Mastering the art of the roast dinner was something I didn’t find particularly easy. All the pots and pans and getting the timings right! I sometimes still do get it wrong when doing roast potatoes and parsips, the full shebang with all the trimmings! With my tiny oven there is usually something that ends up going cold and when you think about ALL that work followed by very little eating time to be concluded with masses of washing up, I sometimes just can’t be bothered!

But, when I get it right I do get it right and my roast dinner, although according to my husband is not as good as his Mum’s, is pretty awesome! And for when I really want to take a break but still have that lovely comforting Sunday staple, I do my fail safe roast tarragon chicken for dummies! There’s no roasted vegetables, instead I choose mash and this means I can make some of it in advance as mash heats up nicely in the microwave without ruining! So… Here’s what I do for a really super easy roast dinner!

Roast Tarragon Chicken For Dummies!

Ingredients

A medium sized chicken

1 lemon (cut into quarters)

A handful of Tarragon (chopped)

Salt and Pepper

1 chicken stock cube

Plain Flour

2 eggs

6 medium sized Maris Piper potatoes (peeled and chopped into small chunks)

6 medium sized carrots (peeled and chopped into small chunks)

1 small swede (peeled and chopped into small chunks)

250g of slightly salted butter

3 cloves of garlic (peeled and finely chopped)

A handful of green beans (trimmed)

Milk

1 finely grated nutmeg

Olive oil

Method

For the mashes:

I make the mashes first. In a pan boil the carrots and swede for 30 minutes, when cooked remove from the water and blend with a hand blended (the fiber is too coarse to mash with a masher). Add the nutmeg, a pinch of salt and a grinding of black pepper and mix in. Cover in a bowl and set aside to heat up later.

Using the same water boil the potatoes until soft then place in a bowl to mash with half of the butter. Again set aside to be heated up later. Retain the water for later!

For the Yorkshire puddings:

I whisk two eggs in a measuring jug then add equal amounts of flour and milk before whisking until smooth with a pinch of salt. The mixture can then sit in the fridge until needed.

For the chicken:

Mix the rest of the butter with the garlic and tarragon then open out the chicken legs and put you hand underneath the skin on the breast. Try not to puncture it but just open it up between the meat and the skin so that you can stuff the butter underneath. Rub it all over and then place the lemon in the cavity before tying up the legs tightly. Score the legs three times and put some of the tarragon and garlic butter in each slice. Top with some salt and pepper rubbed into the skin.

Place the chicken breast side down in a pan suitable for both the oven and hob and cook in a preheated oven at a temperature suitable to your oven and chicken for fifteen minutes, then turn it the right way up and continue cooking for the time suitable to your chicken size. I usually cook mine on about 200 for an hour and fifty minutes total.

At this point rub your Yorkshire tin with olive oil and place in the bottom of the oven to get nice and hot until you need it.

When the chicken is cooked turn it out onto a plate as it needs ten minutes resting time. This is the perfect time to cook the Yorkshires and beans, make the gravy and heat up the mashes and is the only part of the cooking where you will need to be on your toes.

Pour the Yorkshire mixture into your pan (I just use a fairy cake tin), and place on a high shelf in the oven to cook for about ten minutes. At the same time heat the bowls of mash in the microwave and start to boil the green beans, then place the pan which you cooked the chicken in on to a medium heated hob.

Rub round the juices in the bottom of the pan with a spoon, add a teaspoon of flour and the chicken stock cube and mix it into the juices. Then little by little add the water you cooked the potatoes, carrots and swede in. This will give you a thick and delicious gravy which you can keep simmering until needed on the plates.

Carve the chicken and assemble on plates with the mashes, beans and now cooked Yorkshires before covering in the gravy! Yum!

My whole family love this meal and are more than happy to have it again the next day with the left overs!

After dinner, I then plate up another dinner for everyone, cover and pop in the fridge for the next day. There is then usually enough chicken to pull off for a sandwich which I also pop in the fridge. I then boil up the bones for half an hour with any remaining gravy and mash, add a kettle’s worth of boiling water and crumble in another stock cube. Next I remove the bones, any pieces of lemon etc and save the stock in a freezer bag for another recipe or soup on another day!

A medium sized chicken really does go a long way and can be an incredibly thrify way of eating!