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Friday, October 9, 2009

For the Love of Stuffing!


Stuffing, stuffing, oh glorious stuffing! If you are not a stuffing addict then you probablly won't want to read on or get nearly excited as a stuffing addict would. However everything else about the dish may be of some delicious interest...

Thanks  Local Lemons and Melissa Clark from The New York Times for the another great Stuffing idea!!!

I was so excited when I read these articles about baking chicken right on top of bread! Why didn't I ever think of that, being the stuffing lover I am? I have made this chicken twice now. Mike and the boys didn't care for the soggyish bread stuffing, but it is easy to leave behind and just endulge in the chicken. Basically season your chicken with anything you are in the mood for. I stuffed two lemons, after I pierced several holes in the lemon, into the cavity of the birdy. Rubbed a mixture of fresh chopped fennel, olive oil, salt and pepper all over the bird. The lemon gave it a nice fresh, clean taste! Wow!mmmm.



Some tips about this cooking method, which Local Lemons agreed on as well. You don't need to brush the bread with olive oil. There is plenty of fat and juices from the chicken to give it the right moisture and texture. Also do roast breast side down as stated and then flip for the remainder of the cooking time.I think this more evenly cooks the chicken and distributes the juices better. I added about 1 cup of chicken stock to the pan about 1/2 way through the cooking time. Then as the juices combined, with about 1/2 hour of cooking left to go, I uncovered and starting basting with the juices in the pan until it was nice and brown. As expected you really don't get more than 1/4 cup of gravy from this way of baking since the bread has absorbed most of it. Selecting your bread is easy....I always throw leftover peices of bread in a bag and keep it in the freezer for croutouns and breadcrumbs. This bread also works great under the chicken. You want to use baguette, sourdough types, as they hold up to all the juices, unlike a fluffy type. Lay one layer of bread pieces,  a bit of overlapping is okay, in your baking pan. Place your seasoned chicken right on top and try an make sure most of the bread is covered by the chicken. The little peices that aren't covered by the chicken get nice and toasty while the juices try and seep to the ends of the crust...Sooo super good!



Enjoy Stuffing Lovers!!! Jaime

4 comments:

nell8888 said...

Looks delicious! Is it time-consuming though?

Jaime said...

not really...just the basting part....but you could cut out all the basting by putting the whole chicken in a cooking bag instead...That would be real easy.You would not need to add any extra liquid in that case....I will try that next.

Skye said...

Yum, yum. I bet you could also just use a bag of stuffing mix and have the same effect?

Skye said...

Did you tie up the chicken like the recipe said?