Food : Bake in a Bag

While searching through Tesco's online, I stumbled on this.

A butter and parsley basted chicken that bakes in the bag. 

Never done that before! So, into the virtual cart it went.

I know there are ways to bake in a bag in the US. I also know that you can get prepared chicken, but I've never really seen a prepared whole chicken ready to cook in a bag before. (Was I blind? Possibly, but I don't think so.)

Plopped the whole thing into a baking pan (at least 5 cm deep) and stuck it in the oven for 55 minutes. Then, I had to take it out, cut the bag open, and baste the chicken with the melted butter. Back in the oven for 20 minutes, then out of the oven and covered in tinfoil for 10 minutes (which I still don't have, so I cover it with a towel).

Before cooking, however, E&W googled the oven for me. The bottom oven is a fan oven (aka convection oven) which cooks by circulating heat around the oven. The top oven is a conventional oven. It cooks by heating to a desired temperature and "blanketing" the food with heat. Hallelujah! At least I could figure out what temp to cook the chicken at properly.

The above picture is from meat and haggis pies, but shows how packaging here gives 3 temps for cooking dependent upon your own oven. This one doesn't show a fan setting, but the chicken one did. For the record, 180° C is 356° F and 200° C is 392° F; close enough to what I'm use to, to work. Now I just need to commit it to memory (although I think I've got it as I did that off the top of my head and when I double checked for accuracy, I was right.)

We had roasted sweet potato wedges and pan-fried Brussels Sprouts with the chicken.

I apparently still need to figure out the upper oven as I decimated our poor roasted sweet potato wedges. I think I put them in too early or at too high a temp or, frankly, a bit of both.

The sprouts were about half the size of the ones I get in the US.

The chicken didn't brown properly which is my fault. Not really thinking about it, after basting it, I put the bag around it again when I should have pushed it down. You can clearly see where the bag didn't cover the chicken  and how beautifully it started to brown. 

But it's actually irrelevant.

It was so good! So much flavor! The Brussels Sprouts were just as delicious and the sweet potatoes had a bit a flavor even after burning them.
Highly suspect that they would have been superb cooked properly.

Here's the thing I'm wondering now though . . . In the US, affordable chicken was huge and often completely flavorless; how it's cooked adds the flavor. But the chicken here was slightly smaller and brimming with the flavor of chicken. Perhaps growing chickens too quickly with hormones and plumping the meat with injected water and broth is killing the proper size and flavor of chickens in the US.

I guess we'll find out for certain each time we have chicken in the future, which I'm looking forward to.

As a lovely side note . . .

This is in our kitchen.

After talking with Anne, who is married to our landlord, Anthony, I know exactly what to keep for the hens. Last night's Brussels Sprouts cut-offs and leaves as well as sweet potato ends and scraps are going to the hens. Apparently, they'll eat anything, including spaghetti, but meat and eggs are a no-go (duh!). 

The hens are located on a part of the farm that is quite busy with people, so we will not be able to meet them until next week. But once we are out of quarantine, we'll be able to meet them, feed them, and collect eggs ourselves.

I'm so excited!!

One of the girls said, "Is this a Peabody duck thing again, Mom?"

I cried when I got to ride in the elevator with the Peabody ducks at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis for my birthday. So clearly, my answer was, "But, of course!"