I don't cook whole chickens very often. (Usually only when my parents have given us one.) And I've only cooked a spatchcocked chicken once. And I've never done the spatchcocking myself before today. It went pretty smoothly in the end. Although this has convinced me that I need some proper kitchen shears and not just the scissors that came with this knife set. I also couldn't get the wing tips to stay tucked under the breasts like I was supposed to. In the end, I decided to just cut them off and toss them in the InstantPot along with the spine and all the vegetable scraps. I figured if they weren't going to cooperate, they might as well enrich the stock.
I didn't have any fresh thyme, so I ended up tinkering with the spice rub a little bit. It's still pretty much the same. The main issue is that swapping out the fresh thyme for dried changes the proportions a bit since you only need ~1/3 as much dried thyme as fresh. It still worked out amazingly well though, so I'm okay with the altered proportions. (I also decided to use a mix of sweet and hot paprika since I didn't have any smoked. Follow your heart as to which paprika is best for you!)
Cast Iron Chicken and Vegetables
Slightly adapted from Cook's Country February/March 2021
Ingredients
Spice Rub
- 4 tsp. coarse sea salt
- 2 tsp. dried thyme
- 2 tsp. granulated garlic
- 2 tsp. black peppercorns, ground
- 1 tsp. paprika (smoked, hot, sweet, or a mix)
Chicken and Vegetables
- 450g potatoes1
- 1 large or 2 small fennel bulbs2, trimmed and cut into wedges
- 1 red onion, peeled and cut into wedges
- 225g carrots, peeled and halved crosswise3
- 1 (1.4-1.8kg) chicken
- 2 Tbsp. oil, divided
Sauce
- 3 Tbsp. olive oil
- 2 Tbsp. chopped flat-leaf parsley
- 1 1/2 Tbsp. lemon juice
- 1-2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tsp. spice rub
Directions
- Preheat oven to 220°C (425°F).
- Combine all the ingredients for the spice rub and set aside.
- Prep all your veggies. Keep the potatoes separate and submerge them in cold water to stop them from oxidizing.
- Place the chicken breast-side-down and cut along both sides of the spine with kitchen shears. (You can use the spine for making soup/stock.)
- Flip the chicken over and press it flat.
- Tuck the wing tips under the breast. Cut them off if they won't stay put.
- Make a cut ~1cm deep between the leg and the thigh.
- Flip the chicken breast-side-down, and sprikle with ~1 Tbsp. of the spice mixture.
- Filp it back over and drizzle the skin side with 1 Tbsp. of the oil. Then sprinkle with ~5 tsp. of the spice mixture.
- Heat a large (30cm/12") cast iron pan over medium heat for 5 minutes. (Less if using induction.)
- Add the remaining 1 Tbsp. of oil to the pan.
- Place the potatoes in the pan, cut-side-down.
- Add the carrots, fennel, and onion to the pan, trying to get as much pan contact as possible.
- Sprinkle ~1 tsp. of the spice rub over the veggies.
- Place the chicken on top of the veggies.
- Transfer the pan to the oven and roast at 220°C (425°F) until chicken is done (~1 hour).
- Meanwhile, make the sauce by whisking all the sauce ingredients together. Set aside.
- Remove the chicken from the pan and return the veggies to the oven for another 15 minutes.
- Either carve the chicken, top with sauce, and serve with veggies or return the chicken to the pan and drizzle the sauce over it, then carve and serve.
1 The recipe calls for small Yukon Gold potatoes no more than 3 or 4cm in diameter which are then cut in half. I already had a bunch of potatoes that needed to be used up, so I wasn't about to go out and buy more. I used the large potatoes and just cut them into eighths instead of halves. This seemed to work out just fine. The potatoes were beyond delicious! Back
2 The recipe calls for a 450g bulb of fennel and mentions that you should be adding 250g of fennel wedges to the pan after trimming. 2
3 If your carrots are very large, you will likely want to halve them lengthwise as well. Back
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