Blumenthal's roast chicken

Well, it has just happened. I bought a gorgeous free range chicken on Saturday, no not a Bresse, but a great quality Swiss chicken. Compared to a usual chicken it has a longer breast, longer legs, no wonder, after all it runs around outside for almost 3 months.


On the way home I was wondering if I should go for it. If I should go for Heston Blumenthal's way of preparing the "perfect" roast chicken. After all perfection is totally subjective. Although, it was already quite late afternoon, I had the book in one hand, in the other the chicken and I started. I put it in a bowl and filled it with water to count how much salt it needs. In fact, I prepared two chickens: the so to say kind of deluxe one (though I believe that should be the only way to raise chickens) and an organic chicken (that one had a more round breast, and rather strange short legs, like most chicken have in the stores). After all, if I went for the preparation of Blumenthal, why shouldn't I experiment a bit, at least as far as it is possible in my tiny kitchen. So meanwhile I had both chickens having a bath of 6 hours in salty water. It was already late evening when I started to rinse them for an hour. Then around midnight I was dunking them in hot water. Finally, I put them in the fridge covered with a cheesecloth to wish them good night, well to let them dry overnight. The next day, I preheated to oven to the magical 60°C and left the chickens in there for about 6 hours, but I didn't quite trust them yet, so I gave them another 45 minutes. Of course this mission wouldn't been completed without the roasted potatoes, the carrots and the broccoli.


The potatoes are fabulous, but I must say the carrots were the best! I have never ever had carrots in my entire life like those! And they are so easy to prepare! On low heat, among butter, salt and pepper. Just leave them there for 40-50 minutes. That's all! And the chicken? It melts in your mouth! The only difficulty in the recipe is at the end, when you have to fry a chicken in a pan, that is quite a task! But the crispy skin worth it for sure!