Oktoberfest Roast Chicken (Wiesnhendl) | Authentic German Recipe 🍗🇩🇪

Hi, wie geht's, wie steht's and welcome back to Cook Like a German. So what's going on? Well, we just started a mini series and it's called Oktoberfest because September 19th we have 192nd Oktoberfest in Munich and we want to cook a couple things what you get in a traditional tent in Munich. Today a Hähnlo, what is actually a roasted chicken Bavarian style and we will see what we have there. We have beer obviously, we have lemons for stuffing, thyme and rosemary from our garden, garlic and one onion. So then we have for basting this here. This is our Hähnlo spice, Hähnlo, the poultry spice we just made out of multiple spices. I'm not giving away yet what's in there because we have something new coming up for you guys and that's spice on the run where we actually show you different spices for all kind of food. So that's what we use for our Hähnlo. Dijon mustard, two tablespoons of butter and some lemon juice and of course we have that great stuff, the Hofbräuhaus Bavarian beer. We use this for basting. That's half a cup and then we have a little bit of our spice rub and another two spoons. That's what we baste like every 15-20 minutes while this little guy is actually in the oven. This is a free-range chicken. It's around four and a half pound. We will tie up the little leggies because we want to spin it later in our rotisserie. Traditionally in Bavaria, in the tents, those things will be all in professional giant rotisseries like you see here. We make a lot of chicken here too. But we will do our little mini version. We have this thing here if you never have seen it. It's a turkey frame. You can put a 20 pound turkey on that or a chicken in the oven in an angle and it will baste it inside a little bit easier and makes it more moist. So that's how we start out this little guy for one and a half hours. We start out 15 minutes with 425 going down to 350 for another one and a half hours. Our bird is clean. Running water outside inside and we now throw in actually that's one red onion. We follow with a half a lemon in there and we take one twig of rosemary and two of thyme from our garden. This all goes in. A little bit garlic. This is four cloves. We have some melted butter and our lemon juice. It's a Dijon and our secret spice rub. All right. Stuffed chicken. Oven is preheated. I made the rub. So now gently we rub this all over the chicken. You can go under the skin if you want to. Some people do but in this case I will just rub it. All right. 425. 15 minutes. This guy goes in. Our little bird here now after 25 to 30 minutes with beer, butter and our spice blend. We dropped it down to 375 and we do this every 20 minutes for the next hour. All right. While our chicken is nicely roasting we are making a little bit of beer gravy. For that we need, wait for me and the other half we are incorporating in our gravy with some butter, with some shallots, with some broth and a couple spices and a little bit fresh parsley. So that will go good when the bird is done and we can use all the drippings and put them in there as well. So we have the shallots and the garlic. We have a little bit of flour to make a roll with the butter and now half for me half for you. I get a little bit Oktoberfest. So I'm using beef broth but obviously chicken broth would be also very good because we are talking about the chicken here. But don't worry both works. So we are adding a little bit stock there. All right. We are reducing now but what we also add to it is a little bit Dijon and our Wiesn Handel super spice. Since I was six years old I was in charge of dressings and gravies in my family. So if they had a salad and we had some people over for dinner I made the dressings and when we had roasts and stuff like this I made the gravy. So I'm very attached to really good gravies and really good dressings. Not heavy duty stuff normally and I think everything comes down to taste and throw a couple ingredients in which actually work together and that's what we are doing here. All right. Our bird has landed and it looks good. I checked the temp. It's nice and moist in there. All the gravy drippings are in my Handel gravy. The red cabbage is re-warming up and we have the already made Bavarian cucumber salad with it. So let's see how we do it. You don't need the gravy but we made this nice gravy out of the drippings and I love gravy. All right. So this is what you get normally. Most people order half a chicken but it's big enough. This is a four pounder so it's like two and a half pounds. You get a red cabbage like Bavarian cucumber salad but some people get also like Bavarian potato salad. We did it too often. You have gravy on here because I like it but some people eat like little chicken bone here take it out or the wing and eat it by hand but I and a lot of Germans like to eat this and that's how we do it. It's super moist. It's so juicy. Flavored through and through. Simple cucumber Bavarian cucumber salad done in 10 minutes. Really good and it's a staple. Germans, Bavarians, they like the red cabbage and to wash it all down we are in the Oktoberfest. There are only six breweries who provide beer to the Oktoberfest. This is one of it. One of the old ones and cheers. Good luck. Prost. Love it.