The Secrets of Jamie Olivers Chicken in Milk

[elleng]

'In 2002, when he was 25, the British chef and rising BBC cooking star Jamie Oliver put a recipe for chicken in milk into his cookbook “Happy Days With the Naked Chef.” He called it “a slightly odd but really fantastic combination that must be tried.” That description is absolutely accurate, as it happens, though Oliver, 41, told me the words now make him laugh. “I was hardly upselling its virtues,” he said.

The dish’s merits are, in fact, legion. You sear a whole chicken in butter and a little oil, then dump out most of the fat and add cinnamon and garlic to the pot, along with a ton of lemon peel, sage leaves and a few cups of milk, then slide it into a hot oven to create one of the great dinners of all time. The milk breaks apart in the acidity and heat to become a ropy and fascinating sauce, and the garlic goes soft and sweet within it, its fragrance filigreed with the cinnamon and sage. The lemon brightens all around it, and there is even a little bit of crispness to the skin, a textural miracle. It is the sort of meal you might cook once a month for a good long while and reminisce about for years. A friend of mine reminded me of the dish not long ago, spooling me back to a fourth-floor-walk-up kitchen where I had to cook quietly while the baby fell asleep, before greeting guests for late-night suppers. Chicken in milk was my standard go-to company meal then. “I loved that chicken,” my friend said. “Where did that come from?”'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/20/magazine/the-secrets-of-jamie-olivers-chicken-in-milk.html?

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1018737-jamie-olivers-chicken-in-milk

1 whole chicken, 3-4 pounds
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
¼ cup unsalted butter
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 small cinnamon stick
10 cloves garlic, skins left on
2 ½ cups whole milk
1 handful of fresh sage, leaves picked — around 15-20 leaves
2 lemons

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. Have you tried this?

All that garlic....dunno....hmmmm

[elleng]

4. No, I haven't, as with most of the recipes I post.

I'm an equal-opportunity sharer! But there's never too much garlic, imo!

[csziggy]

6. I haven't made this but I have made chicken with 20 cloves of garlic

The garlic gets mellow and soft and the taste is not strong like you'd expect. From the description, I suspect the garlic in this would be the same.

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. Thanks......

I once over garlicked something and have a bit gun shy ever since.

[Nitram]

2. I own four of Oliver's cook books and use them on a regular basis.

The chicken in milk came out deliciously.

[dem in texas]

3. Baking in Milk

A similar technique is used in Mexican cooking to make crispy, browned carnitas. Pork is first cooked in water until tender,. meat is then cut in small pieces and browned In oil, then a little milk is added and as it cooks away, it makes the meat cook crispy. My late mother-in-law grew up the land between the lakes in Kentucky when it was a wilderness area. She lived in a log cabin and they ate lots of game. She was an expert on cooking game. She would finish off squirrel and rabbit with a milk treatment to brown and crisp it. It is the sugars in the milk that make it so good for browning, But can't use a lot of milk, 2 12 cups sounds right for a recipe that is baked all the way in the oven, I am going to give this recipe a try.

[elleng]

5. Thanks for the info, dem.

Let us know how it turns out, please.