January 2015
25
the GREAT BRITISH ROAST No meal makes you think of home more than the classic roast dinner – and it’s all thanks to British farmers
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bviously we can’t do an edition about Great Britain without doing something about the beloved roast dinner. Once you get to university, cooking your first roast is a right of passage. However, it can be a bit off-putting – after all, if you’ve only just perfected the art of using the toastie maker, a fully blown roast dinner can seem like a bit of a leap. That’s where we come in. With our help, we’ll get you cooking a massive piece of meat and producing amazing roast potatoes in no time. We debated over which meat to cook. Oh, how we debated. But in the end, our friends at Love Chicken suggested that we focus on poultry. And a good idea it was too – many people are a bit nervous about cooking a massive chicken, not least because of the stories in the news about campylobacter. But never fear; hold our hand (not that one, it’s got a carving knife in it) and we’ll show you how to cook a roast chicken dinner.
But what else? What else indeed. A single chicken does not a roast dinner make. First things first: never underestimate the importance of the roast potato. Make as many as you can – then make some more
Get a lemon. Make some holes in it with a knife and the shove it in the microwave for 30 seconds. Then shove it up the chicken (sorry, there’s no delicate way to put that). Throw a few sprigs of herbs such as rosemary up there too, and you’re golden.
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking ‘well, we’ve got roast potatoes, so we don’t need more potato-based dishes’. It’s not about needing, it’s about wanting – you’re British, you can eat more carbs than that. Get your masher out, maybe even treat yourself to a bit of dauphinoise. Just don’t boil potatoes – you could have roasted those
Rub a bit of olive oil into the chicken, throw on some salt and pepper and then gently place the bird in an oven which is preheated to about 190°C. For extra flavour surround the chicken with roughly chopped carrots, parsnips, onion and garlic. But there’s loads of ways to cook a chicken – head over to www.greatbritishchicken.co.uk for lots of recipes.
Yorkshire puddings are not just for beef dinners. WE CAN’T STRESS THIS ENOUGH. Make loads so you can eat some cold too
Recipe
Cooking a chicken isn’t rocket science. Oven on, chicken in, happy days. But here are a few tips for poultry glory:
Safety first
Campylobacter sounds terrifying (we shorten it to ‘campy’ for this very reason) but actually, it’s incredibly simple to avoid. First up, don’t wash the chicken. Grannies love doing this, but giving your chicken a quick bath can spread germs around. So just put it straight in the tin. And then cook it properly. When you think it’s ready, make a cut in the thickest part of the chicken – if the juices run clear, your chicken is ready to be gobbled. And if you start cutting it and think ‘Oh, that bit looks a tad pink’ simply shove it back in the oven for a few minutes.
What’s better than a vegetable? A ROASTED vegetable, that’s what! Parsnips, carrots – throw them all in the oven. Have some fresh too though – it’ll make your mum happy We’ll leave you with one final piece of advice. Get yourselves a sweet potato. Ladies – it’s a vegetable, it’s healthy and it’s SWEET. Prayers = answered