Never take for granted the fact that US ovens have temperatures marked on the dial. Argentina and many other countries just have a “high heat” mark and an “off” mark on an otherwise blank dial. Oh, how I miss knowing how hot the oven is. Not a whole lot of places that sell in-the-oven thermometers, either. I just have to shrug and laugh when a recipe gives a pre-heat temperature.
That said, we still rock some roasted chicken here. We can get a fat, whole bird at Mercado Central for about 16 pesos (4 US dollars), and the rest is veggies, details, and nifty phases of leftovers.
Stuff ‘Er an’ Roast ‘Er an’ Eat ‘Er Down to tha Last Drop
Oven Temp: High? I’m guessing 450 F, really.
Ingredients:
Whole chicken, preferably with some of the organs stuffed in the cavity
3 large carrots
Half a celery bunch, the stalks
2 whole sweet onions
1 whole large sweet potato
(You can chop other random roastable veggies for the base as you see fit)
7 to 10 cloves of garlic
Olive oil
Salt n’ pepper
The leaves from the celery stalks
3 to 5 sun-dried tomato halves
Hot peppers if you like the heat, about a quarter cup
1 tablespoons thyme (unless it’s Argentine, in which case 2 tablespoons)
1 tablespoon crushed rosemary (fresh is best)
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper (unless it’s Argentine, in which case 1 tablespoon)
1 teaspoon black pepper (I really like pepper)
1 teaspoon paprika
Some of your delicious wine (or the crap stuff, so long as it’s not sugary)
The How-To
Take the bag of organs out of the chicken and rinse the chicken inside and out. Set aside.
Chicken Baste (we do this the day before sometimes, just to give it time to get saturated):
Mince a clove of garlic, and stir it up with two tablespoons crushed rosemary (fresh is best), four tablespoons olive oil, a teaspoon of salt and pepper, each. Squeeze some lemon in there if you feel inspired. Mix up good and let it sit in a warm spot for the flavors to mingle.
Chop 2 ½ of the carrots, 1 ½ of the onions, all the celery stalks and the sweet potato into very large chunks (1 ½ to 2 inch diameters). Leave all but three of the garlic cloves whole. Toss the chunks of vegetables and the whole garlic cloves in enough olive oil to coat in the roasting dish. My roasting dish is about 10 inches by 14 inches, so all the veggies fit nicely. The big chunks will allow air circulation (crispiness!) under your chicken. Toss some salt and pepper over the top of the veggies in the pan, and while you’re at it salt and pepper the chicken cavity. You can just lay that pretty bird on the bed of veggies for now to get her out of the way.
Chop fine the remaining half a carrot, half an onion, celery leaves, 3 garlic cloves, sundried tomatoes, peppers, chicken liver and heart. Drop them in a pot over medium heat with a tablespoon of olive oil. Add all the herbs and cook until onions soften. I don’t add the lungs or the neck. I just drop those in the roasting pan with the bird to help flavor the juices at the bottom, then pick at the neck later. But I don’t eat lung. Too rubbery.
While that’s cooking, rub the chicken baste over every nook and cranny of the outside of your bird. Set her on her belly, NOT on her back. This is the secret to juicy breasts. Spoon the sautéed mixture into the chicken’s lonely cavity. Tie or sew her up. Pour a glass of whatever red (or white, I suppose) wine you happen to be drinking into the roasting pan (about a cup, maybe cup and a half). Add about a half cup of water as well. Stick her in the oven.
Cook her for 20 minutes on the high heat, uncovered. This makes the skin seal and get crispy. If there’s not much moisture in the bottom of the pan, add another half cup of water (or more wine, it’s all the same to me). Cover her with foil, lower the heat to 375 Fahrenheit (medium? Can’t really tell in this country), stick her back in. Let her hang out for about an hour and a half. A fork poked into the thick of her meaty spots shouldn’t produce blood or red juices by now. Stick her in for another half hour if it does.
Pull her out, and turn her breast-side-up. It’s tricky to do when she’s that hot and heavy, so get help if you need to. I always add another sprinkle of salt and pepper to the breast at this point. Leave her uncovered, turn the heat back up high, and stick her in for 10 minutes. Take her out and baste with the pan juices, then stick her back in. Repeat until the skin is golden brown. Take the bird off the veggies, and set it on a rack to drip and “finish” for about 5-10 minutes.
*Note about the juices: you can leave these in the pan for phase two, or add about a teaspoon of cornstarch to a tablespoon of cold water. Mix violently, then pour into the pan juices. Set the pan on a burner, and scrape and stir the juices and other bottom-of-the-pan delicious bits until you make a stellar gravy. If it’s still runny, just give it a minute or two to cool off. The gravy goes well over the veggies and the chicken.
That’s Phase I.
Phase II: Once you’ve had your dinner of delicious bird, keep all bones, leftover meat, leftover veggies (stuffing or in the pan), gravy, and juices in the pan in the fridge. Because the next day, you’re going to make soup. If you need to add more fresh veggies to fill up the soup pot (we always do), cook them in the juices from the roasting pan until they’ve absorbed the flavor. Do the fun but somewhat gross task of taking all the remaining meat chunks off the bird, chopping them to bite-sized morsels, and tossing them in the soup pot. Add all the bones that are big enough not to choke on—they add a lot of flavor to the soup! The small bones mostly disintegrate, so I don’t worry if a few fall in. Add any and all of the cooked veggies/stuffing. Scrape the roasting pan with hot water to get every scrap of flavor off. Pour this hot water in the soup pot. Add more water until the soup pot is full. Cook over low heat until you’re too hungry to let it cook any longer (slow cooker is MARVELOUS for this). Eat up, and toss out the bones unless you like to suck all the marrow out first. Mmmm…
That’s Phase II.
Phase III: It’s likely you’re going to have some dribbles left from your soup. Leave them in the bottom of the soup pot. Make sure there’s at least a quarter inch of soup at the bottom of the pot, if not add a bit of water. Rinse a head of chard. Chop the stalks, add them to the pot over low heat (I cheat sometimes and add a bit of chopped onion and garlic, but it’s not necessary). Chop the leaves and set them over the chopped stalks in the soup pot. Cover and let cook for about 10 minutes. The soup water will boil the stalks and steam the leaves. Once the leaves are just wilted, take off the heat and stir. Voila! You can do this with fresh spinach if you don’t like chard, but chard is SO GOOD, MAN!!!
**Additional note: if you got a really big bird and have plenty of breast left over after the initial roast, you can add a fourth phase wherein you make a chicken breast salad or a chicken sandwich. Leave nothing to waste away in the fridge!
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