 7mm thick across grain, marinade (1 oz each of light soy, sesame, rice
wine and 1 tsp cornflour) for half an hour, then fry with garlic, ginger, peppers, onions, thinly sliced
carrots. Serve with noodles or rice. See Chinese chapter for more details on stir fry.
Chicken nuggets slice the fillet lengthways into 5 or 6 ‘fingers’ then cut them across into 3 to get about
15 bite sized nuggets per fillet, cut to a bigger size if you prefer. Season with salt and pepper or
spice/herb mix of your choice, dip in light batter and deep fry for 3 or 4 minutes in hot oil in a chip pan (or
shallow fry in a frying pan if you don’t like deep frying). If you are doing chicken nuggets and chips, do
the chips first and keep them warm in a low oven until the nuggets are ready. Serve with baked beans
and chips, on pasta with a tomato and onion sauce, or with salad leaves.
Chicken Casserole
Like tagine, casserole is just a foreign word for a cooking pot which has given its name to a meal cooked
in it. This is dead easy one-pot cookery which an 18 year old sociology student could manage, and as
flexible as you like. Chop a chicken into 8-10 pieces (as described above), fry them in some fat for 5
minutes to ‘brown’ them (you can omit this step, but it does improve colour and flavour), add a litre of
water, stock, wine, cider or mixture of the above plus vegetables and seasoning to your casserole dish
and place in a medium oven for 2 hours while you watch TV, play guitar, do some gardening, or check
your emails.
Ingredients can include carrots, potatoes, celery, onions, peppers and mushrooms, a bouquet garni and
garlic. A casserole can be cooked and left for the next day, handy if you expect to tomorrow to be one big
rush but have spare time today. This saves energy as it will carry on cooking slowly overnight after you
turn the oven off, so you can reduce the oven time by 30%.
Southern style deep fried chicken
Jointed chicken (to serve 4-5 people)
Spice mix
500mls vegetable oil
Joint a chicken as described above to give 10 roughly equal portions. Don’t remove the skin. Toss the
pieces in a herb and spice mix, then dip in batter and deep fry until crisp in very hot vegetable oil for 10-
15 minutes. Cook in small batches, if you put too many in the deep oil pan they will lower the temperature
and not cook so well. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on a grill or tissue. If they look a bit soggy
when it comes to serving, heat the oil up and sizzle them again for 2 minutes.
A good spice mix is fresh ground black pepper, cumin and coriander, salt, finely chopped dried rosemary,
oregano and sage, and paprika. Or use a proprietary chicken spice, Schwarz® make a nice one, or
sesame oil and Chinese five spice. Serve with chips and beans, or noodles and a tomato and onion
sauce, and I suppose fizzy cola.
There are plenty more things you can do with chicken, I mention a few of them in other chapters e.g.
under soups, curries etc. But as I said on the introduction, this book is not my attempt to compete with
Rick, Delia, Jamie or any of the rest of them, but to encourage men who don't cook to have a go, learn
some basics, and then branch out into discovery, so even given the extra space an on-line version allows,
I'm not going to go on and on. Work it out for yourself, its more fun that way.
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