Fast & easy way to cook a whole chicken or whole turkey
This post is somewhat off-topic of couponing, but it came up at my kids' play group, when I mentioned to one of the other moms that I saw our Jewel had an in-store special on whole chickens, .69 a pound. She laughed and said she'd never cooked a whole chicken :) I told her it was EASY the way I learned to do it - and from there we talked about the turkey she had too that needed to be cooked soon but she didn't want to spend a lot of time on. So, this one's for you :)
These two recipes (which aren't even so much "recipes" as they are preparation outlines) are EASY and fast for a whole chicken or a whole turkey. The names of these methods may make you think I'm cursing at poultry, but read on...)
(so called because it's blasted with heat to create a delicious, crispy skin with juicy, tender meat inside)
Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
Rinse inside and outside of chicken in the sink. DRY it off with paper towels (which we all have plenty of cheap/free of!)
Salt and pepper the skin and the inside.
Put the chicken in a baking pans with sides that can catch the juices. Put it in the oven for 45 minutes.
THAT'S IT. When it comes out, it looks and tastes like a rotisserie chicken. Phenomenal, cheap, easy :)
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Here's a very similar recipe for a turkey. Turkeys usually take a LONG time to cook because of the open cavity inside. With this method, you basically flatten the whole bird by breaking the backbone (don't worry, it's not as bad as it sounds) and, once flattened out, you can cook it in a little over an hour.
Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
Rinse inside and outside of turkey in the sink. DRY it off with paper towels.
"Spatchcock" the turkey (break the backbone - Martha Stewart has the best directions I've seen on how to do this with a kitchen shears)
Brush skin with olive oil and salt and pepper the outside.
Put the turkey in a baking pans with sides that can catch the juices. Put it in the oven for 70 minutes.
THAT'S IT. :)
May you no longer be intimidated by cooking whole birds. They are cheap and easy. :)
Do I have to put the chicken on a rack or just right in the pan?
If you use a rack, the skin will get crispy all around versus just the top and sides, but I've done it either way with great results.
Best best way to make a whole chicken is in the Pampered Chef Deep Covered Baker. 30 minutes in the microwaave and it is tender, juicy and DONE!!! seriously the best invention known to man....
Bumping this up for a reader who requested it (and oddly, it wasn't showing up in a search for "blasted chicken" - I wonder if my blog's word filter thought we were using harsh language... ha.)
They no longer recommend that you rinse out your poulty because of the amount of unseen bacteria that is spread in that process. Anything that would have been rinsed away will be killed in the cooking process. You do still need to use paper towels to dry off the skin to get that crispy goodness.
To add extra flavor you can stab a lemon 10 times, microwave it till it is steaming, and stuff it in the cavity of the chicken. This will help the middle of the bird warm and cook faster. It also adds a nice flavor!
Thanks for sharing Jill! I've seen recipes for blasted chicken before (on this site?? or maybe somewhere else) but never tried it. Not sure if my corningware is big enough for a whole bird, I'll have to check that out.
I love chicken salad sandwiches - my grandma makes the best! She uses pecans, red grapes, & apples, along with the usual celery. I sometimes add onion too. I've also used almonds instead of pecans, because I use those more often in cooking/baking. It's a lot of prep if you make a big batch, but so worth it for easy sandwiches all week long :)
Also if you want to make it less fattening, you can use low-fat mayo or a mixture of mayo and greek yogurt. With all the fruit and crunch it still has GREAT flavor :)
nice trick with pears as well. Cat seems to love it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43VjLCRqKNk
I can't believe that was really him and how simple his kitchen looks. Was that his house? That was a fun video to watch. : )
Okay, I cannot imagine the series of circumstances in which Christopher Walken decided to film himself cooking chicken, but as a Walken fan, I thoroughly enjoyed this..! LOL!
I agree Jill!
I make a similar chicken ... you can also cut a lemon in 4ths, add that to the cavity - adds a very subtle flavor, and I think makes the chicken even more moist. Obviously throw out the lemon when the chicken is cooked.
Oh, and if your oven needs cleaning, do it before you cook the chicken. You'll avoid a lot of smoking and mess if you start with a clean oven!!
I bought a 4.4 pound chicken (HAD to use that $2 email coupon!) today and was thinking about trying blasted chicken for tomorrow's dinner. I usually prefer using my Oster toaster/convection oven instead of the regular big oven in the summer. I'm guessing that once I put the chicken in the pan, I'd have about 3 inches between the bird and the oven all the way around.
