Sunday Roast: Leftovers

As mentioned in my previous blog, cooking a whole chicken makes a really economical choice to roast because of what you can do with the leftovers. Cooking for two other girls last Sunday who preferred to eat the breast meat, I was left with lovely, succulent leg meat that is great for using the next day as it doesn't dry out as much, and easily breaks up into bite size pieces. I had enough to make two meals.
Firstly a healthy chicken salad for lunch... And then a creamy chicken risotto inspired by a lovely customer who said she always uses stock made from the carcass and left over chicken meat for risotto the following week. When making risotto you essentially keep adding stock to the rice until it is the lovely consistency that resembles risotto, and add ingredients as you so wish. For a really good basic recipe and other risotto ideas I would turn to Jamie, but again, on a budget I replaced stock with extremely watery gravy! Although this sounds bizarre, I added about 200ml boiling water to a teaspoon of chicken Bisto powder which gave the risotto a lovely hearty flavour.

Sunday Roast

Unable to go home and treat myself to roast beef and yorkshire puddings, I tried my own cheaper roast dinner with chicken for my two housemates. Not only is chicken cheaper than beef, and slightly easier I think to cook, the leftovers of a whole chicken are really easy to turn into tasty meals the following week. 

When buying your chicken there is always a lot of choice in terms of quality. While free range chickens are of a higher welfare standard, Andrew's also sell there cheaper barn-reared chickens that are fed nutritional antibiotic-free diets, live in open barns and still have delicious flavour. Small chickens range from around £5 to £6 and when feeding 3 people as I did (with leftovers for another meal for one) this is really good value for money. Families would obviously need bigger chickens (1.8kg +) but prices are unlikely to exceed £10- still good value in my eyes! Vegetables are also cheap, I used Maris Piper potatoes, and broccoli on offer at Waitrose, (as well as picking up Paxo stuffing for 40p!) and peas I had in the freezer. I simply refuse to believe people who insist that it is too expensive to eat healthily and I think this meal shows it! 

My Tips for Roasting:

-Placing a lemon cut in half and a sprig of thyme inside the chicken will give a lovely flavour and keep it moist.

-Chickens take approximately 1h30m in a hot oven. Crisp the skin up for 15m at 220°C then continue cooking at 180°C. Depending on the size of the chicken, adapt your time (my 1.2kg chicken took 1h15m). The chicken is cooked when all juices run clear. Slice inside to check if you're not sure. 

-Work out your timings for everything else with the chicken in mind. For example, roast potatoes take roughly 50m in the oven (after par-boiling) so put in 50m before your chicken is due to be cooked. 

-Heat a roasting tray with a tablespoon of sunflower oil for ten minutes, so that your potatoes hit a sizzling hot pan. This ensures lovely crispy potatoes, instead of the oil seeping through the potatoes and making them soggy. 

Homesick, Roast-sick

There is nothing in the world I want more right now than to be in my room at home being able to smell roast beef cooking in the oven. As much as I love cooking, nothing beats my mum's roast dinners, even to the point family friends have been known to put in a special request for her roast beef, yorkshire puddings, and roast potatoes when coming over. I feel we are going to have to get Mummy B to do a guest blog on how she does it. As I have the tiniest oven on the planet at university, and limited funds, my recipes are going to become a lot more economical and quick compared to my first ones! I have a freezer full of Andrew's chicken breasts, mince, pork steaks and chipolatas so you will have to wait and see what I come up with...