Roast Chicken Pasta Recipe
Do you know anyone who eats meat that doesn’t like roast chicken? Nah, I didn’t think so.
Between the smell that permeates the house when it’s cooking, the crisp fragrant skin when it’s just out of the oven (which is far superior to pork crackling if you ask me) and the gorgeous flesh with it’s plump chewiness, there is nothing there to dislike. Personally, I’d eat roast chicken three times a week if I was let. There are so many combinations you can play with, it never gets boring. You can make soups out of it, you can do tray bakes, sandwiches, hot pots, pies and pasta or rice dishes. It is as the young ones say da bomb (do they still say that?).
In this recipe, I team a fairly classical roast chicken with pasta, the other great comforter. There are few things better in life than a great big bowl of pasta.
In this instance, I was lucky enough to have some Rosa Madre pasta at hand. It is fresh pasta and is made weekly by Luca and sold through a handful of cunning retailers around Dublin (Toonbridge, Er Buchetto and Clonanny Farm). If you don’t have fresh pasta, this recipe will work just as well, it will just have to be timed slightly differently.
If you can afford to buy a really good free-range chicken from your butcher, please do so, although they are more expensive they won’t spit out as much liquid and the juice that comes out will be less watery.
This recipe made enough food for 4 hungry adults. From prep to plate, it took me 90 min to put it together, however my chicken wasn’t the biggest so the bigger the chicken the longer you will need to cook it.
Ingredients
- 500 g of pasta
- 1 chicken
- 3 large cloves of good garlic
- zest of one lemon
- 150 g of butter
- a few branches of fresh thyme
- 1 table spoon of mild chili flakes (I used Korean chili flakes but you could use aleppo chili or smoked or fresh paprika, if you’re going to go for something with a smoked based make it half a table spoon so it doesn’t overpower everything).
- Bit of oil
- Freshly cracked white pepper
- fresh parsley and pine nuts
Method
- You need the butter to be nice and soft and then you will mix it with the grated garlic, a good pinch of salt, the chili flakes, thyme leaves and the lemon zest.
- While the oven is heating up (to 180 C) massage the butter gently under the skin of the chicken. This is not an exercise that every one enjoys so if it’s not for you, use some food preparation gloves.
- Place the chicken in the oven and cook it until the juice run clear and the skin is beautifully brown and crisp.
- Take it out of the oven and rest it under foil for 10 min. This is an essential step as when the chicken is resting it releases the last of its juices and will give you the most glorious sauce.
- Time to cook your pasta according to the method on the pack. This is best done while the chicken is resting.
- Once the pasta has cooked, give it a drain and a quick glug of olive oil and a toss so it doesn’t get sticky.
- Remove the skin from the chicken and eat it, you may share it with someone you really love if you must.
- Shred the chicken meat (white and brown alike, we want to eat everything here).
- Toss the pasta in the chicken juices, if there is too much of it just spoon enough to coat the pasta so that it is glossy, but not enough that it should be come soggy. Add the chicken shreds and cracked white pepper and mix.
- Finish off with the parsley leaves and pine nuts.