Jill (or anyone else who has made this), how "messy" does the fat get? Do you think it will go all over the walls, or does it just drip out of the chicken down to the bottom of the pan?
I might just chicken out (no pun intended!) and make a pot of chicken soup or just turn the big oven on for a bit for real blasted chicken.
Thanks in advance for your advice!
Thanks to everyone that gave advice. I went ahead and just cranked the big oven on and cooked a bunch of stuff today. Ina Garten always seems to bake her whole chickens on top of cubed bread or potatoes, so I cubed some sweet, red skinned, and yukon gold potatoes. I tossed them with a little olive oil, salt and pepper. They went into the bottom of my largest and deepest Corningware, with the chicken on top. The bird took a little longer to get to 165, but the top skin browned up nicely. Yum!
I'm already thinking that tomorrow we'll cut up the white meat and toss it with my freebie white sauce and pasta from Doms and some broccoli. Easy leftover dinners rock!
is to make Chicken Tortilla soup. I know it's summer so not an ideal meal now, but we make this all the time in the fall/winter. You just throw all the ingredients together and let it simmer for an hour, it's yummy! The "hardest" part is chopping an onion and garlic.
And so healthy...there is not a single bad ingredient in my recipe. So good, so healthy...and SUPER easy like you said. (gives me a reason to use all those cheap Hunt's canned tomatoes and Rotel.)
Last time we made a chicken, we pulled all the leftover meat off the bones and threw it in the crock pot with some bbq sauce and garlic. It made a delicious "pulled chicken" sandwich and we couldn't believe how much meat we got out of it!
I made one last night and it was delicious! It did mess up my regular oven quite a bit (hit self-clean before I went to bed). Next time I'll use a full size roasting pan with high sides versus a 13x9.
I usually do mine in a big Corningware dish with deep sides (4" or so) - put the chicken on a little wire rack thing that fits in the bottom -- all the fat kind of collects in there. I've never had it splatter around inside the oven or anything because the pan is so deep.
We loved it but it was a huge mess in the oven...not sure if I will do it again...but it was very tasty!
the same way . Wouldn't that work ? I have a self cleaning oven ,But hate a greasy mess .
Of course you can cook it outside...this was just beer-can chicken Hollywood-style. The beer (or any beverage) keeps the chicken moist...may take a little over an hour...easy. Just make the pears on a separate pan in the grill...why heat up the house? We cook everything outside.
I just attended a cooking class where they told us that you no longer need to rinse the in- and outside of the chicken in the sink. Apparently there are too many juices (read "bacteria") flying around your kitchen sink when you do so.
It's not just in the sink, the splatters go out onto your counter top, fosset etc.
So the new thing right now is to just pat the chicken dry with the paper towels (you want it as dry as possible, so the seasonings will stick) and then stick it in the oven.
Chicken in the oven is really delicious, thanks for the recipe Jill!
I love crispy chicken going to try that way . But it dosen't splatter grease all over the oven does it ????????
And when I have company for lunch in the summer ,My husband cooks a big pot of chicken broth from 4 -6 chicken breast . Then when chicken cools . cut chicken in small pieces and make chicken salad. Great sandwiches . And he makes great "Chicken " salad and left over broth for soup . Will post recipe if anyone wants to make C. salad
We use our whole chickens to make Chicken Tortilla Soup - yummy! Thanks for the tip on the turkey, I've never done that before!
I bought a teflon upright stand. You wash inside and out, season and stick whole chicken on stand. A little teflon bowl is attached to the stand. It makes it crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. It also lets all the grease flow away from the chicken.
That we need to have a permanent forum topic for recipes using the cheap food we are all buying!
These are fabulous! It might revolutionize Thanksgiving in our house too!!
We take whole chickens and put them in the crockpot. When it's done, it falls off the bones and is great for quick dinners at night, or for recipes that call for pre-cooked chicken.
In addition, you end up with a lot of broth in the bottom of the crock. I typically drain the fat off and freeze in ice cube trays or empty single-serve fruit containers (about 1/2 cup) for use in recipes later.
So now, it's chicken and "free" broth for later!
I would love to know how you prepare/season the chicken and how long you cook it in the crockpot. I love having dinner cooking in there while I'm at work or running around all day.
whole chickens and recently with a bone-in turkey breast. Figuring it would cook while I was at work. I had it on low for 8 hours with it going to simmer afterwards.
It was overcooked, falling off the bones but somewhat dry, even with the turkey broth in it. So I would recommend no more than 6 hours and the temp needs to be 170 degrees internally. It also depends on how hot your "low" temp really is.
