My husband pointed out yesterday that if we didn't have extravagant meals all the time maybe we wouldn't have so much washing up to do! I seriously doubt it would affect it hugely, but I decided to make dinner in one dish last night and see how it went.
Chicken, cut up onions, carrots, cauliflower and mushrooms with a cup of brown rice and a box of chicken stock, salt, pepper and a couple of bay leaves.
I covered it in foil for the first 45minutes hoping that it would steam and help the rice cook nicely. The oven was between 375 and 400, I wasn't precise with it. Now, normally, a chicken this size would be cooked in about 1 1/2hrs at this temperature but when I checked on this one there was not much going on. The top was cooking as usual but the bottom half, mainly the thighs, was so deeply buried in veg and rice that it didn't seem to be responding too well. After about 1 1/2hrs I ended up taking the chicken out and putting it on a foil lined tray to cook as normal (foil lined to avoid washing it, and hence keeping the washing amount down!).
I don't even know how long it took to cook altogether to be honest, I kept checking on it, adding 10minutes to the timer, checking it again and so on. I would say that this method of cooking only works if you are cooking it at a lower temperature and have lots of time to wait. It would work also if you had small pieces of meat rather than a whole chicken. If you want dinner in a normal time frame, cook the chicken separately.
The rest of the dish came out really well, like a brown rice casserole, with lots of flavours running through it.
Eventually the chicken was ready. Though I had had to cut through the thigh part to check on it so many times it wasn't very pretty, but it did taste wonderful.
I still had gravy to make so there was a second pot/pan to wash regardless! I say, make the meal you want to and deal with the washing up afterwards! I made a chilli mayo to go with it which was a great bit of heat on the side.
No comments:
Post a Comment