Hello Dear Reader,
There is such thing as a free lunch! Tesco sent me all the ingredients to make Glazed Roast Chicken. Apparently, Plymouth's favourite meal is the traditional Sunday lunch and to be honest, who can blame them? I hope their campaign gets people trying new ideas and new recipes as I'd never have smothered an £8.31 chicken in anything at all if I'd paid for it!
Here goes! This is the recipe they wanted me to try and then review.
First of all, you'll need a lie down if you've just paid £8.31 for a chicken! I remember now why we don't eat it other than for Christmas lunch! It is so expensive. Never fear, I'm going to strip that bird, make stock, soup and use every last scrap of it. Another way of looking at the campaign is to think about the ever increasing cost of food and for all of us to be as creative as possible with our budgets, eat the best we can within our price range and to love every mouthful because we've paid a lot for it.
Glazed Roast Chicken
6 tbsp of runny honey
5 tbsp of soy sauce
6 garlic cloves - crushed
1 inch cube or a little more of ginger, peeled and grated
5 tbsp of rice wine (I tested this and it tasted of corked wine - you could use wine or sherry or splash of watered down vinegar)
1 big chicken
1kg of charlotte potatoes (I used half this amount and it was still way too much and I have a pan full left to use, and don't worry.....I will use them) - cut them in half.
1 or 2 lemons thinly sliced
1 tbsp of olive oil - or any oil would do.
1 pack of tenderstem broccoli - (I would not have bought this, it's out of season and flown in from Kenya - I would use summer peas, broad beans, spring greens, wilted summer spinach or carrots - but I won't throw food away and it was lovely!)
Preheat the oven to gas 6, 200C or fan 180C
Combine the honey, soy, ginger, garlic and rice wine in a pan.
Bring to the boil and keep stirring until it becomes sticky. I think that soft brown sugar would have worked better than honey as this never became sticky and didn't coat the chicken.
Put the chicken in a roasting dish and cover with the glaze. The instructions told me to brush it on but the ginger and garlic got stuck in the brush!
I covered this in foil, I didn't want an £8.31 chicken to shrink to the size of a sparrow.
Cook in the oven for 1 hour 20/30 minutes - but baste every 30 minutes.
In a roasting tin, toss the potatoes with the lemons, oil and some seasoning - I added more oil.
Roast them in the oven for the last 30 minutes of cooking time along with the chicken.
Boil the broccoli for 3 - 5 minutes and serve with the chicken and potatoes.
I poured the juices from the chicken, along with the marinade that was in the bottom of the roasting tin, into a gravy jug and skimmed the fat off and then poured it all over the chicken.
Now don't get me wrong, I enjoyed this, but put this in front of a Janner and I don't think this is the Sunday roast they were thinking of. The sticky sauce was a delicious combination of honey, ginger and garlic but I felt it masked the natural taste of the chicken. I like my Sunday roast with all the 'trimmings' of stuffing, heaps of steamed seasonal veg, some gravy made from the giblets and if I'm using new potatoes then I like them lightly boiled with a sprig of mint.
I'm going to enjoy using the rest of the chicken, the new potatoes and the other ingredients I was sent. We certainly did love every mouthful and I can definitely recommend the sticky ginger sauce recipe.
Over to you Dear Reader, is it just me or are we all finding the cost of meat almost prohibitively expensive?
Until tomorrow,
Love Froogs xxxxxxx
The food looks delicious, as usual Froogs. I agree whole heartedly about the cost of meat. We were asked to take 30 large breed sussex cockerels aged 3 weeks, which would be simply culled. The people who had them felt despite being a luxury table stock, that they were unprofitable. So, free chicken, but nope, it is going to cost us about £5 a bird to rear them to table weight. I'm doing it, because I couldn't buy large free-range, organically reared chicken for £5, but still... It is not cheap, and I'm not counting the man hours that will go into keeping these birds happy, healthy and then processed. It is hard going out there, and I am grateful we have so many laying hens to keep use in cheap protein. I just feel shocked every time I walk into a grocery shop.
ReplyDeleteChickens will eat anything, we have chickens at the end of our garden (there not ours tho long story) and the owners a dinner lady, she brings home scrapes for them and feeds them peelings.
DeleteI'd recommend feeding them peelings and any reduced bread or veg you can get your hands on.
