At my birthplace (Allahabad), Barbequed/Oven cooked chicken is termed as “Roast chicken". No matter which class or clan one is from or how much one has travelled, this mistake has never been corrected in times. Once I told my mother and sisters to correct themselves and call it by the proper name. To my surprise, they did correct themselves but only for a day then again it’s back to the same story.
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| Sunday Roast |
Truly speaking I can’t correct all the people from Allahabad and it doesn’t matter since I don’t live there anymore.
The trouble with roasting or baking a whole chicken is that it takes a bit of time. Now sometimes that's alright and part of the fun is the longer time in the kitchen preparing a big weekend meal with your family, but sometimes it would be nice to speed things up, and that's where the pressure cooker comes in.
I love roast chicken. The crispy skin, tender flesh, and delicious root vegetables… It’s definitely a delicious meal that yields plenty of leftovers and it's an easy transition to make homemade chicken stock at just about the same time.
Every home cook should have a no-fail recipe for roast chicken, one you can count on to always deliver golden skin and well cooked, moist, flavoursome meat. So what’s the secret? Well, there are several:
Buy fresh Chicken
Buy fresh Chicken
Pre-Season the Bird
Season Liberally
Dry Skin = Crispy Skin
Don’t Roast a Cold Bird
Ingredients:
1 whole chicken
4 cloves garlic (grated)
1 whole chicken
4 cloves garlic (grated)
1 onion grated
Fresh Parsley
Thyme/Rosemary
Black Pepper powder
Little bit of Lemon juice
Salt
2 Tbs olive oil
3/4 cup fluid: chicken broth or water
2 Tbs olive oil
3/4 cup fluid: chicken broth or water
Season and Brown
Take the fully defrosted and rinsed chicken and liberally coat the skin with spices and seasonings. Heat the olive oil in the pressure cooker, and carefully brown the top, sides, and bottom of the chicken.
Degalze and add metal stand
Now remove the whole chicken and deglaze the bottom of the pressure cooker with a spatula after adding the water or broth. There shouldn't be much oil in the pan, but you may want to let it cool for a minute or two to lesson the risk of a little too much steam or splashing. Now put in place the little metal stand and the metal platform.
Cook
Cook it for 20 to 25 minutes. First 10 minutes on a high flame then cook it on a slow flame
Open and crisp if you would like
When you open the pressure cooker you’ll see beautiful juices that can be thickened and used to make chicken gravy.
Optional: If you want crispy skin you’ll have to take the cooked chicken, baste it with just a little butter or oil (and if you want - more spices), and oven roast for about 10 minutes at 400 degrees. It will already be cooked, and it won’t take long to simply crisp-up the skin. You can also add the cooked veggies to the roasting pan during this step. We thoroughly enjoyed ours right out of the cooker.
Make stock with leftovers
Wait, hold on. Don't throw away the bones. One of the best parts of pressure cooker chicken is the simplicity of going from "roast" chicken right into homemade chicken stock using all the juices and bones still in the cooker, and then if we want right into homemade soups like homemade chicken soup and a few days worth of lunches. :~)
