Recipe
A Bite To Eat With Alice: Upside-down roast chicken with lemony gravy
- Prep time:
- 20
- Cook time:
- 90
- Skill level:
- Low
- Serves:
- 4
Roasting your chicken upside down is the trick to getting crispy skin and preventing the chicken breast from overcooking. (ABC News: David Sier)
Australian comedian and actor Dave O’Neil joined Alice in the kitchen.
He brought in a full chicken to roast, but shared with Alice that he's never even attempted a roast before and would love to learn.
The result is this easy roast chook recipe.
The roasting juices are packed full of flavour and make the best gravy. (ABC News: David Sier)
This recipe appears in A Bite to Eat with Alice, a new nightly cooking show on ABC iview and weeknights at 6pm on ABC TV.
A Bite To Eat With Alice: Upside-down roast chicken with lemony gravy
- Prep time:
- 20
- Cook time:
- 90
- Skill level:
- Low
- Serves:
- 4
Ingredients
Method
- Check the chicken cavity for necks and feet (save these in the freezer for making stock). Pat the chicken dry all over. Place it on a plate, breast side down. Leave, uncovered, on the lowest shelf of the fridge to dry out for a couple of days, or at least overnight. This step is a lot like cultivating the crackling on roast pork. It takes some planning, but the resulting shards of golden chicken skin are well worth the delayed gratification.
- Take the chicken out of the fridge an hour before you're going to roast it, so that it's not fridge-cold, leaving it loosely covered.
- When you're ready to get roasting, preheat the oven to 220°C fan (240°C conventional).
- Pat the chicken dry, then massage in the salt flakes and olive oil. Chuck the lemon in the cavity with the garlic cloves. This helps distribute the heat more evenly, while also flavouring the chicken.
- Put the bird in a roasting tin, breast side down. This protects the delicate breast meat from overcooking, and also exposes the parson's nose (my favourite bit) for maximum crunch-factor. Slide the bird into the oven and immediately drop the heat down to 180°C fan (200°C conventional). This gives the skin enough time to start crisping up without blistering, meaning that, by the time your chook's cooked, the skin will be evenly golden and the meat as moist as can be.
- For the cooking time, roast a bird of this size for around 1 hour 10 minutes. (A good rule of thumb is 40 minutes for the first kilogram, then 20 minutes for every extra kilo.) You can check it's done by poking a sharp knife into the thickest part of the leg and watching for the juice to run clear.
- Once the bird is cooked, pull the roasting tin out of the oven. Transfer the chicken to a tray to rest while we harvest the schmaltz (chicken fat) and those roasting pan juices, by pouring the liquid in the bottom of the roasting tin into a clean, wide jar. Store this in the fridge.
- While the chicken is resting, make the lemony gravy by scooping the schmutz in the base of the roasting pan into a frying pan, along with a bit of the schmaltz (the residual should be enough). Heat in the pan, then add your shallots and garlic and sauté. When shallots have softened and become translucent (3-4 minutes), stir in your mustard and creamy component, swishing about until everything is silky. Sprinkle in the parsley and squeeze in the juice from your chicken's lemon once it's cool enough to touch and a little water if required. Season to taste.
- Once the chicken is cool enough to touch, you can slice in. I prefer to serve the brown meat (legs, thighs, etc.) and leave the breasts on the frame for leftovers, but you do you. Serve with lemony gravy.