Sous vide whole chicken

  • medium
  • 4
  • 60 minutes
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This sous vide whole chicken recipe comes from Rosana McPhee's experiments with cooking a proper 'roast dinner' in a water bath. She shows you really can create the perfect sous vide whole chicken at home.

It’s been quite exciting times experimenting with cooking sous vide, including this recipe for sous vide whole chicken. I like a roast chicken dinner for two reasons. Firstly, it’s such a warming homely dish and secondly, the use of leftovers for another meal. I looked in to how to cook a whole chicken sous vide, I didn’t find anything on roasting, but found some information on poaching and I also learned that each part of the chicken cooks at different times and temperatures on sous vide.

After much deliberation, I did some maths, now that is dangerous since I am not good at it! Anyway, I came up with a few possibilities based on my findings. First attempt, I poached the chicken for 6 hours at 60°C as per my finding online and it didn’t work for my taste, the meat wasn’t quite what I was expecting, it was a bit too pink and juices weren’t running too clear.

Next experiment - I poached another chicken for 7 hours at 62°C, every degree counts on sous vide, and bingo! It was perfect! The meat is moist, juicy and the chicken still just about holds its shape.

It looked quite pale, but after a good 5 minutes under a very hot grill, you just want to crisp up the skin and not to cook the chicken. It looked very appetising. (I had tried the blow torch method but it didn’t look that great).

I also sous vide the vegetables. The onions taste so good and sweet afterwards, I made an extra dish, onion purée. Don’t worry about unpleasant breath.

This recipe is great if made on the day or in advance for a stress free roast chicken meal.

Ingredients

Metric

Imperial

Sous vide whole chicken

Method

1
Start by preparing the sous vide (water bath): add water to it and set the temperature, in this case 85°C, cook the vegetables first
2
While waiting for the water to reach the desired temperature, prepare the chicken and vegetables
3
Add whole trussed chicken (tied up so it holds together in the pouch while poaching), the chicken sotck, half of the baby onions, mushroom and its stock, garlic, bay leaves, thyme, mustard, salt and pepper, seal the pouch. Reserve
4
In a separate pouch add the carrots, potatoes and the rest of baby onions, salt and pepper and seal
5
By now the sous vide should be ready at 85°C, if not wait and when ready place the carrot and potatoes pouch into the sous vide for 1 hour. Reserve
6
Lower the sous vide temperature to 62°C, when it reaches the desired temperature, place the chicken pouch in to the machine for 7 hours. In the last 20 minutes add the vegetable pouch to finish off cooking and re-heating
7
Preheat the grill to 250°C, remove the vegetable pouch, set aside. Remove the chicken pouch from bath and sieve the contents. Reserve the mushroom and onions. Place the broth in to a pan and simmer it by half
8
Untie the chicken and place it in a heat proof dish and under the grill for 5 minutes
9
By now the broth should be ready, add a knob of butter to achieve a shiny gravy
10
For the onion purée: add the onions (sous vide with the chicken) 2 tablespoons of chicken broth and cream into a blender, mix well, check for salt and pepper
11
Serve: vegetables around the sous vide whole chicken, place the onion puree in a separate dish. Enjoy

Brazilian food and travel blogger, living in London.

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