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"A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart who looks at her watch." - James Beard


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Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Batch Cooking - Roast Chickens

Even with just the two of us I find it helpful to do large batch cooking sometimes to save time and feed us for many meals.


I found a deal on whole chickens so I got two!

I roasted the chickens with vegetables and made a pan sauce for the first meal, then used the leftovers for other meals throughout the week.


You can just as easily do this with one chicken (or three if your pan's big enough!), but here's how I did two.


Two plump chickens. These are about 3 pounds each.


I also love to roast fennel with chicken.  


Put a little oil in the bottom of a roasting pan.


Core the fennel.


Slice the fennel, not too thin, and toss it in the roasting pan.


Add some carrots and an onion, quartered.


This roasting pan has a V-shaped rack which works well to let air circulate around the chickens, but you can just drop them on top of the vegetables if you don't have a rack. That's what I always did before I got this pan.


Rub the chicken all over with some olive oil, salt and pepper.  Sprinkle some salt and pepper inside as well.


You can also stuff half a lemon and some herbs inside.  I used sage, rosemary and thyme.


I also like to sprinkle paprika over the chickens.  It gives a nice golden colour as it roasts.


I cook the chickens breast-down for the first half hour.


Then flip them over, breast side up for the last hour or so.  


This allows the skin to crisp up on both the top and bottom.


Once the chicken is done, remove the birds and the vegetables from the pan and cover to keep warm.


The other nice thing about this pan is it can straddle two burners to make a sauce.  Sprinkle a tablespoon of flour over the pan juices.  


Then whisk in some chicken stock. Let the sauce bubble for a few minutes to thicken up.  You can strain it into a gravy boat if you're fancy...


... or just pour it over your chicken and potatoes.


We each had a drumstick and half a breast and there was tons of chicken left over for lunches and dinners later in the week.

2 comments:

  1. What make is your roasting pan and where did you get it? I need a new one.

    P.S. Did you know you can take off that "prove you're not a robot" thing when leaving comments? It's annoying. ;)

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    1. Sorry I didn't answer you! I got it at Superstore and it was pretty cheap - under $20 if I recall. It's nice and light, nonstick so it cleans easily, except the rack is annoying to clean. All racks are. I hate them.

      Looking into getting rid of the robot thing, sorry! Gotta be responsive to my only commenter! :)

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