Roasted chicken - two ways..

Last Saturday the husband left for what should be not more than five days on a work trip. I kept myself busy with housework on Saturday night - I managed to clean the main bedroom from top to bottom, which was quite an achievement. The mother-in-law was wondering whether to cook ribeye steaks on the barbeque on Sunday, or the two free-range chickens she bought. Since as it turned out it was only gonna be the in-laws and myself for Sunday lunch, and she had enough steaks to feed an army, we decided it was wiser to save the steaks for Monday (when there will be more mouths to feed).

I suggested trying out an experiment I had read on The Paupered Chef - basically roasting a chicken in a slowcooker by cooking it on the 'Keep Warm' setting (or about 60 deg Celcius) for 5 hours. This was based on a method mentioned in Heston Blumenthal's In Search of Perfection, and would theoretically lead to virtually no loss of juices from the chicken, leaving the meat plump and tender as no other roasting method would. The only downside is that the skin doesn't crisp up, as happens in the traditional oven-roasting method... so as a compromise, and also to compare the tenderness of the meat resulting from the two cooking methods, we decided to cook one chicken using the slowcooker, and the other we'd roast in the oven.

On Sunday morning mother-in-law was still hopeful that we'll be able to fire up the barbeque and sizzle those steaks, but we had to resort to the roast chicken plans as soon as we realised that the father-in-law might not make it for lunch due to a last-minute business meeting. Definitely not worth starting the barbeque just for three people.. so I took one bird out of the fridge, rubbed it with some good olive oil, seasoned it with sea salt and freshly-ground pepper and shoved it in the slowcooker. Then I rushed out to the garden and got a bunch of fresh rosemary which I shoved inside the chicken's cavity for aromatisation purposes. That was it. Since it was already 10am there wasn't gonna be time for the required 5 hours.. so I amended that to 2 hours on the 'high' setting. The mother-in-law put the other chicken on a roasting dish, seasoned it and shoved it in the oven for two hours. It was too hot to think of preparing anything more fancy or elaborate than simple roast potatoes and a nice fresh salad as accompaniments. Plus I was itching to rush next door after I had finished 'cooking' to have some more fun scraping paint off the floor.

Two hours later and there they were - Specimen A - Slowcooker Chicken.. Specimen B - Oven-roasted Chicken. Specimen A had released as much juices in the dish as Specimen B, although had I followed Heston's method of cooking at a lower temperature for almost double the time, I should have had no juices at all. Specimen A hadn't lost any juices through evaporation though, unlike the oven-cooked Specimen B, so the meat was much more juicy. The really obvious difference was when we tasted the chicken breast. I definitely prefer the slowcooker method, especially since most of the crispy skin of Specimen B was eaten by our two (very grateful) dogs. So trying out Heston's method, this time following the temperature and time instructions properly, is definitely on my to-do list once we move into the new house. I'm fascinated by my slowcooker and I can't wait to start experimenting on the different dishes that I can make in it. So far I've been using mother-in-laws (which is identical to mine), and I've experimented with dishes such as chilli con carne, stews and an amazingly rich and decadent chocolate mud cake. What I love about slowcooker recipes is that you usually just throw in the raw ingredients, switch the thing on, leave the house and slowcooker (safely) unattended for anywhere between 3 to 8 hours, and return to a kitchen full of intoxicating aromas and, more importantly, a ready-to-serve meal. I've been looking for reliable slowcooker recipes on the net for some time now so that I'll have a range of quick-resort meals for weekdays when I won't have time to cook dinner after work. On SlowAndSimple.com I've found quite a good list of recipes that sound interesting, whereas A Year of Crockpotting is a blog written by a slowcooker-obsessed cook who plans to use her slowcooker every single day of the year. While I definitely wouldn't want to use my slowcooker daily due to limitations that would bring along, I sure am looking forward to experiment with this cooking method. Right now though, I've got rooms to clean and vases to buy and curtains to hang.. hopefully the husband will be pleasantly surprised to see all the developments when he comes back on Thursday. From my calculations we should have moved in by the end of next week, so that's not too bad. I'll just have to keep myself from going crazy until the husband's return.. I was in such a bad way yesterday that I somehow ended up washing my car in the driveway - I decided that 2pm was the perfect time to wash my car.. it was scorching hot and I kept burning my feet on the pavement.. silly me. At least though, I could actually see through the car windows this morning on my way to work!