Never Ending Cider-roasted Chicken

[BlueStringPudding]

Okay, here's another of my lasts-forever tasty recipes for you, which is what I'm living off this week. Again the below is suitable for a paleo diet, but you can replace the sweet potato and carrots with any root veggies you like (if you choose spuds make sure they're a firm variety so they don't turn into mush); replace the coconut oil with any oil you like, and replace the coconut flour with a different flour.

 

You'll get three different types of meal out of this, and a total of about 9 generous greedy-chops portions, and all for under a tenner.

 

Ingredients:

 

1 cheapo medium sized whole chicken (no giblets. Aldi do them from £2.99 and they have a better flavour than Tesco value chickies)

3 onions

A bulb of garlic

2 sprigs of rosemary (thyme will do just as well)

1 large sweet potato

2 large carrots

2 large apples (I used Braeburn)

1 bottle of cheapo cider - approx. 0.5 - 1 litre (I used my brother's homebrew which I like to call "Bro's Old Descaler")

I tablespoon of coconut flour

Salt

Coconut oil or olive oil

Cheapo salad leaves

A cucumber

Pack of cheapest bacon

Tin of unflavoured beans - cannellini works well

 

Not essential:

Bay leaf

A lemon

 

 

 

 

Phase one:

• Turn the oven on full heat
• Cut three cloves of garlic in half (no need to peel) and shove them up the arse of the chicky along with a sprig of rosemary. Pop the chicky into a large, deep roasting tin.
• Cut your root veggies in chunks of no more than 2" or so and plop them in the tin around the chicky. Pull the leaves off another sprig of rosemary and sprinkle them over the veggies along with the rest of the garlic cloves (no need to peel or cut them, just separate them from the bulb).
• Pour a bottle of "Bro's Old Descaler" cider over the chicken and veggies. You want to be very generous with the cider as this will be the base of ongoing recipes. Then season the whole lot with salt.
• Cover with foil and pop in the oven, turning it down to Gas Mark 6, for an hour.
• When the hour is nearly up, cut a large onion into chunks and 2 large apples into quarters and remove the core. Leave the skin on the apples.
• Take the roasting tin out the oven and remove the foil. Baste the chicky and veggies well with the cidery gravy, turn all the veggies to ensure they cook evenly, and then add the apples and onions to the tin. If your boat lists like mine, then now is a good time to turn the tin by 180 degrees to ensure even cooking (I find rotating it around a vertical axis ensures you don't pour it all over the floor) and then pop it back into the oven, uncovered for a further 45 minutes.
• When the time is up, remove the roasting tin from the oven and you'll notice the chicky is now nice and brown. Give it a bit of a stabbing with a knife in the breast meat and the thigh meat, and press with the side of the knife to see if the juices squidge out clear. If they do lift the whole chicky above the pan and rotate it arse side down, so the the garlicy juices that have built up in the cavity run out into the roasting tin. Again check to see that these juices also run clear. If they're slightly pink, put the chicky back in the tin and the whole lot back in the oven for another 15 minutes and then check and drain again. If the juices are clear, put the drained chicky on a plate and loosely cover with foil while it rests.
• In the meantime using a slotted spoon, scoop all the veggies out of the roasting tin and pop them in a bowl. Put the roasting tin directly on the hob and light one of the gas burners under it on a low heat. Give the contents of the pan a good stir, being sure to scrape up any yummy bits stuck to the pan into the cidery gravy. Add a tablespoon of flour and keep stirring to make sure there's no lumps. (If you use cornflour, mix it into a paste with a little water first to avoid it going lumpy) This will slightly thicken the gravy, but you don't want it to be a really thick gravy because it's got a strong flavour and the thiness works best for the later recipes. Have a taste and add salt if needed.
• The rested chicky will have wazzed out some more lovely meaty juices onto the plate, so pour those into the cider gravy too and stir in.
• Carve your rested chicky and serve with the roasted veggies, then pour on a little of the cider gravy. Pop a chunk of soft cooked apple on the top and a whole garlic clove (you can squidge out the soft roasted garlic from its skin as you eat). Yum!

And that's a really moist cider roasted chicken with apples. I like to have the chicken legs first as they're my favourite. Whichever bits you eat, make sure you keep the bones and pop them in a large saucepan with a lid. Pour the remaining cider gravy into another saucepan and keep that too, because you've used loads of cider you should have plenty. I had 2 roast dinner meals out of this before moving on to the next phase.

 

Phase two:

• Remove any remaining meat from the chicky carcass - there should be plenty. Pop it into a covered bowl or tupperware tub and keep it in the fridge.
• The cider gravy will be gelatinous when cold because it's full of the chicky goodness. Gently heat it back up till it's runny and again and add a handful of the leftover shredded chicky meat to it. Roughly cut up a few of the root veggies left over from the roast and pop them in the cider gravy too. Let the whole lot cook through for a good ten minutes till the meat is piping hot.
• While it's heating through, cut a thick wedge of lemon and keep to one side
• In a large bowl add some salad leaves and sliced cucumber. Lift the chicken and veggies out of the cider gravy using a slatted spoon or tongs, and pile onto the salad. Then take a couple of spoonfuls of the warm gravy and sprinkle over the salad. It's a very light gravy so makes a great dressing. Pinch of salt to taste. Serve with the lemon wedge on the side and squeeze it over the salad when you eat.

And there you have a really tasty warm cider chicken salad. Each chicken breast will make one good sized salad, and then the chicken wings plus all the scraps from under the nooks of the carcass will be enough to make another one or two more, depending on the size of your chicky and your tummy.

 

 

Phase three

• Making a stock: Pop the remaining chicky carcass, and any skin you might not have snarfed in the saucepan with the other bones and cover with water. Add salt, an onion cut in half, and if you have a bayleaf lying around that's always good. Make the stock within 2-3 days of roasting the chicken, as you don't want the carcass to go awf. But the stock will keep well in either the fridge (or in a sealed container on the bow this time of year) or the freezer.
• Bring the whole lot to the boil with a lid on the pan, on your cooker. And then transfer from the cooker to the top of your wood-burning stove to let it slowly simmer for an hour, while saving your gas.
• While it's simmering, slice another onion into fairly thin slices, slice two peeled cloves of garlic, and snip up 4-6 rasher of bacon with scissors.
• When the time is up on the stock, drain the stock through a colander into a second pan or a jug, keeping all the lovely stock and disposing of the bones and onion/bayleaf. do this while the stock is still warm because it thickens when it's cold. Put the stock to one side.
• In the original saucepan (coz I hate washing up) add a little oil and fry the onions and garlic till the onions start to look glassy. Add the chopped bacon and fry till lightly cooked but nothing is brown or crispy. You can also add some rosemary, thyme or sage at this stage.
• Into the bacon pan, pour your remaining cider gravy from the roast dinner, plus all the stock you've just made. Add a tin of beans
• Allow the whole lot to simmer for 15 minutes. Have a taste - because it already has salt in it from the stock, the bacon and the cider gravy, it may not need any more seasoning. If it does, go gentle on it because the salt flavour will increase every time the broth is reheated.
• Serve in a huge bowl and scoff it down. The beans in it make it really filling.

This makes enough beany cider and bacon broth to last about 4 more meals.

 

So it's a good 9 meals you get for less than a tenner in ingredients. Enjoy.

 

 

Edited January 29, 2015 by BlueStringPudding

[little duck!]

sounds yummy, thanks for sharing, can't believe how much you typed that would take me the whole time the chicken was cooking!

[Tuscan]

It's the bay leaf that does it !! Seriously going to try this sounds good