Get three meals from one roast chicken on holiday

One chicken, roasted on arrival at your favourite weekend getaway, can transform into three meals. Here’s how:

 

The Roast

A one-pan self-basting meal, where roasting juices flavour the veggies.
Feeds 4

Ingredients

• 1,8 – 2kg chicken
• 250g butternut
• 250g sweet potatoes
• 250g potatoes
• 250g carrots
• 4 shallots (optional)
• 2 table spoons of extra-virgin olive oil
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2 sprigs rosemary

Method

1. Rinse the chicken and pat dry with plenty of paper towel. Leave to come to room temperature (it takes about an hour and a half).

2. Truss the chicken if you know how, or simply tie the ankles together. Preheat the oven to 250°C and place the rack in the lower third.

3. Peel the vegetables and cut into 2 x 1cm pieces. Peel and halve the shallots, lengthways.

4. Tip the veg into a cast-iron pan, toss with oil, season and add the rosemary sprigs. Nestle the chicken on top, season generously and roast for 25 minutes.

5. Reduce the heat to 200°C and continue roasting for 45 minutes. Take it out the oven and make a cut between the leg and body. If the juices run clear it’s done; if they are pink, roast for 10 minutes more.

6. Once cooked, rip off all the crispy skin and set it aside on a plate lined with paper towel. Leave the chicken to rest for 30 minutes.

7. Carve the chicken and serve with the skin and vegetables.

8. Important: Save any juices that pool on the carving board for the pasta (day three), keep the carcass for making stock and any leftover meat for soup the next day.

Roast notes:
Freeze the chicken so it doubles as an ice brick for your cooler box. Just be sure to sync the drive and defrost times so your chicken is fully thawed on arrival. Alternatively, use the frozen peas or any extra chicken carcasses you’ve packed for the same purpose.
Don’t skip step one of the recipe. Do it before unpacking the car. The skin must be bone dry to crisp up, and the chicken at room temperature to cook through properly.
Chopping the vegetables into the same smallish sizes will ensure they cook quickly and evenly.
Use pre-cut butternut and sweet potato to save chopping time on arrival. They’re sold in bags of 500g so to simplify further, use only butternut and sweet potato.
A cast-iron pan is useful for reheating the veg on the stove before serving (if necessary) but a roasting tin works fine too.

 

The Stock

Making stock is a hands-off process suited to lazy afternoons. All it requires is the odd skim in between reading a book or stoking the fire, and an occasional check that it’s simmering, not boiling. Multitask by gently cooking the aromatic vegetable base for the soup at the same time.

Ingredients

• 1 chicken carcass (at least)
• 1 onion, unpeeled and halved
• 1 carrot, peeled and halved
• 1 stick celery, base and leaves removed, halved
• 1 – 2 bay leaves
• 6 peppercorns
• handful of parsley sprigs

Method

1. Place the carcass and other ingredients in a large pot and cover with cold water (about four to fi ve litres).

2. Set over a medium-low heat and very slowly bring to just below boiling point. Skim any frothy, foamy scum from the surface.

3. Just as it’s on the verge of simmering, reduce the heat and cook for 90 minutes (or longer). The liquid should be moving ever so slightly, with the odd tiny bubble and steam rising off the surface.

4. Strain and refrigerate. Once cold, spoon off the layer of solid fat on top and save it for the pasta sauce (or add to the butter when making the soup base).

 

The Soup

A complete and comforting meal in a bowl.
Feeds 4 – 6

Ingredients

• ¼ cup butter
• 2 onions, peeled and finely chopped
• 2 carrots, peeled and finely chopped
• 2 celery sticks, finely chopped
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1,5 litre of strong homemade chicken stock

Optional:
• ½ cup pasta rice
• extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 cup frozen peas
• ¼ cup crème fraîche
• chopped roast chicken (if there’s any left over)
• finely chopped flatleaf parsley

Method

1. Place the butter, onion, carrot, celery and a good pinch of salt into a medium-sized pot over a medium-low heat and put the lid on. Cook for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

2. Remove the lid and cook for 45 minutes until soft, golden and caramelised. Check and stir frequently in the last 30 minutes of cooking.

3. Meanwhile, cook the pasta rice, if using, according to the packet instructions. Rinse under running cold water, toss with a drizzle of olive oil and set aside.

4. Add the stock to the soup base, bring to the boil, then add the peas (if using) and simmer until bright green and just cooked.

