My 3 Favourite Chicken Dishes

Everybody loves a roast chicken. Usually when you roast a chicken there's lots of leftovers. So why not use that and make some delicious other dishes too, rather than letting it go to waste or sitting cold in the fridge. And I'm going to show you how I like to cook roast chicken and then turn it into three different dishes afterwards. Let's get stuck in and make them. We want to get the roast chicken in to start. First off I'm going to make a really nice rub. So we'll need to add in one large sprig of thyme, the zest of one whole lemon, some salt and pepper, 100 grams of unsalted butter, two cloves of grated garlic, two tablespoons of olive oil and blitz that all together. Olive oil here is just to help soften it a little bit otherwise the butter gets quite sticky. Also that will prevent the butter from burning quite as much when you put it on the chicken. And now to prep the potatoes. I'm using Marist Piper here. They are the best for roasting. They're the best all-round potato. If you're in America I think these are the same as russet potatoes. Let me know down in the comments below what the equivalent would be. Next up we want to finely slice two onions. Nothing too crazy here, just chop them into little pieces and then add them to the tray. Julienning an onion across the section like that is a lot better. Less juice comes out of the onion, you cry less, everyone's happy and it actually is better for the onion. You get a better texture to it. Weirdly enough. Pour over a generous amount of olive oil, season with some salt and pepper and then mix together. I'm going to link these in the description. These are the hex clad salt and pepper grinders. I have to say I think they're my favourite ever. They're really weighty, they give a really good grind. So we're going to leave the potatoes pretty basic here because we're going to have that herby butter. All the flavour from the chicken, almost like that chicken stock, the chicken fat will make these taste 10 times better. So you don't need to overpower it with spicy things, paprika, all of that kind of stuff. This is a very pared back, refreshing flavour. This is not how you get the crispiest chicken skin. This is how you get a lot of flavour into the chicken. With really crispy chicken skin you actually want to have it completely bare, you're going to dry brine it overnight with some salt on top like you would with a steak but for this video we are doing the most flavour. You can get into the chicken all on a whim, you don't need to prep this the night before, this can just go in the oven straight away. Putting this to 200 degrees celsius fan, so if you don't have a fan oven basically bump it up 20 degrees celsius, that's the best temperature for roasting. People may say 180 but I think that's more of a slower roast. 200 for crispy chicken is where you want to be. After about 40 minutes of roasting we want to take the chicken out. Now we're going to baste it with some of the juices from the chicken, make sure to tip any out that are in the cavity and pour this over the skin. This is extra flavour and helps keep the chicken very nice and juicy. Whilst the chicken's roasting we're going to make a homemade mayonnaise. Add in one egg yolk, one tablespoon of Dijon mustard, squeeze of lemon juice and mix together with a whisk, then stream in some olive oil whilst continuing to whisk. So this is the base for my Caesar dressing, this is not authentic but this is how I like to do it and this is perfect for a dish where we're going to have the potatoes, salad and chicken shredded over the top. Homemade mayonnaise always tastes great. Now we have the base of the Caesar dressing, our homemade mayonnaise, we're going to add in some anchovies. Make sure they're finely sliced so we don't get any chunks that are too big. So you're sort of making the anchovies into a paste, otherwise they get really chunky and you can taste it too much. The idea here is not to have any fishiness, it's to have a nice saltiness to the Caesar dressing. It's a traditional ingredient, if you don't like anchovies I promise you, include them, don't skip it, trust me. Add in a splash of Worcester sauce, grate in one clove of garlic, season with some salt and pepper and then the most important part, parmesan cheese. Add in some yogurt and finish with a squeeze of lemon juice and then mix together well until incorporated and there you have delicious homemade Caesar dressing. We've taken the chicken out, we're gonna let it rest for a little bit and whilst that's resting we're gonna whack the potatoes back in, get a little bit more caramelisation and then we'll take them out, plate it up and enjoy. Now it's time to shred the chicken. Don't worry about leaving a little bit of meat on the chicken because we're going to use this for another recipe, our chicken noodle soup. Making sure your hands are clean you can now pick off any leftover meat from the chicken, put your leftover bones in a pot. We're going to save these chicken breasts for a different recipe and then we're going to pick off all the meat from the legs. The main component of the salad is of course the lettuce. So here I've got an iceberg lettuce, we want to cut off the leaves, add this to a bowl with some watercress, some of the Caesar dressing, some olive oil and then mix together and serve this on a plate. Top this with some of the potatoes from the chicken, add the shredded