Pot Roast Chicken

Pot Roast Chicken

One pot, 1 hr 20, 180°C, serves 4 with leftovers

Ingredients

chicken          1.6kg, whole
potatoes         1kg, halved
carrots          4, in thick chunks
onions           2, in wedges
garlic           1 bulb, cloves separated, skins on
lemon            1, halved
thyme            few sprigs
olive oil        3 tbsp
salt and pepper  to season

Cut the veg bigger than feels right. Small pieces dissolve before the bird is done.
Parsnips, shallots and squash all work. Green veg doesn’t, it turns to sludge over an hour. Do that on the side.
Day one of three. The leftovers and the carcass are two more dinners.

Recipe

1. Heat the oven to 180°C. Get the chicken out of the fridge half an hour before, if you remember.

2. Into the Dutch oven with the oil. Toss:

[potatoes 1kg halved, carrots 4 in thick chunks, onions 2 in wedges, garlic 1 bulb skins on, olive oil 3 tbsp]

3. Half the lemon and the thyme into the cavity. Sit the chicken on top of the veg. Salt the skin hard.

The veg is the roasting rack. Everything that renders off the bird drips into it, and that is the entire reason to do this in the Dutch oven rather than a tray.

4. Lid on, 45 minutes.

5. Lid off, 20 minutes more, until the skin is properly brown.

Lid off at the end is the whole trick. Steam is what stops skin crisping, so it has to escape.

6. Check the thickest part of the thigh is 75°C. Rest 15 minutes in the pot, lid off.

Lid on while it rests and the trapped steam softens the skin you just spent 20 minutes on.

Go by the thermometer, not the clock. 65 minutes is shorter than the usual 20 minutes per 500g plus 20, which would be 84 for a 1.6kg bird. The lid makes up most of it, but ovens and birds vary.
Probe the thickest part of the thigh, not the breast, and keep clear of the bone.
Under 75°C, lid off, give it another 10 and check again.

7. Toss the veg through the juices in the bottom and squeeze the other lemon half over.

Carve every last scrap off the bird before you do anything else, and keep the carcass. Meat left on the bones through a three hour stock tastes of nothing afterwards.
A 1.6kg bird gives about 500g of picked meat and 1.5 litres of stock off the frame. Two of you eating a roast gets through half of that, so the meat is what runs out, not the stock. Buy a 2kg bird if you want all three meals comfortably.