Roasted butterflied chook you can prepare ahead of time
This succulent chicken recipe is all about creating a sense of home and bringing comfort.
Sunday is Mother’s Day, which has always been a big day in my family. My mother loves a celebration – any excuse to pop a bottle of champagne! But I know it can be a hard day for many. This recipe is all about creating a sense of home and bringing comfort.
Roasting a chook defines comfort food for me. And let’s face it, it’s one of those straightforward meals that anyone can throw together. I especially love roasting a butterflied chook, not only because it reduces the cooking time but because the chicken becomes a blanket over a bed of ingredients, allowing anything underneath to cook in its delicious juices and flavours. And in today’s case, that’s canned beans. I always have cans of beans in the pantry – chickpeas, butter beans, cannellini and borlotti – for quick, easy meals. You can’t beat soaking and cooking beans from dried (or when fresh borlotti hits the markets), but there’s no denying the convenience factor of canned beans.
Back to the chicken. To encourage an extra succulent bird I marinate it in buttermilk – a tip I picked up from Samin Nosrat’s inspirational book Salt Fat Acid Heat. Buttermilk helps tenderise the chicken and gives it a lovely golden crust. The result is worth the extra effort. I wanted to share this extra step with you, with the idea that you’ll be cooking this for Mother’s Day lunch, giving you plenty of time to hop to it and marinate the bird overnight. (I must confess, I have made this lots of times without marinating the chicken and the result is still delicious, so you’ll be forgiven if you do skip it.)
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RECIPE: Butterfly chook & butter beans
Ingredients
- 1 whole chook, butterflied, spine removed
- 500ml buttermilk
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 2 x 400g cans butter beans, drained and rinsed
- 1 red onion, cut into ½ cm slices
- 4 garlic cloves, finely sliced
- 2 sprigs rosemary
- 1 red chilli, deseeded and finely sliced
- 1 lemon, cut into quarters
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- Salt and pepper
- To serve, radicchio or rocket
Method
- Place your butterflied chicken in a large snap-lock bag. Pour in buttermilk and add 1 tablespoon of salt. Seal. Give it a move around in the bag and pop in the fridge for 8 hours or overnight to marinate. (It can be marinated in a container, if you prefer.)
- Preheat the oven to 200C. When ready to cook, remove chicken from the buttermilk, scraping much of the marinade off without being too fussy. Sit the bird on a rack to come to room temperature. Even if you don’t bother with buttermilk marinade, a key step when roasting a chook – or any meat for that matter – is to bring it to room temperature first.
- In a large baking tray, add drained beans, onion, garlic, rosemary, chilli and lemon. Drizzle over 1 tablespoon of olive oil and season. Give everything a good toss, then lay chicken over the top. Drizzle it with another tablespoon of olive oil and give it an extra season of salt and pepper.Pop in an oven and bake for 45-55 minutes until golden and cooked through. You might want to move your tray around in the oven to avoid getting hot spots on the chook. To test if it’s done, pierce the thigh with a skewer – the liquid should run clear. Remove from the oven and carefully put the chicken on a plate to the side; cover and leave to rest. To finish the beans, toss through some chopped radicchio or rocket. There should be lovely juices that will act as a dressing; pour into a dish and place chicken back on top. Serve in the middle of the table.