Five hours poultry

A recipe from cooking-ez.com

For 1 poultry, you will need:

• 1 1 whole bird (chicken, duck etc.)
• 2 1 bunch herbs of your choice
• 3 1 bouquet garni (optional)
• 4 2 cloves garlic (optional)
• 5 salt
• 6 pepper
• Total weight: 1,810 grams

Times:

Preparation	Cooking	Start to finish
15 min.	5 hours	5 hours 15 min.

Step by step recipe

1	This works with all kinds of poultry: chicken of course, but also duck, guinea fowl, turkey, etc. Salt and pepper the outside...
2	... and inside of the bird.
3	Tie herbs firmly in a small bunch, or use a bouquet garni and put inside the bird with 2 cloves garlic.
4	You can also put in half an onion or a whole shallot.
5	Put bird in a cooking bag then in a dish, or cover dish with oven plastic film (see this page for more informations on papers and bags).
6	Put in the oven at 150°C ou 302°F and forget about it for 3 hours.
7	After 3 hours, remove the lid, or remove from the cooking bag, arrange vegetables around the bird, and baste with its juices. For the last 2 hours, leave uncovered, and baste with juices every 15 minutes (or thereabouts).
8	After the five hours, you can cut it up (but is it the right word when you do that with a fork?) and serve. Tip: during the last 15 minutes it's a good idea to turn the oven up to 220°C or 428°F to really heat the meat, otherwise it gets cold very quickly at your guests' table. Do remember to heat the plates as well.
9	Note: This works too with roasting meats. For a joint of pork, for example, surround the meat with some sage leaves, which go very well with pork or white meats.

Remarks

This recipe is warmly dedicated to Frances Maguire, from Dublin, who kindly taught me everything about cooking in a bag.
How can such a low cooking temperature produce such soft meat? To understand that you need some molecular gastronomy. Please note that you can apply this slow cooking to many other foods.
If you have a really big bird, like a capon or turkey, you can easily go beyond 6 hours.
Vegetables cooked long and slow in the poultry juices, become deliciously moist and flavoursome ...
If your bird is so big that you have left-overs, you can make an "Express Parmentier" with it by covering a layer of meat with mashed potato and grated cheese (10 minutes under the grill), and it's very good!

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