Pot Roasted Chicken for Rainy Autumn Days

Pot roasted stuffed chicken is absolutely delicious. It’s good old American-style delicious and is definitely Mommy food. I used to make it in a Crockpot when I was very busy and it would cook all day until we needed it. Nowadays I don’t have such a thing and I’ve reverted back to the way my grandmother would have cooked it, in a heavy covered Dutch oven.

It can’t get any easier, really, and it could only be cheaper if you left out the chicken. Then I think it would be pot roasted stuffing with vegetables and that sounds okay to me.

This is a very small chicken, one of the kind that comes in pairs from the supermarket. They don’t usually taste like much, but this recipe overcomes that. It gave me four great meals. Presumably that means the recipe serves four, eh?

Pot Roasted Chicken with Stuffing

 3 cups of stuffing made from scratch or from a packet (more won’t hurt) made with butter sauteed onion and part of the broth below
 8 pieces of cleaned leek; cut four 4” pieces in half lengthwise or 4 onions
 4 potatoes
 1 liter or quart of chicken broth, homemade, bought or from cubes (use part to make the stuffing)
 1 teaspoon salt
 handful of herbs you like
 1 cleaned and dried chicken
 a bit of olive oil.

Heat a bit of olive oil in a large, heavy pot with a lid, like a Dutch oven. Using tongs, brown the chicken on all four sides. Stuff the cavity with as much as it will hold. Put it back into the pan. Arrange the vegetables around the bird. Lay the stuffing that didn’t fit on top of them. Pour in the broth, then scatter the salt and herbs over the chicken. Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer until a thermometer inserted into the middle of the stuffing measures 165°F. That took one hour and fifteen minutes for me.

Remove the bird to a platter and carve as you would any whole chicken. It will taste like roast chicken from the good old days and the broth will have been thickened by the extra stuffing into a gorgeous gravy. Serve the kind of vegetables you like with roast chicken and maybe cranberry relish?

In these times of financial crisis I think this dish for four cost about euro 4.50 or $6.75 to make, and here even chicken on sale costs over 3 euro per kilo. I don’t know what those little Asian things are next to my list, but I like them.