🎄🍗🐓🐔🎅⛄Claire's Crazy Cakes, Bakes and Kitchen Hacks: Chapter 34.1 Traditional Roast Chicken With Perfect Stuffing and Gravy🎄🍗🐓🐔🎅⛄

In case you're wondering, no, I'm not done, and I still have a few more Christmas secrets to give away, but let's look at this fantastic Christmas meal, that is perfect absolutely every time, and completely failproof. I've proven that now that this Christmas was almost canceled due to a broken oven. But lots of love and attention, an extra tiny oven, and a Weber made this all possible.

Let's face it, no one likes turkey. So When it comes to Christmas, I know one chicken will never suffice, so I made two! The non-negotiable tricks and my absolute best-kept secrets with my roast chicken, whether it's a full-on traditional one like this one or if it's my drunk bacon chicken (a good alternative for people who don't like traditional stuffing): The rules are:

**1. Don't rush it

1. Don't skimp on the wine
2. Never ever skimp on the garlic (this is true for all of my main course recipies
3. cook with love**

Claire's Crazy Cakes, Bakes and Kitchen Hacks: Chapter 17 - One Pan Easy Roast Drunk Bacon Chicken

These rules make this chicken the absolute best you will ever have. Which ever variation you choose, because they're based on the same principals. And believe me, once you've made either one, you'll never want to cook chicken any other way.

This way, you cannot tell the difference between thigh and breast meat, because its all so tender and juicy. No matter what part of the chicken you end up with, you will feel utterly spoilt as every part of it will be filled with love (and possible cardiac failure!)

Ingredients:
2 whole free-range chickens at roughly 1.8kgs each
a 100g tub of chicken livers
4 or 5 large grated carrots
4 slices of bread (can be stale bread even. Makes no difference.

6 generous spoons of herb mix (which is similar to Crack but without the chillies). I made mine with tonnes of fresh basil, fresh rosemary, 4 whole bulbs of garlic and olive oil. I went through the whole lot between all my Christmas roasts
4 large eggs (well 10 in total cause you'll need some for the roasting pan as well)
3 large onions
200-300g of pure butter
Seasoning salt
Lots of wine (about a bottle - 750ml)
Tin foil

Start by making your stuffing which is actually so much fun. It's messy business, but kids love to get involved. Just make sure those grubby paws are clean! Grate the carrots, chop the onions and the livers and throw into a large mixing bowl along with the eggs and garlic/ herb mix and some seasoning salt to taste.

Mix everything together using your hands. It's a squishy business, but ensures everything is mixed really well. Try to have a basin of water already waiting for you to wash your hands in afterward because you don't want to be trying to turn taps with your hands full of stuffing. Then stuff your chickens as much as they can handle. I had leftover stuffing so I just wrapped it in some tin foil and let it roast beside my chicken. Nothing wrong with extra stuffing!

Once your chickens are stuffed, you can place them in a big baking tray with around six large roughly cut onions.

Smother the chicken in butter and garlic/ herb mix, season with salt and gently add all the wine.

Cover with tin foil and put it into a preheated oven at about 160 deg celsius and let it roast for up to six hours.

Once you're done, you can now remove the foil and drain off most of the liquid into a separate pot for the most glorious gravy (I add a few tablespoons of good quality gravy powder to help thicken it, but don't add too much. You do not want to ruin the authentic flavor and have it taste like supermarket packet gravy). Don't worry if some of the onions fall in. In fact, try to let this happen! Not all of them, but up to about half of them is great. You can either blend these into your gravy with a stick blender, or even just leave them as is! Don't remove ALL the liquid from the pan though because your chickens will still need this to be spread over the chicken during the browning process.

Set your oven to a low grill but place the chicken low down in the oven to prevent burning. Alternatively, you can transfer the chicken to the Weber for browning, which is what we did. Before browning, coat generously with more butter and make sure you keep scooping the rest of the juices combined with that buttery goodness all over the chicken until it looks golden, rich, and delicious.

Once again, @zakludick thank you for handling the basting and browning part like an absolute pro! We make such a great team!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the MobeyLudick Household!

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