Meat is expensive. I have to agree though I would not cover a roasted bird in honey and ginger. A stir fry would be lovely though. I had a flat mate ruin a brand new pan cooking chicken and honey. She lined it with foil and the corning ware never recovered from her harsh treatment. But a simple roast with a decent stuffing is fantastic.
ReplyDeleteMama Dragon it astonishes me that farmers receive so little for their hard work.
We kept chickens for meat and eggs when we were children. We fed them scraps and wheat tops - also corn cobs dried from the summer. We fed them cooked potato peelings and carrots tops, cabbages and anything we had but no meat. we used to have a slaughter day and it stunk and what a mess, then a freezer full of chickens, we used to do about ten at a time. ours were organic, sometimes when we slaughtered them, they had illness or worms and we had to burn them on the bonfire - they never had anti biotics and if they got ill, dad just pulled their necks - we raised all our own chicks - we used to get young turkeys and geese in the autumn and fatten them for christmas and they used to go away alive to be slaughtered professionally so they could be sold. oh the glory days before defra!
ReplyDeleteToo true! I wish we could feed them our surplus, but unfortunately the only vegetable tops they are allowed is when they break into our cold frames and greenhouse. Though that is far from a frugal way to feed poultry!
DeleteHi mama deagon - you can feed them what you like and slaughter them yourself if they are for personal consumption. There is a lot of black market farm meat round my wAy
DeleteThat is good to know. I may alter and reduce the cost of feeding them then. I'm sure they would prefer it! I have always been a little concerned about being reported by a busy body, so I have always done it by the 'rules' so to speak.
DeleteFroogs is absolutely right. If they are for your own consumption and that of family living in your house you CAN feed them on scraps and anything you want and slaughter them yourself when the time comes. Only if they are for sale or being given away to others do you have to abide by all the excessive rules.
DeleteThere is nothing for anyone to report you for unless they saw a sign at your gate offering free range prepared chickens for sale.
Go for it.
The meal looks amazing, but who would pay over £8 for a chicken, even a free-range one? Aldi do lovely free-range chickens for £4.99. Like you I make several meals from one chicken, using even the tiniest scraps in soup or with savoury rice and vegetables.
ReplyDeleteDidn't see this post. I'm glad to see that it's possible for folks on a budget to be able to get free-range chicken at an affordable price.
DeleteI think meat is expensive, but i think it has made me (or at least if i look at it this way it doesn't annoy me so much)more respectful of it.
ReplyDeleteSadly for me Hubby won't have a veggie dinner, however i work in town and normally at lunch time i can time it right and get all of the reduced things in a supermarket. We also have a square of puff pastry or yorkshire puddings and skirlie (oats, onions and fat) or white pudding along with all the veg if its a sunday dinner. So our plate fills up with cheaper things.
This looks delicious! I can't wait to try this. Excellent idea and it's frugal to boot.
ReplyDeleteChicken has been the cheapest meat in the US for years, but the price has about doubled within the past two years. Last week I got fresh bone-in chicken breasts for the unheard-of price of $1.39 lb., and I cooked 6 lbs. and cubed and froze them in 2 cup packages (most recipes for cooked chicken call for 2 cups of cooked chicken). I got 10 cups of chicken plus lovely broth, which I froze for soup.
ReplyDeleteWhat is a Janner?
ReplyDeleteWhat is a Janner?
ReplyDeleteA plymouthian
DeleteI would have cooked a meal such as this once upon a time when I was young and naive. Now that I am older and wiser a meal such as this is too extravagant. If I were to buy all the ingredients listed they would just about amount to my total food budget for the week. I am not good at converting English pounds to Aussie dollars but was that an organic free range chook at that price? I should hope so! The irony of meat prices is that the farmer gets next to nothing for his/her hard work but we pay exorbitant prices at the supermarket. What I want from my Telsco equivalent store is a fair purchase price for me the consumer, a fair sale price for the farmer who made it all possible, and, a product that is from a local farmer and is ethically produced. Is that too much to ask Mr Telco and co?
DeleteThank you! I've made a similar glaze/marinade for chicken drumsticks or thighs in the past - not that I would go out and buy any of the ingredients specially, just mix together differing amounts according to what I had available. Very nice.
