I bought a chicken & now i need help!!

littlenicki

Hello all! I love reading these threads and was hoping that some of you may be able to help me. Whilst walking around ASDA earlier they were selling whole chickens (1.55kg) for £2 so i picked one up. Then i got home and realised that 1-i have never cooked a whole chicken before (im a student!) and 2- i dont really know what to make with it!

I was thinking about using it in sandwiches, pasta, making maybe a curry and chicken fricasee and then a soup but i think im still going to have lots left as im only cooking for 1.

The cooking bit....do i need to take the string off its legs? and do i just pop it in a roasting tin for the right amount of time or is there anything else i should do?

Sorry complete newbie here with cooking chickens!

CCP

What a bargain - well done! :T

Now, how to roast it:

It's up to you if you take the string off the legs or not - it's just there to hold them in place so it stays in a nice neat shape. Personally I take it off, though, as I find it's a nuisance trying to get it off once the chicken's cooked. Your choice!

Then check it doesn't have giblets in - the packaging should tell you this (I don't think supermarket chickens usually have giblets, but it's worth checking before you cook it. Then put your chicken in the baking tray, drizzle with a bit of oil, add some seasoning if you want to, then put it in the oven. I can never remember the correct timings for roast chicken and tend to just cook it until it's done, but I'm sure someone else will come along and tell you the exact timing.

Check if it's done by poking it in the leg with a skewer or a sharp knife - if the juices are at all pink it's not cooked, and will need to go back in the oven for a bit longer. When the juices are clear, it's done.

While it's cooking, you can decide what to do with it - there is a long-running discussion on that very subject which pops up occasionally, which I will try and track down for you in a minute. I'm also on my own and find I can get five or six meals, plus a couple of rounds of sandwiches, from a standard chicken, so you should be sorted for a few days now!


Edit: that was surprisingly easy - the thread I was thinking of is here. Lots of ideas for you!

Buddingblonde

If I am doing a chicken I leave the string until it is cooked - I lightly oil it and salt and pepper it and put it in the preheated oven at 180 degrees and cook it for 45 mins per kilo and 20 mins over. After half an hour I tend to open the door and baste the chicken with the juice that it has released and again half an hour later.
I also make sure that I lift up the chicken and pour all the juice out of the body cavity - you will notice that it takes ages for this juice to run clear. Also once it is cooked, check that when you !!!!! it that all the juice runs clear.

Buddingblonde

If you dont fancy roasting it and you have a large enough pan with a lid you could boil or poach the bird whole. Just put bird in the pan, add boiling water, stock cubes, some largely chopped onions, carrots and celery and cook until the meat falls off the bone. You will notice this happening when you try to to take the bird out. Keep the stock that you have made, strip the bird and then put the bird back into the stock, add more water iff needed and cook the bones until you have a really rich stock for soups, risotto or just for freezing.

Bongedone

That's an hour and 20 minute chicken at 190c in this house. Let it rest for 10 minutes before carving it.

If you scroll down this page there is a calculator.

http://www.eatwell.gov.uk/healthydiet/seasonsandcelebrations/winter/saferchristmaseating/

littlenicki

Thank you ever so much everyone Also thank you for finding that thread for me CCP I think i will cook it tomorrow and have lots of lovely chicken all week!

mi_jardin

when you are down to the scraps, boil up the carcass for about 10 minutes, then let it cool. strip the last of the meat off and boil up the stock and meat with onion, carrot, swede etc and a bit of pearl barley or other grain, add a tsp of chicken bisto and you'll have lovely soup for lunch!

Stephen_Leak

I also live on my own and, even just using my existing recipes, I reckon that I could get no less than 10 meals out of a so-called "rubber" chicken, 8 of which can be frozen.

Sunday: Roast the chicken, and have a leg & a wing with roast potatoes & mixed veg’.
Monday: Have the remaining leg & wing with oven chips and/or a salad.
Use one of the breasts to make 2 portions of chicken korma.
Use the other breast to make 2 x 250ml bowls of chicken & sweet corn soup.
Use the carcass to make 4 x 250ml bowls of chicken soup.

Recipes for the curry and soups are available on request.

PS. In the unlikely event of it still having its giblets, I can even do you a recipe for chicken giblet pie!

ChapelGirl

If you are roasting it you could also cut 2 slices of lemon and ease the breast skin loose from the meat by sliding your fingers in very gently from the neck end between the meat and the skin, starting where the flap of neck skin hangs down. Don't rip the skin, though. You want 2 small pockets, one each side of the breast bone. If you make just enough of a pocket to get a slice of lemon in and maybe a smear of butter it will add flavour to the bird. A sprinkling of chopped fresh or dried thyme is good too. You can mix that with the butter, put it in the cavity or just wave it over the bird in a casual manner.

If you can't bring yourself to poke about in the bird too much then you could put half a lemon in the body cavity instead.

I sometimes put the bird in "upside down" to start with as then all the juices run into th breast meat and it comes out more succulent. You can turn it over for the last 15 minutes if you want the skin to be crispy.

You're a student so I don't suppose you have a lot of cash but I would never buy a £2 supermarket chicken myself. Apart from the animal welfare issues (as banged on about by Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall) you're getting something which will have very little goodness or flavour. Garbage in, garbage out. But it's better than living on McNuggets.

ChapelGirl

Stephen_Leak wrote: »

I also live on my own and, even just using my existing recipes, I reckon that I could get no less than 10 meals out of a so-called "rubber" chicken, 8 of which can be frozen.

A man after my own heart! When I was at Uni. I used to do the same. There were 10 of us in a shared self-catering house which had one fridge, and a kitchen locker each (with central heating pipes behind!) which were about 1 foot square x 18 inches deep, so you had to be inventive with storage too. I used to joint the chicken straight away and make a soup with the carcasse and wings, then bag up the other bits and store in corners of the fridge or the freezer box if there was room.

I had a recipe for chicken chowder which was basically chicken and sweetcorn soup with milk.

ChapelGirl

Sorry, don't mean to hog this thread, but on the subject of giblets...

Here in France they sell chicken gizards in plastic tubs, in the way you sometimes see chicken livers sold in the UK. They cook them gently in oil or duck fat for a couple of hours and add them to a salad or just eat them with a cocktail stick as an appetiser. They are delicious, but in the UK they get thrown away, or at best end up in a stock. You are advised to soak them in salty water for a few hours first, though.