A few months ago, a good friend of mine told me about a roast chicken recipe she'd found on Pinterest. It involved basting with a sour cream mixture, and placing bread underneath to soak up the juice. Her and her boyfriend loved this recipe, and she'd make it regularly. So naturally, I had to give it a go.
It was called Million Dollar Chicken, and it was awesome!
I don't buy whole chickens all that often. But a recent trip to the supermarket saw some lovely free range whole chickens on offer, so it would have been rude not to!
I didn't have the recipe to hand, so decided to make up my own from what I could remember. In my head I was thinking "I'm creating my very own Million Pound Chicken".
The results were so good I made it two weeks in a row, each time trying different types of bread. In the first (pictured) I just used a slice of stale bread I had left over, but in the second I followed my friends advice and used some french bread, as she found this didn't go so soggy. I must admit I enjoyed both. The first I baked a little longer, so the bread was like toast, with chicken stock; seriously moreish! The second I didn't cook for quite so long, which worked better as the french bread is more forgiving, but if I did it again I'd cut the slices maybe a little thinner.
Overall I'd recommend choosing the bread based on the size of the chicken. I used 1Kg and 1.5 Kg chickens meaning slightly different cooking times. The longer your roasting time, the easier it is to use sliced bread, for smaller chickens I'd use sliced french bread instead.
A note on the sour cream mixture. I tried it just with sour cream, and also with a butter and sour cream mix. I found the butter mix worked better, as it had a richer taste and was slightly thicker too so easier to baste and also easier to serve. Now, it's important you mix the two at similar temperatures, so I melted the butter and let it cool, then added it to room temperature sour cream. That way you don't get lumps of butter in your sauce.
I served with salad, in sandwiches, and also made a dinner with it, with a light gravy and gorgeous in-season new potatoes. So it's pretty versatile. My favourite was using the leftovers in a slice of bread with the sour cream mix, so good.
Look at the golden onions on the bread... I can't explain how good it tasted!
Million Pound Roast Chicken Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 Medium chicken 1-1.5Kg
- 1/2 Lemon
- 2 Small cooking onions
- 1 Slice of stale white bread torn into pieces or 4 slices of a baguette
- 50 g Butter
- Sea salt
- Black pepper
- 150 ml Sour cream
- 15 g Chives 1/2 bunch
- 2 pinches cayenne pepper
- 3 Cloves of garlic
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 170 'C
- Remove the chicken from the fridge for around 20 minutes before cooking, to get to room temperature.
- Read the packet instructions of your chicken and calculate cooking time depending on the weight (as a rough guide most instructions suggest 30mins per 500g with 10 minute resting time).
- Cut your lemon half into quarters and your cooking onion into quarters too.
- In a high sided roasting tin, place the torn or sliced bread in the centre with the onions on top, or in between. You want to arrange it so they'll sit directly under the chicken.
- Pull the skin of the chicken off the breasts slightly, I find it easier to ease it away with my fingers to form a pocket along each breast. Into these pockets stuff 10g of the butter.
- Place the lemon and whole cloves into the cavity.
- Position the chicken on top of your bread and onions.
- Rub another 20g of butter over the whole chicken, sprinkle with a generous pinch of good quality sea salt and black pepper and place in the oven.
- Finely chop the chives and add to the sour cream with the cayenne pepper. Set to one side for 10 minutes to come to room temperature.
- Melt the remaining butter (20g) and allow to cool slightly, then add to the sour cream mix. NB the butter and sour cream should be of similar temperature to prevent lumps.
- minutes before the chicken is due to finish cooking, remove from the oven and baste with half of the sour cream mix. Place back in the oven for 10 minutes, then turn the oven off and let rest for a further 10 minutes.
- Remove from the oven and serve with the onions, bread and remaining sour cream sauce.
Once you've made this roast chicken, why not try these awesome recipes to use up any leftovers:
Chicken and tarragon pasta bake from Kavey Eats
Chicken and plantain sandwhich from Recipes from a Pantry
Healthier coronation chicken from Fuss Free Flavours
Roast chicken and creamy garlic mushroom burger from Kitchen Sanctuary
Chicken-miso soup from Gingeybites
Roast chicken lasagne from Munchies and Munchkins
This is so very very up my street I cannot even begin to tell you. Will be trying this very soon. We eat a lot of roast chickens, because I adore them and I adore using up the leftovers, plus we throw the carcass in the slowcooker overnight to make stock (which we either use for a risotto in the next couple of days or throw into the freezer for another time. Oh my goodness, this is a very exciting recipe!
I keep looking for ways to jazz up my chicken recipes and I think this is certainly the way to do it. Mind if I borrow it?
Hi Thanks Bintu!! Sure thing! I look forward to hearing what you think 🙂 x