Saturday, August 29, 2009

The best chicken stuffing (seasoning) imho

The best stuffing for chicken I have ever tasted is, in my humble opinion, my mother's recipe.  (Stuffing or seasoning - what you put in the bird's cavity before roasting it).  It's dead simple, and I've never seen a formal recipe for it anywhere, or tasted it anywhere else but when it's been made by Mum, or another one of my family.  It's not one where I can give exact quantities, but you'll get the idea and be able to make it yourself.  Quantities also depend on the size of the chook you're cooking.  If you make too much, cook the leftover in a small ovenproof bowl, but it will probably need less time than the stuffed chook.  (If the stuffing in the bowl burns, that was probably too long...).
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Start by setting some butter to melt - maybe a couple of tablespoonsful?
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You need bread: maybe two or three slices of fresh bread, whizzed in the blender.
A couple of rashers of bacon.  Take off the rinds and chop or whizz the rest (I put the rinds on top of the bird, where they crisp while it cooks and often don't make it to the final plates of dinner...)
Parsley.  I like a bit of this, maybe 1/3 of a bunch (four or five decently bushy stalks) - whizz in the blender, stalks and all (the flavour's in the stalks and the greenery adds green).  Also nice when picked from your garden.
Put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix - the melted butter will bind them together.  You want it just sort of holding together, not sloppy with butter. 
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Don't get fancy-schmancy with adding more herbs, or anything else (except maybe a little coarse-ground black pepper).  Just try this once the simple way.  You can make fancier stuffings/seasonings, but this one, simple as it is, is hard to beat.  Fill the cavity of the chook, and roast it as you normally would (a chicken with stuffing always needs longer than a chicken without).  Another family habit is to cover the chicken with bacon when you put it in to cook.  Take the bacon off when it's nearly done so it can brown up nicely.   See?
Yum. 
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1 comment:

Pam said...

I'm vegetarian but my husband's not so I shall try it on him some time when we have company.

I liked your sad little meme. Hope the things you can't change do a bit of spontaneous changing. (Don't tell me YOUR daughter's going out with an actor too...? - sigh.)