chicken and then a lot more of the Caesar dressing, grate over some parmesan cheese, add some parsley on top and there you have the delicious Caesar salad. My roast chicken Caesar salad, it's so refreshing but really comforting and I think this is bang on and one that you should really consider making. Number one of how to roast chicken three ways. On to recipe two, chicken noodle soup. With the leftover bones we had from the chicken I'm going to make a really tasty broth. You're just going to add some water, we are going to add some aromatics such as spring onions, ginger, we're then going to be using some garlic cloves. You just need to bash these with the back of your knife and then chuck them in and then we're going to bring it to a gentle simmer over a medium low heat. I've got a gentle bubble on the broth and the scum has started to build around the side so we're going to just take that out. Whilst the broth is simmering away in the background I'm going to prep the fresh toppings for the soup. So we're going to begin by finely slicing some red chilli, I'm going to set that aside. I've then got some spring onions which I'm also going to finely slice and then we're just going to roughly chop some coriander to sprinkle on as well. So here we have the three main toppings, finally we have some bok choy and then I'm simply just going to cut each one right down the middle. Toppings are limitless with the soup, you can add as many as little as you want. To cook this I'm going to now strain the broth, we're then going to put this back in the clear broth, cook it for a few minutes then take it out and whilst that's steeping I'm going to season it. The saltiness I'm going to get through adding some soy sauce and the slight sweetness I'm going to get by adding a tiny bit of honey and a splash of mirin, so this still needs a little bit more salt. After a few minutes you'll be able to see that this is completely softened up so you can take this out. In the base of each bowl when you serve add a splash of soy sauce, I've got some fresh egg noodles, a nice big serving of the chicken broth, some of the bok choy, handful of the coriander, sprinkling of chilli, handful of spring onions, some of the sliced chicken and last but not least the crispy chilli oil. I have to say if there's one comfort dish I'd pick chicken broth is definitely up there. And now for our third and final recipe, marinate chicken. First things first let's make the paste. For the paste we have three garlic cloves, one bunch of basil leaves, one red chilli, 110 grams of sun-dried tomatoes, one tablespoon of tomato paste, a squeeze of lemon juice and the zest of one lemon, two tablespoons of sun-dried tomato oil, one tablespoon of water, two pinches of dried oregano, seasoned with salt and pepper, one teaspoon of smoked paprika and blitz it until it's nice and smooth. I have to say this gadget here is a coffee vice grinder, I think it's perfect for when you're doing small blends of pastes and spices so I'm going to link this in the description. So this is what the base of the paste should look like once you've blended it and that is going to be packed full of so much flavour. We've got the key component ready for the sauce, I'm now gonna build it and put it together. We're going to add some olive oil into the saucepan and get that up to a nice medium heat, we're then going to add the paste in on top of the oil and fry this for about three to five minutes until it is nice and fragrant and starting to cook through. As soon as the sauce hits the pan you can instantly smell all of those amazing flavours. Now we are at that point I'm going to add in the cream, stir this around, bring it all together and then we're going to cook it for about 10 minutes and let this simmer away until it is a nice thick consistency. After about 15 to 20 minutes the sauce has thickened up and is now perfect to add to our pasta once it's cooked. For the choice of pasta I'm using mezzi rigatoni, this is just shorter rigatoni pasta. So we're going to bring this to boil then cook it for 10 to 15 minutes, take off one or two minutes for that so you're cooking it just al dente because then we'll finish cooking when you add in the sauce in a second. Whilst the pasta's cooking the sauce is sitting aside ready, I'm going to carve my chicken breast that I cooked earlier on the roast chicken into nice slices and as an extra garnish I'm going to chop some more fresh basil. Now the pasta's cooked I'm going to scoop the pasta back into the pan of the sauce, we're then going to mix it around like this until it has emulsified with the sauce, created a really nice thick and glossy coating to the pasta and here we have it the marry me chicken pasta. We've got the roasted chicken breast with all the beautiful flavours from that butter on top of the creamy spiced pasta sauce, this is a winner. That is so good and that is how I've turned a roast chicken into three delicious dishes. We've had our chicken noodle soup, our marry me chicken and our roast chicken caesar salad. I think the amazing thing about this selection is they can be used for three completely different meals. Roasted chicken on a Sunday, you guys can have this throughout the week, you're using up all your leftovers, it's a really good way of utilising it and not wasting any food. If you guys enjoyed the video please remember to like, comment and subscribe and until next time, let's do some cooking!