Roast Herb Chicken

Roast chicken is one of my favorite dishes to cook. But the thing is, I really don't have a set recipe. It changes from time to time, depending on my mood, and what I remember from the last time I cooked it. The results therefore varies. Sometimes the chicken is fantastic, but sometimes, not so much. I always thought one day I really ought to write it down! Today I had such an opportunity.

Recipe is as follows:

1 big Chicken
half a stick of butter
salt and pepper
thyme
rosemary
ground black pepper
5 pandan leaves
baby potatoes (optional)

For the gravy:

1 cup water
3 tablespoons flour
1 chicken cube
1 beef cube
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 tsp white pepper

The chicken I chose is a pretty big one. It's one of those jumbo chickens that you can buy at the local grocery. And it's huge, like a small turkey. I chose that because it's going to be feeding 7 people and 2 dogs today, so it had to be pretty big.

I began the thawing process 24 hours before by placing the frozen chicken in a container out of the freezer and down the ref. It's become a habit of mine to do this, as opposed to taking the chicken out and dumping it on water an hour before cooking. I do it the long way to prevent unnecessary bacteria from developing on the chicken by allowing it to thaw while still inside the ref.

A couple of hours before I start cooking, I already took out a stick of butter from the ref to allow it to soften. Now that it's gotten really soft, I rub it on the chicken using a brush. I make sure I brush the entire chicken, including the cavity.

Inside the cavity I place and rub on at least a tablespoon of salt.  I then fold and jam the pandan leaves inside.

I then sprinkle salt, black pepper, thyme and rosemary all over, making sure I cover much of the chicken. How much spices you put really depends on you.

I then place the chicken in a deep metal baking dish or bowl, which is deep enough that I can cover it with aluminum foil without the foil touching any parts of the chicken.

I then place the bowl inside a a preheated oven at 200 C, and just leave it there for two hours. I then remove the foil, place the baby potatoes along with the chicken and place the foil back on. I continue baking for another hour, after which I removed the foil.  I let it continue baking for another hour, for a total of 4 hours. The last hour the chicken is baked uncovered to brown the surface.

Now I know that takes a lot of time, but I had to consider how large the chicken was, and the heat generated by my oven. Through trial and error, I learned that my oven usually takes longer to cook certain things, and for a chicken this size, I learned that I had to cook it for at least 4 hours, at that particular temperature.

Your oven might not behave the same so make sure you check your chicken once in a while.

Ok, for the gravy.

Once you've taken the potatoes and chicken out of the baking bowl, slowly try to remove as much of the oil as possible. You can't remove it all without removing all the good chicken droppings so you need to leave a little bit in. Place one cup of water in that same bowl, add the chicken and beef cubes, the flour, pepper and butter, and place it on a stove on medium-high heat. Mix it thoroughly and quickly so that the flour doesn't form into balls. You need to mix this while the mixture isn't too hot yet so the flour would integrate better.

Allow it to boil to cook the flour and for the mixture to reduce a bit. Pour the gravy on serving bowls through a strainer.

Cooking the chicken for 4 hours like this makes the chicken really easy to carve up.

It turned out pretty good!