Crockpot-to-Oven Herb Roast Chicken

I have a wonderful new thing, an electric slow cooker. 'Aubergine' coloured crock pots were on sale on Amazon and I had always wanted one so I could throw some things in to cook before going to work and come home to a good meal. It would be especially useful for pot roasts and things which take a long time to cook.

The first thing I decided to make with the crock pot is herb roast chicken. I adapted this from Bon Appetit Y'all, which is turning out to be a good book for excellent basic recipes like roast chicken and pot roast.

Ensure that the chicken cavity is empty, and devoid of internal organs etc.

Prepare 200ml of chicken stock or you can use water - I made my stock up from half a cube.

Have three bowls prepared, one for the chicken rub, chicken cavity, and onions.

Use a mixture of dried herbs - I used marjoram, sage and thyme - freshly ground black pepper and salt for both the chicken rub and chicken cavity mix. I also added cayenne pepper to the chicken rub mix.

Peel four garlic cloves and add to the chicken cavity mix. Add two dried bay leaves.

Quarter a lemon and remove the seeds. Place on top of the chicken cavity mix.

Slice and wash two red onions. Line the bottom of the crockpot with the onion slices.

Put in the 200ml chicken stock or water.

Put on some plastic gloves. Rub the herb chicken rub mix all over the chicken. Rub the chicken cavity mix all over the inside of the cavity. Squeeze lemon juice into the cavity, and place the lemon quarters inside. Put the bay leaves in.

Lift the herbed chicken into the crockpot.

Put some pats of butter on the chicken - I used Lurpak garlic butter.





Cook on high for an hour then reduce to low and cook for five hours.

Do other things. It was a lovely sunny day so I went to the park with James. We had ice-creams.

Five hours later, return to the kitchen and check on your chicken. It will smell amazing.



It is time to prepare your vegetables.

Turn on the oven and pre-heat to 180 deg Celsius.

I used new potatoes which I washed throughly and boiled.



I really hate peeling carrots so I used Chantenay carrots. All I had to do was top and tail them and cut them in half.





Also washed and boiled these.

When the vegetables are ready, transfer them to a roasting tin with some canola oil, black pepper and cayenne pepper.



Prepare a larger, chicken-sized roasting tin.

Turn off the crock pot and remove the chicken to the tin. I put additional pats of garlic butter on the chicken. At the moment the chicken is cooked, but looks a bit pale with soggy skin. As always, crispy skin is the goal.



Put both tins in the oven. Roast until ready and chicken skin is crispy.

Everything is roasting - gravy time. This chicken yields a beautiful smelling herbed lemony chicken stock. Ladle some of it into a saucepan for the gravy.



The gravy is super easy. Heat up the pan of stock and add a slurry of flour and water to thicken it up.





The gravy was kind of fatty so I would recommend that you skim the fat off if possible. I did save the rest of the stock from the crockpot and stuck it in the fridge - I plan on scooping the chilled fat off the top and using the skimmed stock for something tomorrow. I got about a pint of stock from that chicken.

The crispy chicken:



Vegetables:



Plate:



The skin on this chicken in particular is very very good because of the encrusted dried herbs and oven-crispness. I wouldn't skip the last half hour in the oven.

I used a chicken weighing about 1kg. This is the smallest whole roasting chicken available and is the maximum size of chicken that fits in a 3.5L crockpot. Half of the chicken was left even though we ate lots, this yields enough food for four meals and even includes a bonus 1 pint of stock which can be used for all kinds of useful things. The chicken itself cost about £5 so I would say it's definitely cheaper to roast your own small whole chicken than getting separate chicken parts, and it makes eating the next day a whole lot easier.

Pictures, and Harumi Kurihara

I've not been blogging for a long while, and have done some lovely things in the meantime:

Went to the New Forest and was nosed by ponies,



tried to grow carrots and failed,



went to a wedding in Bath,



and discovered Harumi Kurihara.



Harumi Kurihara is a Japanese TV chef and homemaker, known as Japan's Martha Stewart. I've recently bought her second book in English, Everyday Harumi.

She lived in London for a few months when researching her book and the result is doable recipes, with ingredients you can get in London (albeit in Japanese or East Asian supermarkets in London). That means no difficult seafood ingredients (she uses mackerel and sea bream), she gives instructions to fix things that are different (eg. English vs Japanese cucumbers), and provides a recipe that uses those tiny prawn cocktail prawns. I find the best thing about the book is the inclusion of easy, quick pickle recipes ('tsukemono'). I like pickles but haven't got the dedication to make a harvestload of pickles in sterilised jam jars - I would slice some cucumbers and shake them with some liquid in a ziploc bag though.

I tried out one of her recipes I found on the internet before buying Everyday Harumi, as a sort of test. It's an easy chicken recipe using mostly storecupboard ingredients: Chicken with soy and balsamic dressing.

I combined two tablespoons soy sauce (Kikkoman) and two tablespoons balsamic vinegar instead of 1tbsp recommended in the recipe, mixed with 1 sliced garlic clove and ground pepper (I didn't use salt), and marinated the diced chicken breast for half an hour.

Fried that chicken.

