Garlic Rice Roast Chicken - Food Wishes

hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with garlic rice roast chicken that's right we've done chicken next to rice and we've done chicken on rice and in rice but i believe this is the first time we're going to reverse that or as we used to say back in the early 90s flip the script and do the rice in the chicken and no not stuffed in the cavity this experiment involved stuffing the rice under the skin and the results really were spectacular so with that let's go ahead and get started with what originally inspired this video and that was about a cup and a half or so of cold white leftover rice from some thai food takeout if you must know and to that what we'll do is add a whole bunch of freshly crushed garlic or very very very finely minced we will also add some freshly chopped chicken friendly herbs which in my case were thyme rosemary and parsley sorry sage and then we'll season that up with some freshly ground black pepper plus a generous sprinkling of kosher salt as well as a little shake of cayenne pepper and then last but not least a fairly significant amount of melted butter and by the way if you melt butter in a pan and then let it sit there as it starts to cool it kind of forms a flaky crust on the top which i only mentioned to explain that weird looking flaky crust on the top but anyway once everything's in there we'll go ahead and give this a mix and we will keep mixing until we are 100 confident every grain of rice has been coated in that butter at which point we should probably transfer this into the fridge since it's going to be a lot easier to work with once that butter firms up and while that's chilling we can move on to prep our chicken and by prep i mean stick our fingers under the skin right where the back of the breast meets the cavity okay the skin is usually pretty loose there and what we'll want to do here is take some kind of thin spatula or spoon and we'll slide that in between the skin and the flesh loosening that skin all the way to the front of the bird which if you're doing with a spatula like this is fairly easy since raw chicken skin is very tough and does not tear easily so as long as you're using something that doesn't have any really sharp edges it should work just fine and if you'll notice we're going on either side of the breastbone which for mostly presentational purposes we want that skin to stay attached and that's it once our skin has been successfully and thoughtfully loosened we'll go ahead and transfer our chicken into a lightly oiled oven safe skillet or roasting pan or i prefer a pan since it's easier to make a pan sauce later but as long as it can go in an oven you're fine and then what we'll do is pull our cold garlic rice mixture out of the fridge and we'll proceed to stuff as much as we can under the skin over each breast and know there is no neat or graceful or elegant way to do this just grab some in your hands and shove it in and then once you've squeezed a certain amount in there and it's starting to build up what we can do is kind of press and push our fingers along the surface working that mixture towards the front of the bird and it's very difficult to tell you how much exactly you're going to be able to fit in there okay if we really really overstuff it that skin could rupture as a rose or it might just start pushing out of the opening so we don't want to go with a crazy amount but i would say we want to try to get at least like a two inch thick layer in there and no matter how much you manage to stuff in there we'll want to make sure we're sliding our fingers over the surface to sort of shape this into the natural contours of the breast okay anytime you're going to enhance breasts like this we really do want them to look natural so you may need to do a little bit of shaping and then what we'll do with any of the leftover rice which i'm guessing you'll have a little bit of is we'll go ahead and simply add that to the cavity and of course any of that garlic rice that's fallen into the pan should be snatched up and also placed in the cavity and then what we'll do once that set is go ahead and tie our legs together with a little piece of kitchen string or plain dental floss and by the way that is technically optional all right a lot of chefs say that doesn't make any difference but on the other hand a lot of chefs say it does especially the ones i learned from in culinary school so mostly by habit i do tie mine up and then before this goes in the oven we'll want to give it a very generous saltine or a bottom sides and top and that's it once the outside surface has been sufficiently seasoned we'll go ahead and transfer that into the center of a 425 degree oven for about an hour or until your bird is what you would consider safely cooked and if everything goes according to plan it should look like one of the most beautiful roast chickens you've ever seen i mean come on look at that just absolutely stunning oh and of course since this pan has a handle that's really hot we will always place a towel over that until it's cooled but anyway what we're going to do at this point is transfer that to our cutting board to rest for about 5 or 10 minutes and while we're waiting let's go ahead and put that pan back on the stove over medium-high heat and we will simply add some sherry vinegar or the vinegar of your choice to these pan drippings and we'll go ahead and bring that up to a boil while we scraping to glaze all that goodness off the bottom and that's it you just witnessed how to make the world's simplest pan sauce all right we have those flavorful juices that gloriously garlicky chicken fat and beautiful acidic flavorful vinegar to balance everything perfectly and once that's boiled and reduced a little bit we can simply turn that off and serve it as is or if we want to get fancy we could strain it but the point is that is ready to go so i set that aside and went ahead and cut into my chicken and as i removed that section of the breast i was extremely happy with what i saw all right that meat looked very moist and juicy and i thought that rice stuffing was pretty well behaved all right i was afraid it was going to kind of crumble all over the place but that really wasn't the case and above and beyond appearance man was that stuff delicious okay if you told me you were gonna take the chicken and just leave me with the rice i would have been fine with that so the rice tasted amazing but i wanted to taste everything all together so i cut a piece off and drizzled down a little bit of our quick and easy pan sauce and that my friends was the perfect bite of food right it's very difficult to describe just how delicious that was so i cussed them up and went ahead and served on a plate next to some beautiful braised greens and since not all the chicken has rice attached i decide to place those pieces down first and then top it with those beautiful slices of skin and breast meat before finishing up with our pan drippings and above and beyond producing one of the most gorgeous roast chickens i've seen in a long time i found that stuffing that rice under the skin had three main benefits okay first of all it insulated our breast meat so it cooked a little slower which means it did not dry out while the dark meat was finishing cooking all right this meat was extremely moist and juicy and then secondly because it kind of stretched the skin out and separated it from the surface that skin got beautifully browned and crispy and virtually all the fat rendered out and there was none of that flabby fat you sometimes get under the skin with a roasted chicken and then thirdly speaking of rendered fat guess where all that delicious chicken skin fat went that's right it was absorbed by the rice which was already delicious with the butter and garlic and herbs but that extra richness from the chicken fat took it up to the next level oh and i actually should have said four benefits because i'm skipping over one of the most obvious ones and that's being able to flavor the chicken from the inside out or if you season the chicken on the outside a lot of that just stays on the surface and really doesn't get into the meat as well as when it's actually touching the meat like we have going on here so let's update that to four official advantages and maybe the best news you could do this exact same technique by using all kinds of different herbs and spices and flavorings i mean you are after all the john mitzvich the third of your garlic rice stuff bird and i really do hope you take this basic technique and then come up with your own fabulous variations but whether you decide to do that or make this exactly as shown i really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 281,592

Rating: 4.9547272 out of 5

Keywords: chicken, garlic, rice, roast, roasted, stuffed, chef, john, food, wishes, recipe, easy, butter, poultry

Id: KEaG-Ljb8cY

Length: 8min 8sec (488 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 28 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/PK_RocknRoll]

I’ve gotta try this one