Bikers - The Hairy Bikers Chicken & Egg

THE HAIRY BIKERS

CHICKEN & EGG

Wed like to dedicate this book to our mothers Stella and Margaret. They introduced us to the joys of chicken and to our daily chucky egg, and they started us on a wonderful journey thats led from our childhood kitchens to travels worldwide. Weve been lucky. Thanks our mams.

CONTENTS

Everyone loves chicken perhaps the most versatile and healthy of meats and eggs too! Both can be turned into an almost endless variety of great-tasting dishes.

This cookbook is a real passion project for us. In fact, we first started thinking about it nearly ten years ago, so now were really egg-cited to bring you our very best chicken and egg recipes. We have so many fantastic Hairy ideas to share and weve included easy suppers, family favourites, healthy salads and grills, as well as some special blow-out treats. So, lets do the funky chicken and get cooking

Chicken, oh how we love it! Its mild flavour marries so well with the spices and herbs of every kind of cuisine, and it can be roasted, grilled, baked, fried, barbecued, put in a soup, a salad or a pie. Chicken is enjoyed by everybody from toddlers to grannies. In survey after survey it comes out as one of the UKs best-loved foods and its cooked worldwide too in a multitude of ways from the cheap and cheerful offerings of chicken shops to the fanciest creations of the worlds Michelin-starred restaurants.

We both cook loads of chicken dishes at home for our families and we like experimenting with curries and braises as well as the more traditional roasts and grills. And chicken has become even more of a feature on our menus in recent years while weve been watching our weight and counting calories. Its such a healthy form of protein and its much lower in calories and fat than red meat. Did you know that half a roast chicken, without the skin, is only about 450 calories? That means you can afford to tuck into a generous portion! Chicken can be a lifesaver for dieters.

Eggs are a super-healthy food too and a great way to get your protein a large egg is only about 80 calories, unless youre frying it in butter of course! If youve an egg in the fridge, youre never without something good to eat.

Weve been lucky enough to travel across the world to discover the very best recipes for our BBC TV series CHICKEN & EGG. From Turin to Timbuktu, everyone has a way with these two culinary treasures. Weve been to countries such as Morocco, Israel, the US and France as well as lots of places in the UK to talk to experts and home cooks about their fowl favourites and weve heard plenty of egg-cracking chicken jokes along the way!

Its been a real eye-opener to find out just how inventive you can be with two relatively humble but fantastic ingredients and were so chuffed with all our new discoveries. We havent forgotten the old favourites though, so you will find casseroles, pies, salads and comforting soups as well, not forgetting a nice clutch of sweet and savoury egg dishes.

A whole roast chicken is a joy to behold, with its golden crispy skin and succulent flesh, but we also have lots of recipes for pieces of chicken in this book. Of course, you can buy chicken breasts, thighs and legs for use in these dishes, but a much more economical way of going about things is to buy a whole chicken and ask your butcher to joint it for you or even do it yourself its easy (see ). Youll find this is a much cheaper option and you can use all the little scraps and trimmings in a stock. Just chuck them in a bag in the freezer until you have enough. No waste! One of the great things about chicken is you can use every bit and we make a point of doing so as a mark of respect to the animal.

Of course everyone has their favourite part of the bird some like the dark meat of the thighs and legs; others insist on white breast meat. We think the little nuggets known as oysters that lie either side of the backbone are the best of all and we have been know to sneak a mouthful of them while carving.

When cooking pieces of chicken, be sure to choose the right cut for the recipe. For quick pan-frying or grilling, breasts are fine although you may like to butterfly them (see ) to make sure they cook evenly. For slow-cooked dishes, such as curries, thighs are much more suitable. Its almost impossible to overcook a thigh and the meat is really juicy and tasty. When you do use breasts for slower-cooked dishes, its best to have them on the bone. That will help them stay moist. We have some minced chicken recipes too and we recommend using half breast, half thigh meat for the best results.

Dave

When I was a lad, a roast chicken dinner on a Sunday was a special treat. My mum would bung in some Packet stuffing and cook the chicken in a big enamel casserole dish until the meat was falling off the bones. Wed eat it with mash, cauli cheese and lots of gravy while listening to Two-way Family Favourites on the radio. Then the next day thered be cold chicken with bubble and squeak, and on the third a chicken soup made with the carcass and any pickings. That was three meals for the three of us a chicken did us proud. As did my daily chucky egg. I was a scrambled kid in more ways than one, but for me, buttery scrambled eggs on golden toast was, and still is, a bit of heaven.

Si

My mum was a great cook and she cooked chicken often. Her chicken soup was epic she would add split peas as well as onions, carrots and potatoes and it tasted amazing. But best of all was her chicken and ham pie. She would use the dark chicken meat and ham hock so the pie was juicy and flavoursome, and shed sometimes add leeks too. I can still remember the scent of the pie baking in the oven it would fill the house and tempt the tastebuds like nothing else. We always had a sit-down dinner on a Saturday afternoon, when my brother came back from football, and that dinner was usually chicken pie. Even once we were all grown up we would head home for Saturday dinner with Mum. For me, the smell of chicken cooking brings back those days and will always mean home.

Back when we were kids chicken was a special treat, but now we eat it any day of the week. This is thanks to the massive changes in chicken farming, with huge numbers of fast-growing broilers (birds bred for meat) being produced, bringing prices down and making chicken accessible to everyone. Also, its now so easy to buy pieces of chicken such as breasts, thighs, drumsticks whatever you need. When money is tight, chicken can come to the rescue, as a little can go a long way and there are plenty of recipes like this in our book.

Weve often been a bit confused about all the different kinds of chicken and what the terms mean so weve done a bit of research on the whole business.

Theres no doubt that you do get what you pay for with chicken and there is more flavour in free-range bird that has had a chance to move around more and had a more active, less stressful life than your basic broiler. Intensively reared birds have short lives and are fattened up quickly. Free-range birds live longer so the skeleton has a chance to grow properly, giving strength and flavour to the bones. Exercise allows the leg muscles to develop, making tastier flesh. But of course these birds are more expensive to produce because they need more space and more time.