Roast Chicken
You will need:
- 1.5kg chicken
- 2 onions, quartered
- 2 carrots, roll cut
- 1 lemon, halved
- Thyme, a small bunch
- 4 garlic cloves, whole
- 25g butter, or enough to coat the chicken and put some under the skin
- 2 Tbsp flaky salt
- 1 Tbsp ground black pepper
- 1 Tbsp paprika
- 450ml chicken stock
- 225ml white wine
- 1 Tbsp cornflour
Optional
- Potatoes
- Rosemary
Set your oven rack in the lower middle part of the oven and ensure that the overhead is clear. Preheat oven to 170C fan.
In a roasting dish that is large enough to not crowd the chicken, add 1 quarter onion, 2 roll cut carrots, 2 cloves of garlic and half of the thyme bunch. Then add to the dish your stock and wine. You can also add the optional ingredients at this stage.
In a small bowl mix your salt, pepper and paprika together and set to the side. Also, portion out your butter on a separate plate and set to the side. This will help to prevent any contamination from working with the chicken.
To prepare your chicken, boil a kettle and in the sink on a wire rack, pour the boiling water over the chicken skin to firm it up, this will help it be nice in crispy after roasting. Once you can handle the chicken, pat any excess water away and transfer to your cutting board/work surface. Add a generous pinch of your seasoning mix to the cavity, then stuff the chicken with your remaining herbs, veg and the two lemon halves. Whatever you cannot fit in the bird can go with the rest of the accoutrement in the roasting pan.
Massage the stuffed chicken with the butter, getting some under the skin, and even if the cavity, should you like, or have extra. Then sprinkle your seasoning mix over the chicken and rub it in. Set the dressed and stuffed bird on the veg in the pan.
Transfer the chicken to your preheated oven and absolutely leave it alone for one hour and twenty minutes. This is the real key here, do not disturb the bird or the oven during this time! At the end of the bake, check to see if the juices are running clear, or use a meat thermometer to ensure the temperature is just right.
When the bird is finished, remove from the oven, cut the heat and transfer the chicken to a platter to rest, doing your best to drain any juices and stuffing from the cavity before departing the roasting dish. Allow the chicken to rest for 15-20 minutes, you can lightly tent with some aluminium, should you please, but do allow moisture to escape as to not compromise the crispiness of the skin.
Returning your attention to the roasting dish, reserve any carrots - potatoes if you used them - that you wish to have with your roast, leaving just a few in the sauce. Place the reserved veg in the gradually cooling oven to stay warm during the resting. We have a roasting pan that you can use right on the hob, so I boil whatever is left in there with all the herbs, stuffing and veg. Once a boil has been achieved, gently use a potatoes masher to further extract the flavour from the contents. Transfer all of this through a fine sieve into another pot, squeezing out whatever juice you can and then discard the mush. Continue to reduce your jus on meduim. Any juice that has come from the resting chicken can be added to this pot now.
Make a slurry of 1 Tbsp cornflour to 2 Tbsp cold water, and whilst constantly stirring the jus, add in the slurry to thicken into a gravy. This will really set up as it cools down, so be cautious of adding any more starch, lest you want a very thick gravy. Cut the heat and cover.
At this point, your chicken should have rested enough. Carve up, grab the veg out of the oven, and set the gravy down next to it, et voila, roast dinner!
(I intentionally left off the Yorkshire puds because everyone has their method and option, but I am of the school of thought that they can be done at the very last stage during the resting period, as Yorkshire puddings bakes are just at the longer end of that time window and I prefer hot puds.)