Roast Chicken, The Meal That Keeps on Giving = Ancient Roman Home Food
Whoo hoo, Fred Meyer…roasting chickens for $.88/lb.; I got one for $4.23 and is it going to work hard. Cooking-from-scratch is the way to go for thrift, but is it ever time consuming, so any way I can save time and effort = great! Ta da, enter my Romertoph Clay Baker. Actually, this is a reentry, as I haven’t used my Clay Baker for several years; it took me some time to find it in the back of the cupboard.
Dinner: Core Meal #2 Roast Chicken
Dinner Prep on Wednesday, Hunger Challenge Day #3. Roasting chicken in my faithful clay baker. Seasonings are salt, pepper, lemon, garlic and in the plastic bulk-buying bags: sage and bay leaves. The chicken looks a bit odd because I’m experimenting; the chicken is going to cook breast down in the clay baker.
Tried an experiment with my clay baker, I cooked the chicken upside-down, with the breast on the bottom. Done with the breast up the result is a gorgeous brown, crispy chicken. My experiment was a success; the result wasn’t as gorgeous looking but was it ever delicious! The meat was so moist and flavorful. The breast meat was essentially poached. My daughter declared it the best ever.
Accompanying the roast chicken were oven roasted root vegetables. In keeping with tonight’s minimizing time/effort theme, they can cook on an open pan in the 450 degree oven with the chicken. The cut-up vegetables were seasoned wit
h salt & pepper and tossed with clarified butter (couldn’t afford the oil normally used, but clarified butter is great).
Dinner tonight was a huge success. Simple, thrifty and really good. Plus a lot of leftovers for more meals. Yup, this is Home Food at its best. The clay baker saw its day a few years ago as a trendy item, then it was forgotten. I’m going to keep mine at the front of the cupboard now, the result tonight was that good. Apparently the ancient Roman Army created their own clay bakers by encasing a fowl in wet mud then cooking it in a campfire. That’s good enough for me; the clay baker is actually a classic, rather than a trend.
