Chicken is really popular and a whole chicken is not difficult to work with. Although there are plenty of different recipes for this bird, cooking a whole chicken results in a spectacular meal which everyone will love.
Serve roast chicken with roast potatoes and vegetables to delight your family and do not forget to make a delicious homemade gravy recipe to go with it. Well roasted chicken should be juicy, succulent, and really flavorful.
Easy Yet Delicious Stuffing
A good way to make a tasty chicken stuffing for a five pound chicken is to mix together a peeled, cored, quartered apple, a quartered onion, eight ounces of minced pork sausage, four ounces of bread without crusts, a tablespoon each or sage and parsley, the livers from the chicken and some mace, salt and pepper. Puree the mixture in a food processor.
Loosen the skin flap at the neck end of the bird and pack two thirds of the stuffing mixture inside the chicken. Tuck the neck flap back in place and use a toothpick to hold it in place. Put the rest of the stuffing in the body cavity.
If you are going to the trouble of making a perfect roast chicken, you will also want to make a delicious gravy recipe to serve with it. Perhaps you are familiar with a turkey gravy recipe or pork gravy recipe and chicken gravy is not so different. To make the stock for the gravy, you can simmer the chicken’s giblets with a chopped carrot, half an onion, a bay leaf, some thyme, parsley, salt and pepper in hot water for two hours. The resulting stock will be very tasty.
Get The Bird Ready for the Oven
Put the bird in a roasting tin and rub softened butter all over it, to seal in the natural juices and add more succulence. Do not forget that serving a gravy with the chicken will also increase the moistness of the bird. Maybe you already know about what hamburger steak brown gravy recipes can do for hamburger steaks and a good chicken gravy recipe does the same for chicken.
Sprinkle salt and pepper over the chicken and arrange bacon strips along the breast. Cut one strip in half and put some on each chicken leg. You will find that this infuses the bird with lots of wonderful taste.
Cook the Chicken Perfectly
You need to roast the bird in a 375 degrees F oven for twenty minutes per pound plus an extra ten or twenty minutes. Baste it three times during cooking and remove the bacon strips during the final basting. Turn the oven up for the last fifteen minutes – 425 degrees F is perfect. The extra heat helps to crisp the skin. Remove the chicken from the oven and cover it with aluminum foil. Let it sit for half an hour.
The final step is to make the gravy. A great gravy for chicken is made with the giblet stock you made earlier. Maybe you have made a sausage gravy recipe or something similar to that in the past. Chicken gravy is not too different but sausage gravy tends to be creamy and chicken gravy is usually brown.
To prepare the gravy, combine three tablespoons of balsamic vinegar with six tablespoons of cranberry jelly and stir in some salt and pepper. Whisk the mixture in a pan over a gently heat until the jelly melts, then combine some of the mixture with the bird drippings and giblet stock to make the gravy. Serve it at room temperature, warm or hot with the roast bird.
Tags: Cooking, Food, gravy, gravy recipes