DeleteEgads! If my calculations are correct, you paid the equivalant of $2.91/lb US dollars for that chicken (ok Tesco charges). Thud! I can see why chicken would rarely grace the table! My go to price is 99/lb for both oven stuffer roasters as well as fryers. Common "on sale" price. Aldi's even charges 89/lb. Today, I added 2 fryers to my freezer as the local, very expensive, independent store was having an anniversary sale on fryers @ 79/lb, limit 2. I got my 2, thank you very much, along with some other loss leaders. Looking around the store, I was quickly reminded why I don't normally frequent that shop, I simply can't afford to!
ReplyDeleteLovely that you were able to give their recipe a go, as a freebie to you and DB. Looking forward to your upcoming blog (assumed) on how far you were able to stretch that chicken!
I also agree-eat seasonally, support the local farmer, lower the carbon footprint.
Carol in CT
Ha ha, love the Janner comment. Spoken like a true Cornish woman. X
ReplyDeleteI recently paid £6 for a free range chook from my local butcher but I got six meals from it and would rather have decent meat infrequently, than processed crap often. I regularly make veggie meals in my slow cooker and did your butternut squash tagine the other day.
ReplyDeleteYour meal above looks delish but I probably wouldn't be arsed to make the marinade as like you I prefer a plain roast.
I don't always spend £8.31 on an entire week's shop! I do eat meat, but I agree that the rising prices have made it a luxury rather than an everyday item. The glaze looks lovely though, I wonder what it would be like on roasted vegetables?
ReplyDeleteI was wondering what a Janner is too? The chicken did look tasty I've got to say, but you really made me laugh when you said "First of all, you'll need a lie down if you've just paid £8.31 for a chicken!" I think you are so right lol
ReplyDeleteSadly I believe free-range meat is probably far too expensive for the pockets of most people on very tight budgets. Were I a meat eater on a low income, I would still however try to purchase 'higher welfare' chicken. While I appreciate that it is still no doubt somewhat more expensive, there are some places you can get it that don't charge the earth. While Waitrose doesn't necessarily shout 'budget' all of Waitrose's "essential" (basics) range of chicken is higher welfare (albeit not free-range, but still I believe a better choice for the animals than battery cage). In the freezer section you can get a 1.5 kilo 'higher welfare' chicken for £3.99, which although it may not be as cheap as a cage reared bird, sounds fairly good value to me. I don't know what other folks think? Is it possible to get 'higher welfare' chicken cheaply elsewhere?
ReplyDeleteJust to point out no 'caged' birds go into the human food chain. Birds for meat are reared in huge barns, thousands at a time and are ready for consumption in a matter of weeks. This is why there is no taste in most cheap chicken, the bird does not have time or space to use muscles, they are merely fed to fatten them with food laced with antibiotics to keep down the incidence of sickness in the mass overcrowding.
DeleteYou can get 'free range' chicken occasionally on offer and it is always worth stocking up when you see it or look out for reduced sticker items.
Yes, the price of meat is out of sight, if it wasn't for yellow stickers I don't think we'd be eating much of it.
ReplyDeleteI don't buy whole chickens any more unless there reduced. I actually find chicken breasts better value, however I can get massive ones for less than 80p a breast bulk buying, 2 feeds 5 of us in a casserole or pie and even one will do a stew, 3 does a roast dinner. Where as I wouldn't be able to get a chicken for less than £5 to do us all and to top it off I don't like chicken stock!
ReplyDeleteI did wonder when I opened this if you'd taken leave of your senses and bought stem broccoli and 2 for £3!! I did actually get the asda version for 10p a few weeks back it was lovely but not worth £1.50!!
I nearly choked at the cost but it does look good. I make sticky glazes, I use my homemade plum jam or jelly with stem ginger and a squeeze of lemon. I add garlic cloves grated, fresh finely diced chilli either and both. I just add the ingredients to the jars and fill up with the preserve. That way I get a variety of flavours at one fell swoop. With a shake of soy sauce and a splash of cheap sherry and whatever else I feel like adding in it makes a tasty and cheap sauce.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteMy family gave this a thumbs up. It was delicious on the chicken legs. I used vinegar and water instead of the wine as you suggested, and brown sugar instead of honey. I soaked the pan for a couple of hours and it washed up easily. Thanks for the recipe.
