A good 90% of this website is chicken based. I could be a colonel.
But every time you see a recipe for chicken here, you can normally count on it being roasted. You could bet good money on it.
And if you want to make even MORE money, you can bet that it was also marinated in some form of flavoured liquid prior to roasting.
Let’s be millionaires together.
This particular chicken recipe ticks all of my clucking boxes. Succulent, juicy, deep in flavour – the kind of chicken that makes you suck on your fingers afterwards. THAT’S the chicken I want.
I never liked breasts. PAUSE. They dry out quickly and you need to do a lot to them to get them half as sexy as the brown meat, so I will always opt for the bone over the breast.
This blog is sick.
Whoever invented the zip lock bag needs a special kiss from me. I am consistently cramming ingredients into bags and leaving them sit idly in the fridge so that the meat gets infused with the hypnotic flavours, and this recipe does just that.
Cooking with beer is no strange feat to me (I work for the country’s biggest brewery after all) so I know all about the soulful, sneaky flavours that are packed into every hopped up bottle of beer.
The flavours of the beer just whisper all over the chicken as opposed to drowning it in it’s famed yeast soul, so what you get is a tangy coat of beer, which sings perfectly against the special, delicate breath of the caraway seeds.
And I love a jacket potato but I always think it’s more of a faff than it’s worth. This here method is an absolute life saver and what you get is a small bundle of gorgeous, fluffy yet crispy jacket potatoes you can dip or slather in the sauce of your choice. The perfect alternative to big jacket potatoes when you’re feeding the mass.
First marinade your chicken. Take a handful of chicken drumsticks (I had 5) and place in a big zip lock bag. Put the bag in a bowl so that it’s easier to pour in the rest of the ingredients.
Throw in 3 bashed garlic cloves. Also throw in a teaspoon of paprika, half a teaspoon of cumin, a teaspoon and a half of caraway seeds, salt, pepper and a little olive oil.
Now pour in an entire bottle of beer – like I said, I went for a red ale but any good, strong beer would be banging.
Zip up the bag, give it a careful smush around and then leave in the fridge to marinade overnight.
When you’re ready to cook, preheat the oven to 200c and take your chicken out to come to room temperature.
While it preheats, make your sauce so that it’s out of the way. Take half a block of blue cheese in a jug and pour in a few tablespoons of double cream and a quick, whiff splash of apple cider vinegar.
Blitz this up with a hand blender or hack away for a while with the back of a fork. You get a creamier result with a blender though, just saying. Put this to one side.
Place the chicken pieces in a roasting tray (don’t throw away the beer marinade). Pat dry with some kitchen roll and then pour over a little olive oil and scatter with some sea salt.
Grab yourself some tiny potatoes (new potatoes are fine) and take a long metal skewer. Push each potato on to the skewer (I went for 2 per person).
Put the oiled/salted chicken in the oven and on another rack, place the potatoes straight on the rack (don’t worry about a tray).
Leave both to cook for 45 minutes.
While this cooks, empty the beer marinade into a saucepan and put on a high heat. Once it starts boiling, the beer will start to foam and make it’s way to the top of the pan but take off the heat, give it a stir, turn the heat down to medium and put the pan back on the heat.
Keep the pan on a medium heat and let it reduce in volume by about half and it will create a thick, sexy beery syrup.
After 45 minutes, take the chicken out of the oven and carefully pour the beer syrup over the chicken pieces and slide back in the oven for another 10 minutes.
After this time the chicken will be burnished and glazed to within an inch of their clucking lives, the potatoes will be crispy to the touch but pillowy and cloud like inside.
Serve alongside the blue cheese dip and some form of greenage – I went for spinach because it’s all I had, but rocket or peashoot would be amazing.
MIKEY AND THE KITCHEN. 