Yum. I know it sounds kind of funny – cooking a chicken in milk – but it was dee-lish-us! Jay was craving roasted chicken and I wanted to do something in the enamelled cast iron dutch oven he gave me for Christmas. I found this recipe on Pinterest (yay Pinterest!)… Hi, my name is Tanya and I’m a Pinterest recipe addict.
I used a pretty small chicken – maybe 3 lbs (I didn’t weigh it). I bought it from an awesome little butcher shop in little India for $3.49/lb. The chicken skin stuck to pot when searing it so the photos don’t look very good with half the skin ripped off. Oh well. It tasted just fine. I will make it again, so I’ll have to take new photos when I do.
I used 12 cloves garlic instead of 10. With such a small chicken I probably should have used less rather than more. Good thing we love garlic! You could really really smell the garlic while baking, and in fact Jay felt his eyes burning. I thought it smelled good! I used fresh rosemary sprigs, and dried thyme from my garden (no sage). I used a full stick cinnamon (not 1/2 a stick as directed), but it was a skinny stick. 2 large lemons provided a pile of zest. Don’t skimp on this – the zest added a pile of flavour. Sadly, I zested my thumb knuckle so I pulled out the cut resistant gloves I gave Jay for Christmas and put them to good use (albeit a little late in the process).
The chicken didn’t look pretty but it turned out awesome! It was super moist and tender. The chicken was flavourful with a taste reminiscent of green curry. After removing the chicken from the pot (covering with aluminum foil) I strained the cooking liquids through a fine meshed strainer and made a gravy (I just sprinkled flour in it, whisked it well and cooked it until slightly thicker).
I served the chicken with sautéed tomatoes & spirallized zucchini. The little tomatoes were sliced in half and sautéed in basil EVOO and garlic. Once the tomatoes were soft and wrinkly I added the spirallized zucchini. The zucchini only takes a couple minutes to cook so you have to wait until dinner is almost ready to serve. I wasn’t prepared to go all out for the meal so I sautéed some portobello mushrooms in butter and cooked them with Uncle Bens wild and long grained rice. Uncle Bens rice brings back memories of my younger days. Yum!
Lemon and Garlic Milk Braised Chicken
Serves 4
Active time: 25 minutes
Total time: 2 hours
Ingredients
Ingredients
1 (4- to 5-pound) whole chicken
Kosher salt and ground black pepper
2 Tbsp unsalted butter
2 cups milk
Zest of 2 lemons
10 cloves garlic, peeled and lightly smashed
½ cinnamon stick
5 to 8 large sage leaves
2 (3″) sprigs rosemary
Instructions
Preheat oven to 375°. Discard chicken neck and any included giblets. Pat chicken dry with paper towels and season generously with kosher salt and black pepper, including inside the cavity.
Place a 4-quart (or larger) Dutch oven or heavy oven-safe pot or pan over high heat. Add butter; when it melts and foams, add chicken. Brown chicken over high heat 10 minutes, using tongs to turn over. When chicken is evenly golden brown, turn it breast side down in pot and pour in milk. Bring to a simmer, then turn off heat.
Add to milk the lemon zest, garlic cloves, cinnamon, sage, and rosemary. Cover pot with a lid or foil and roast 45 minutes. Remove lid and roast until a thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the thigh registers 165°, 30 to 45 minutes more. Remove from oven and carve or shred chicken (it should pull off the bone easily). If needed, add salt to sauce to taste. Serve, spooning sauce from pan over meat.
Notes
Recipe copied and pasted from:
http://www.oprah.com/food/Lemon-and-Milk-Braised-Chicken-Recipe?cid=pi_omag_recipe_roast_chicken
This was my test run of the Kitchenaid spiralizer, and it was cool. It worked really well to turn the zucchini into curly veggies and it was super easy to set up and clean. The only thing that sucks about eating spiralized veggies is that they’re messy. Think of really long spaghetti… but it’s a neat idea and gets you away from eating (boring) sliced or cubed zucchini.
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