Take aluminum foil and make 3 loose balls of aluminum foil (that fits in your hand) to set in the bottom of the crock pot - this is to keep the chicken out of the majority of the drippings.
Season as you like - my wife usually uses Lawry's seasoning or Paprika
Place the chicken into the crock pot
Take 1 average size apple and cut into 1/8ths and stick the apples in the cavity and around the chicken.
Put crock pot on low and heat for 3-4 hrs or until done.
Enjoy extremely moist chicken
slice 1-2 lemons into wedges(depending on how lemony you want it:)
rough chop 1 onion
1-2 whole cloves garlic,peeled
layer these on the bottom of the crock
pat the chicken dry, season with salt and pepper
lay chicken breast side down on top of onion/lemon/garlic
cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours.
yes, the chicken will absolutely fall apart at the end, so be careful!!
Sounds yummy!
I've been doing this too, but it's not helping me get through the boxes of free broth from the fall! Too much broth!
I used up a lot of my broth making Egg Drop soup. It's super easy if you like Chinese food, maybe as a starter for all those Wanchai meals? LOL I'd be happy to dig up the recipe if you'd like it.
Would love the recipe - we like Chinese over here
Awesome tips you all, thank you!
Ingredients:
* 4 cups chicken broth or stock
* 2 eggs, lightly beaten
* 1 -2 green onions, minced
* 1/4 teaspoon white pepper (if desired, traditional is a little more bland, white pepper has a little bit of a bite to it)
* Salt to taste
* A few drops of sesame oil (optional)
In a wok or saucepan, bring the 4 cups of chicken broth to a boil. Add the white pepper and salt, and the sesame oil if using. Cook for about another minute. Very slowly pour in the eggs in a steady stream. To make shreds, stir the egg rapidly in a clockwise direction for one minute. To make thin streams or ribbons, gently stir the eggs in a clockwise direction until they form. Garnish with green onion and serve.
To get a few extra veggies in the little ones you can also add 1/2 cup frozen peas or carrots.
Now, getting the eggs to come out nicely and not rubbery can be a little tricky. If you have a helper its easier. Here are some tips:
Lightly beat the egg so that no bubbles form
Turn off the heat just a second before you begin pouring in the egg (this produces silkier threads)
Pour the egg in a very slow stream (pouring it through the tines of a fork from several inches above the pot is a good way to keep the stream slow and steady) (This is where you need a helper because you want to begin stirring as soon as you start pouring in the egg. To make shreds or threads, stir rapidly for at least 1 minute, and stir the beaten egg in one direction only.
Also, Egg Drop Soup is frequently thickened with cornstarch in restaurants. To add a cornstarch thickener, mix 2 - 3 tablespoons of cornstarch with 1/2 cup water. Just before adding the beaten egg, stir in the cornstarch/water mixture, remove the soup from the heat, and then add the beaten egg.
It's not at all complicated, it just gets a little tricky when you first try it to get the slow stream of egg just right. I hope you like it!
*Edit* we like noodles in our soup, I use egg noodles, prepared according to package directions and add after the soup is done just before serving.
Thank you very much for the egg drop soup recipe! I copied it and I shall try it.
Do you know how big the crock pot needs to be for a whole chicken to fit in it? Like 4 or 5 quarts or 6?
I was reading the crock pots at Costco are bad, fall apart and the low setting is really high so you cannot leave it at home alone.
Hamilton Beach were supposed to be better, there is one at farms and fleet I think for $15 this week for a 5 quart.
I do not know how large a crockpot needs to be to cook a whole chicken, but I did want to mention something I have learned about crockpots. I have had one for many years that has a temperature control on it, and it is WONDERFUL! Per an old crockpot cookbook I had found, I use 200 degrees for low and 300 for high, and if I make something that turns out a little over or undercooked, I can adjust the temp accordingly. It is great to have more control than just the low or high settings. Not sure if they sell this type anymore, but I think it is worth investigating. Probably won't find one for $15 tho :)
in the oven and very little prep. After doing one you might be shocked at what the deli charges. If you have time, brining will give a super juicy bird while letting it air dry on a rack in the fridge will make an extra crispy skin. I did that turkey trick, I think Cooks Illustrated calls it butterflied turkey, the only bad part is cutting the thing apart to flatten if I remember.
http://www.cooksillustrated.com/images/document/howto/ND01_ISBriningbasi...
This sounds great and so easy. I am going to give it a try. Thanks for sharing. Coupon queen AND master chef. You are truly a "Jill" of all trades. :)
coupon queen and domestic goddess - you're my hero:-)
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