Roasted Chicken

I’m baaaaaaack 🙂 Sorry I’ve been away for so long because my exams just ended. All I’ve done for the past few weeks was sleep, mug, eat and sleep. But now that exams are over, I’m super excited to be baking and cooking for November :> before everything starts piling up again and there are exams again in January ):

Anyway, here is the roasted chicken a made a couple of weeks back which follows Heston’s way of cooking. If you don’t know who Heston Blumenthal is, he’s this eccentric British chef whose restaurant, Fat Duck, is a place I dream of eating at. But it’s going to cost at least $400 per person, so I’m just going to continue dreaming. He has really science-y ways of cooking stuff but it comes out perfect and this roasted chicken is very replicable at home!

I first ate this chicken at D’s place and it had one of the most tender chicken breast meat ever. It was soft and juicy, nothing like those dry, stringy breast meat I was used to. Sadly, the skin wasn’t crispy because we didn’t have time to blast it (it was 2 something by the time the chicken was cooked and we were famished). So without a doubt, I had to remake the chicken at home to get the crispy skin.

Preparing for this chicken takes a day and the roasting takes a few hours which makes it a bit troublesome but then there are really little skills involved. All you need to do is to brine the chicken overnight, dump it into your oven for 2 hours, then turn up your oven to its maximum temperature to blast the chicken and get that crispy skin.

It was actually quite epic to turn my oven up to the maximum temperature because when I opened the oven door, the entire kitchen filled with so much smoke that we all ran out. Oh oh oh be mentally prepared that your kitchen will smell like roasted chicken for the entire day hahahah.

Other than that, roast away!!! 🙂

Ingredients
1 kg whole raw chicken
Water
Salt
50g of melted butter
1 Lemon
Pepper
Herbs de Provence

Directions
1. Mix 1 litre of water and 40g of salt. You can change the amount of water according to how much you need to cover the chicken but always use this ratio of 1 litre of water to 40g of salt.
2. In a pot large enough to fit your chicken but small enough to reside in your fridge, place the chicken and pour the salt water over, ensure that the water completely covers the chicken.
3. Place the pot in the fridge and leave it overnight.
4. The next morning, pour away the salt water and replace it with normal water.
5. When you want to cook the chicken, take the chicken out and pat it dry.
6. Place it on a baking tray and brush it with melted butter. Sprinkle the herbs, salt and pepper on the chicken.
7. Roast it at 100 degrees until the thickest part of the breast meat reaches 60 degrees Celsius.
8. Take the chicken out and let it rest for 45 minutes.
9. Turn your oven up to its maximum temperature.
10. Brush your chicken with melted butter again and place it in the oven.
11. Roast it for about 10 minutes or until the skin is golden brown and crispy.

Bacon Wrapped Chicken & Onion Rings

It has almost been a year since I met up with Kim and the last time we did, we were at my house baking a Japanese cheesecake (which I have yet to master haha). This time, I went to her beautiful house with her cute little malteses (world’s most well behaved dogs) and cooked. It was quite funny because we were trying to figure out how to wrap the chicken and her mother so desperately wanted to help us but we refused her help no matter what. Eventually, we managed to roll it out nicely such that there was nice oozing cheese in the middle and crispy bacon on the outside.

The onion rings were a side dish that took forever to make because it was so tedious dipping each ring into flour then batter then breadcrumbs. The onions could have been more well-seasoned perhaps with stronger flavours like smoked paprika because tried spamming with Italian herbs but it was quite mild. The plus point of this recipe is that you get crispy onion rings without needing to fry it! That is so healthy, considering how much bacon you would have used for the chicken TEEHEE.

 

Bacon Wrapped Chicken
Ingredients
2 pieces of chicken breast meat
100g of Mozzarella cheese
Streaky bacon

Directions
1. Cut the chicken breast meat into half the thickness but not all the way through so that you can open the meat up.
2. Place the bacon in a longitudinal direction on a baking tray.
3. Place the chicken breast in the same direction.
4. Place the cheese on the chicken breast.
5. Roll the chicken over the cheese, from the sides to the middle.
6. Do the same to the bacon such that all the chicken is covered by the bacon.
7. Place the chicken into a preheated oven of 200 degrees Celsius and bake for 45 minutes.

Onion Rings
Ingredients
3 onions cut into 1 cm (1/2 inch) thick
Panic bread crumbs

Dusting mix
1/4 cup flour
1/2 t salt and pepper
1/2 t smoked paprika or other herbs

Batter
1/2 cup milk
1 egg
1/4 cup + 2 T flour (6 T)
1/4 t smoked paprika or other herbs
salt and pepper

Directions
1. Pre heat your oven to 230C
2. Mix the dusting ingredients in one bowl.
3. Mix the the batter ingredients together with a whisk, it should be the consistency of thick cream, and put in another bowl.
4. Spread the crumb out on a plate.
5. Line baking tray with baking paper.
6. Toss onion rings in dusting mix, then batter, shaking off any excess before rolling in crumbs to coat.
7. Bake for 10 minutes until they are golden brown.

Roasted Chicken in Milk with Lemon Zest

I have no idea how I came across this recipe but when I saw it, I knew I had to try it out because it looked so simple yet everyone only had praises for it. It was only recently when my friends were talking about how they tried to make this for New Year’s Eve dinner that I got reminded about this recipe. Fyi, two guys who had never cooked before managed to make this chicken, proving how easy this dish is!

So I tried it out tonight and the hardest part was basting the chicken for an hour while it was roasting in the oven. The milk turned into a nice creamy thick sauce with a hint of lemon that would turn into a pasta sauce if only I wasn’t on my stupid pseudo-Atkins diet. The chicken was quite filling, probably because of the cream but it tasted like comfort food.

I’m quite excited about the possibilities of this recipe, perhaps adding paprika to it would bring it to another level or maybe I should put more thought into bringing out the lemon-y taste.

Ingredients
Chopped up chicken/ Whole chicken
500 ml milk
3 dried bay leaf
Zest of 2 lemons
1/2 cinnamon stick
10 cloves of garlic

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
2. Drizzle olive oil onto pan and fry chicken, skin side down until it is golden brown.
3. Place chicken onto roasting pan with the rest of the ingredients.
4. Roast chicken for about an hour, basting it occasionally.

Chicken Sandwich & Raw Veggies with Sour Cream Dip

Got really lazy today and decided to whip up something from what’s in my fridge. I always wanted to try making this sour cream dip even since I tasted it from my favourite Swiss mama, Evelyn, who served it to me for lunch when I was in Switzerland 🙂 Also, since there was leftover roasted chicken in the fridge, it became lunch.

The chicken sandwich is really simple, just toast some wholegrain bread and mix the roasted chicken strips with wholegrain mustard and mayonnaise. The best part of cooking is that sometimes, you don’t need to follow measurements. It all depends on what you have in the pantry and the seasoning is always, to taste.

For the raw veggies with the sour cream dip, just chop the veggies into the shapes you like. See, cooking is fun! 🙂  I like my carrots and cucumbers in sticks but it’s all up to you! Here’s the recipe for the dip though;

Ingredients
1/2 cup of sour cream
1/4 cup of plain yogurt
salt & pepper, to taste
1 tsp of minced garlic

Directions
1. Just mix everything together and serve it in a nice bowl!