DeleteI found a bulk buy of chicken legs at the bottom of our freezer and I think your recipe will be good to use them up.. Hold yourself up now when I tell you that a 3 lb chicken will cost you £16 here in Norway, and that's not free range or organic!
ReplyDeleteAm I the only person that thinks shops are selling smaller and smaller chicken? We used to buy a large chicken and have meat left over. Now a large chicken is 2 ish kg,and that doesn't leave much left when my family of 6 (3 teenage boys) have eaten Sunday lunch!
ReplyDeleteYour meal looks delicious. I would certainly try this.
ReplyDeleteI have 32 new hens to choose from ....when I am considering this recipe
ReplyDeleteNaughty!!
DeleteI am with you Frugal, a whole chicken is becoming a bit more of a treat. It does look tasty, but if I am spending that much, I too would rather be not covering it with lots of sauce. I would just rub a touch of olive oil on the skin with seasoning, and roast lots of veg in the same pan.
ReplyDeleteOur factory farmed chickens are half the price, but that is what we would pay for a free range chicken. Wow - did I read that one of your readers can buy chicken breast for 80p each!! In our supermarket they are about $2.50 each here in NZ.
Julie Q
Yum!
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteYour dish looks lovely though I agree this is a very expensive way of cooking. I would never buy such chicken because I believe it is mainly supermarket rip-off playing on our conscience, beliefs and so on.
ReplyDeleteYou are so lucky to only pay 8 pounds for that chook! I find meat crazy crazy expensive. I've stopped buying lamb for this reason. Washing the chicken pan look like hard work! I line mine before I roast because I loathe the scrubbing! Good luck with the house sale x
ReplyDeleteI too find meat extremely expensive. I never buy lamb either any more although I love it! I certainly would never spend £8+ on a chicken! I don't have meat every days either, and when I do buy meat I make it last. Nothing is wasted.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it's just supermarkets either. I hear people online talk about cheap butchers, cheap farmers markets. Cheap butchers? Cheap farmers markets? Where? Certainly not round here!
This recipe you cooked looks absolutely lovely and I will try at some point so thanks for sharing this :-)
In the past, I have reared chickens, although we only killed the surplus cockerels and they were always a bit boney and toughish - hence coq-au-vin.Not this year though.
ReplyDeleteWe have our own turkeys, they fatten very easily on maize and wheat, with our own garden greens and waste thrown in. We kill and butcher, which I hate. They cost us around £2 a pound - we'll have one for Christmas, the leftovers into freezer meals, we might 'sell' one to pay for the feed (then they cost us virtually nothing) and the rest will be cut up, into the freezer raw. The lambs cost us about the same, but we get them slaughtered and butchered. We do use a lot of lentils/chic peas/kidney beans to eke out the meat. We have to - can't afford to buy it now.
Oh, and I do buy a couple of shoulders of pork when they are on VERY special offer, joint up etc, and they cost about £2 a kilo too.
£2 a kilo seems to be my maximum.
That's this year's plan anyway.
Now I WOULD pay this for a corn-fed free range chicken, knowing the price of corn and the price the farmer deserves to get for the rearing of the bird I think it's fair. I guess I will be a lone voice here, but I would rather spend a bit more and make every last bit of meat and bone work for me.
ReplyDeleteSaying that I would only buy it usually when it is proudly displaying a yellow sticker, and then the supermarket has to take the drop in profit, not the farmer who has already been paid (hopefully) :-)
I would never buy a free range chicken, they are too far out of my price range.
ReplyDeleteI do get 3 meals for 2 of us as well as stock out of the Aldi chicken I buy. Last week DD2 cooked chicken for my birthday supper, 4 of us had plenty and there was enough left over for OH and myself to have with salad the next night.
I usually buy 1 chicken a month for Sunday and we finish it off in the week. Prefer beef for Christmas lunch. last year I got a joint from Lidl in October, it was around £9 did us lunch, supper boxing day and then several more meals after I sliced it, wrapped in cling film and froze it. We finished the last pack on Easter Sunday as I was emptying the freezer ready to move.
Hiya firstly i saw the puic of the ingredients and thought you'd won the lottery. I do find meat really expensive especially chicken it use to a relatively cheap meal but I can't very often afford to do a roast dinner, I also feel beef has gone up in price too.
ReplyDelete