5. Turn off the heat and season generously with salt and pepper. Stir in the crème fraîche and leftover chicken (if using).

6. Divide the pasta rice among bowls, ladle in the soup, sprinkle with parsley and serve immediately.

Soup notes: 

The first seven ingredients are the blueprint and can stand alone as a delicious chicken broth. Any other additions depend on personal preference. A good soup relies on powerful stock and a solid aromatic base.
The stock
Ramp up flavour by using two or three chicken carcasses to make stock – freeze them after each roast. If there’s only one carcass to hand, boil the finished stock to reduce by half before using.

The aromatic base
This is the holy trinity of onion, carrot and celery. Use generous quantities and cook low and slow until soft, sweet and caramelised. Developing these flavours cannot be rushed.

 

The Pasta

A quick, easy, end-of-the-weekend (or end-of-the-month) pasta.
Feeds 4

Ingredients

• 2 cups homemade stock (or roasting juices, see Pasta Notes)
• sea salt
• 100g butter
• 4 teaspoons of rosemary, finely chopped
• 8 cloves garlic, very finely chopped
• 500g dried tagliatelle
• finely chopped parsley, for serving (optional)
• Parmesan, grated
• black pepper, freshly ground

Method

1. Pour the stock into a small pot (with any carving juices from last night’s chicken) and boil until reduced by half. Taste and add salt – it should be strong, ‘chickeny’ and delicious.

2. Melt the butter (plus any chicken fat lifted off the stock when you made it) in a pot over a medium-low to low heat and add the rosemary and garlic.

3. Cook gently for five minutes until softened. Add the reduced stock to the butter pot and boil briefly, then remove from the heat.

4. Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil. Add the tagliatelle and then plenty of salt. From the moment it comes back to the boil, cook the pasta for five minutes (it should be undercooked in order to remain al dente once it’s been added to the sauce).

5. Using tongs, transfer the cooked pasta and a splash of pasta water to the other pot and cook on medium-high, tossing constantly until the sauce looks thickened and coats the pasta.

6. Toss through parsley and serve immediately with plenty of Parmesan and black pepper.

Pasta notes:
• If you roast your chicken without vegetables, pour any roasting juices into a small bowl. Deglaze the pan by adding ½ cup white wine and boiling, while stirring and scraping all the bits from the bottom, until the wine has almost cooked away. Tip this into the bowl too. Refrigerate or freeze until the fat forms a solid layer on top. Remove the fat and add it to the butter when cooking the garlic. Then use these intensely flavoured roasting juices as a starting point for the pasta sauce, and add enough homemade stock to make 1 cup of liquid.

 

What wine should I have with chicken?

Chooks are such easy dinner dates, as comfortable roasting in a pan as they are simmering in green curry. So finding a wine companion can be tricky unless you follow the golden rule: focus on matching with the sauce or seasoning, not the meat. As a result, plenty of chicken recipes go brilliantly with red. But for delicious roasts like this month’s opening act, or anything vaguely creamy, look no further than the Chardonnay shelf. From grilled, lemony-herb fowls to voluptuous, buttery birds, the ‘queen of grapes’ delivers in abundance.

What label?

The crazy-good-value wine
Somewhere between the Huguenot Tunnel and Worcester, you’ll find a co-op winery and its category winner in this year’s Best Value Wines competition. Slanghoek Private Selection Chardonnay 2016 is a four-star wine for (drum roll) R43. No, that’s not a road name or a typo. Only 40 per cent of the juice was in oak for four months so it’s gently wooded with a rare trait: a wine that tastes jolly expensive, but isn’t. bestvaluewineguide.com

For an earth-first thirst
At Journey’s End, Mother Nature is tickled wherever possible. For its green wines, think solar power, snail-chomping geese and housing for owls, which keep the vermin in check. They make three Chards, starting with the entry-level Haystack Chardonnay 2015 (R80), which is a fi ne example of what happens when you achieve the perfect balance between oak and fruit, neither overpowering the other. greenwineawards.com

Impress the guests
In the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley near Hermanus, Kevin Grant has been making extraordinary wines for over a decade, including a world-class, wooded Chardonnay with so much going on that your taste buds will freak out. Yes, it’s R235, but if you’d like to wow your mates or simply expand your horizons, Ataraxia Chardonnay 2015 is a proper treat.

 

 

This article, Get three meals from one roast chicken on holiday, was originally posted on the Getaway Blog by Nikki Werner.