Perfect Roast Chicken (Jamie Oliver)

By sarah_carroll

Ingredients

• As well as your roasted veg from the roast chicken recipe, you’ll need:
• • 1 x approximately 1.6kg chicken, preferably free-range, organic or higher welfare
• • 2 medium onions
• • 2 carrots
• • 2 sticks of celery
• • 1 bulb of garlic
• • olive oil
• • sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• • 1 lemon
• a small bunch of fresh thyme, rosemary, bay or sage, or a mixture
• Gravy
• • 1 heaped dessertspoon plain flour
• • a wineglass of red wine, white wine or cider,
• or a good splash of port or sherry
• • 1 litre vegetable, chicken or beef
• stock, preferably organic

Details

Servings 4

Preparation

Step 1

To prepare your chicken
• Take your chicken out of the fridge 30 minutes before it goes into the oven
• Preheat your oven to 240°C/475°F/gas 9
• There’s no need to peel the vegetables – just give them a wash and roughly chop them
• Break the garlic bulb into cloves, leaving them unpeeled
• Pile all the veg and garlic into the middle of a large roasting tray and drizzle with olive oil
• Drizzle the chicken with olive oil and season well with salt and pepper, rubbing it all over the bird
• Carefully prick the lemon all over, using the tip of a sharp knife (if you have a microwave, you could pop the lemon in these for 40 seconds at this point as this will really bring out the flavour)
• Put the lemon inside the chicken’s cavity, with the bunch of herbs

To cook your chicken
• Place the chicken on top of the vegetables in the roasting tray and put it into the preheated oven
• Turn the heat down immediately to 200°C/400°F/gas 6 and cook the chicken for 1 hour and 20 minutes
• If you’re doing roast potatoes and veggies, this is the time to crack on with them – get them into the oven for the last 45 minutes of cooking
• Baste the chicken halfway through cooking and if the veg look dry, add a splash of water to the tray to stop them burning
• When cooked, take the tray out of the oven and transfer the chicken to a board to rest for 15 minutes or so
• Cover it with a layer of tinfoil and a tea towel and put aside. Now is the time to make your gravy

To carve your chicken
• Remove any string from the chicken and take off the wings (break them up and add to your gravy for mega flavour)
• Carefully cut down between the leg and the breast
• Cut through the joint and pull the leg off
• Repeat on the other side, then cut each leg between the thigh and the drumstick so you end up with four portions of dark meat
• Place these on a serving platter
• You should now have a clear space to carve the rest of your chicken
• Angle the knife along the breastbone and carve one side off, then the other
• When you get down to the fussy bits, just use your fingers to pull all the meat off, and turn the chicken over to get all the tasty, juicy bits from underneath
• You should be left with a stripped carcass, and a platter full of lovely meat that you can serve with your piping hot gravy and gorgeous roast veg


Gravy
To make your gravy
• When you come to make your gravy, your chicken will be covered and resting and you’ll have your tray of chicken juices and vegetable trivet in front of you
• Using a spoon, carefully remove 90 per cent of the hot fat from the tray by angling it away from yourself and scooping off the fatty layer that settles on top
• Put the tray back on the hob over a high heat
• Add the flour, stir it around and, holding the tray steady with a tea towel in one hand, use a potato masher to mash all the veg to a pulp – don’t worry if it’s lumpy
• You can rip the wings off the chicken and break them up into the tray to add more flavour at this point
• When everything is mixed and mashed up, add the alcohol to give a little fragrance before you add your stock (the alcohol will cook away)
• Keep it over the heat and let it boil for a few minutes
• Pour the stock into the tray, or add 1 litre of hot water • Bring everything in the pan to the boil, scraping all the goodness from the bottom of the pan as you go
• Reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes, or until you’ve achieved the gravy consistency you’re looking for

To serve your gravy
• Get yourself a large jug, bowl or pan and put a coarse sieve over it
• Pour your gravy through the sieve, using a ladle to really push all the goodness through
• Discard any veg or meat left behind
• At this point you’ve got a really cracking gravy, and you can either serve it straight away or put it back on the heat to simmer and thicken up
• Depending on which meat I’m serving it with, I’ll add a teaspoonful of horseradish, mustard, redcurrant jelly, cranberry, mint or apple sauce – you certainly don’t have to, but I think the little edge of complementary flavour you get from doing this is brilliant