I'm using a lovely contraption my mother gave me, a Zojirushi electric frying pan thingy. It has a sliding thing to control the temperature, from simmer to high temperatures, and I don't have to faff about with a flame. When the pan gets hot enough, it stops heating and the little light turns off, so the temperature's kept fairly consistent as well.





I served it on a plate of rocket with a decorative border of cherry tomatoes and we had it with rice, it tasted good and was pretty effortless, except for dicing the chicken. If you bought ready-diced chicken, this recipe's pretty much no work at all.

Result: Tasty chicken, not too strong flavoured. It was really good considering the effort invested in it.

Bonus point: I was able to mix the leftover chicken and 'dressing' with a salad to take to work the next day.



I've been cooking more often and better, so I should be updating this blog more often with things I cook and things. There's a book sale every month or so at the building where I work, and I often get cookbooks from there and have been trying out different recipes. In a bout of excitement I got a pastry book by Michel Roux - I'm very excited about trying to make good pastry. There's a recipe for pizza dough as well but it looks very involved, and instructions include measuring the temperature of the room and the dough and other different things and adding them all up to a specific temperature - and so looks a bit scarier and more exact than I'd trust myself to do, but the pastry ones look a bit more doable.



Greetings from Catfriend.

Something amazing! Easy chicken strips with smoky chilli sauce.

I made something awesome for dinner. I call it: Easy chicken strips with smoky chilli sauce.

Ingredients:

6 dried chillies, including smoky-type chillies.

1 tin chopped tomatoes.

3 boneless chicken breasts.

Flour.

Salt.
Sugar.
Oregano.
Ground cumin.
Ground coriander.
Ground black pepper.
Garlic powder.

3 cloves garlic.

(Vary seasonings according to taste.)

Chilli soak stage

First, boil some water and put in the dried chillies. I have a little dried chilli collection.



I used: 1 naga jolokia, 1 ancho poblano, 1 guajillo, 2 chipotle, 1 pasilla. As long as you use a few smoky type chillies it should be fine. Dried chipotle is smoky, and easy to find. I got many of my chillies from South Devon Chilli Farm, which has descriptions.

Turn the heat off and let the chillies soak in hot water while you do other things.

Chicken strip stage

Prepare a bowl of milk and a bowl of flour. Add salt, ground black pepper, and garlic powder to the flour and mix.

I used skinless boneless chicken breast, but I think it would be better with skin-on. Then you'll get the crispy skin. It's the best bit!

Cut the chicken into strips.

Dip the strips into the milk bowl followed by the flour bowl, then fry until crispy and cooked through. Drain chicken strips on a plate lined with kitchen roll.

Carb stage

We had rice, so at this stage I cooked the rice in the rice cooker. Prepare the carb of your choice.

Sauce stage

Blend the soaked chillies (stems removed, and de-seeded if you want) with a little bit of the chilli water and three cloves of garlic.

Heat some oil in a pan.

Add chilli mixture to the pan.

Add your seasonings: oregano, ground cumin, and ground coriander. I shook the bottles until I was satisfied. I used about a teaspoon of each, but I put more oregano in because I like it.

Fry until fragrant.

Add a tin of chopped tomatoes.

Add salt and sugar. I used sea salt and demerara sugar.



Mix thoroughly. Simmer for a while. Taste. Adjust seasonings.

At this point, the rice/etc. should be ready as well.



Rice + Chicken + Chilli sauce.




Leftovers. I will have them in a sandwich for lunch tomorrow. So many things can be done with it! Like potato waffles!

I'm very pleased with my attempt at chicken strips, and I'll do them again, with different sauces. I'll do skin-on chicken next time, with potato waffles/

Claypot chicken rice casserole!

The cat is still here. He likes 'ocean fish pate'. It's one of those cans with those tab-tops that break off. I had to use a can opener. The pate made him really excited.

We ended up not going out today and I cooked the claypot chicken rice casserole instead. It's amazing! You have to make it.

As always, I substituted with what I had: I used dark soy sauce with a splash of oyster sauce and cornflour (instead of cornstarch) in the marinade, and didn't use Chinese sausage.



Hob-cooking, just before baking in the oven.



Round cast-iron casserole from Procook. It's a pretty deep casserole for just the two of us and a little dish like this, but it'll be especially useful for cooking a large batch for lots of people.



What's left!

Monday night cajun chicken pasta

Cajun Chicken Pasta: result!


I did make the cajun chicken pasta from the Pioneer Woman website yesterday with slight modifications. I left out the white wine and used a cup of chicken stock (from cube). I also used a cup of single cream instead of 'thick cream' as we had some left over from a fruit salad, and simmered the sauce for longer.
I'm not sure what thick cream is, but I believe single cream is equivalent to the American half and half.
I replaced the cube roma tomatoes with cherry tomatoes and cooked them until their skins began to break and they got a bit squishy. Squished. Also used two different pasta - the last of the fussili and some spaghetti. I also used lots of cajun spice. Lots. You want to watch out for that cajun spice from hell.
Didn't do much after that, we watched Blossom on the YouTube. There's not really any other way to get hold of Blossom episodes beyond season one due to music licensing issues - unless you can get hold of old videotapes.