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When the weekend rolls around, there are certain things we cook, like chicken. Roasted, curried, stewed, stuffed, fried, steamed or dropped into a pot of soup, chicken is a go-to ingredient for the weekend meal, particularly Sunday lunch or Sunday dinner.
Growing up, for us it was baked chicken, for some it curried chicken or chicken soup. For family friends here in Barbados, it is roast chicken. And just like the holidays, when we are looking for different ways to cook familiar dishes and ingredients, at the weekend we scratch our heads thinking of ways to cook the bird. We try seasoning it with different herb or spice pastes, marinades and dry seasoning blends. We cook the chicken whole, halved, quartered, cut into large or small pieces depending on how we want to cook and serve it.
The cooking method employed allows you to taste and experience the meat of chicken in different ways.
finished in the oven (Photo by Cynthia Nelson)
Last weekend I took out half of a whole chicken to defrost with no clear idea of how I was going to cook it. A couple of weeks prior, I had roasted the other half. When the chicken was defrosted, I cut it up with the idea of baking it. I seasoned the chicken with green seasoning, oyster sauce, Worcestershire sauce and a sprinkling of dried all-purpose seasoning and left it to marinate for a couple of hours. When the time came to cook the chicken, I changed my mind. Rather than adding everything to a baking dish and tossing it into the oven, I decided to do a two-step cooking process, that would be a mix of baking, roasting and pot roast. It turned out to be an extremely tasty pan of chicken with the flavours from the seasoning, concentrated.
I really love my cast iron skillets because they go easily from the stovetop to the oven to the dining table. Everything done in one pan. Less clean up.
Give this method of doing your weekend chicken a try. A bonus is that it finishes cooking quicker than if you bake or roast it because it is already partially cooked when it goes into the oven. The specialty thing you will need is a pan that can go from the stovetop to the oven and it would be good if it is a 10-inch pan but an 8-inch pan would work too. It would depend on how much chicken you are cooking.
Another stand out thing about this cooking process is that it is not necessary for the chicken to be marinating for a long time. An hour is good enough. However, given that you are doing this as a weekend chicken meal, it is likely to have an overnight marinade. All good.
Here’s how to cook it.
● If you had the seasoned chicken in the refrigerator, bring it to room temperature first then preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
● Drizzle some oil in the pan/skillet over medium heat and let it get hot until you see light wisps of smoke.
● Working in batches, shake off the excess marinade, place the chicken skin side down and let it brown nicely. This should take from 3 to 5 minutes. Turn to brown the other side before removing and placing on a platter. Repeat until all the pieces are browned.
● Arrange the browned chicken in the pan, adding any drippings from when it was resting as well as any marinade left in the bowl (do not pour it on top of the chicken but around the edges of the pan).
● Transfer the pan to the oven and roast for 35 minutes or until the juices run clear and the chicken is cooked through. The chicken is done when the drippings in the pan are lacquer-like along with some fat from the chicken.
● Remove the pan from the oven and let the chicken rest. The following is optional: baste the chicken with the drippings and loosely cover with aluminum foil to rest until ready to serve.
Try this and tell me if you are not pleasantly surprised at how good the chicken tastes. And how easy it is to cook! This pan chicken is like a weeknight chicken dinner that tastes and looks like a weekend chicken dinner.
Cynthia
