Garlic and tinned tomato roast chicken recipe

My grandad introduced me to the joys of slathering a chicken in garlic. I don’t just mean a few cloves, I mean a few heads of garlic. I tone it down a little nowadays, but I still include his overnight marinating technique, so you do need to plan ahead. The tomatoes as the base impart the chicken with flavour throughout the cooking process and they give you an instant sauce at the end.

Timing

Prep time: 30 minutes, plus optional overnight marinating 

Cook time: 1 hour 50 minutes

Serves

6

Ingredients

• 1 head of garlic or 12 cloves (you can use less for a milder garlic flavour)
• 6 tbsp olive oil
• 1 whole chicken (around 1.5kg)
• 1 x 400g tin chopped or plum tomatoes
• 2 carrots, roughly chopped
• 2 celery sticks, roughly chopped
• 1 onion, roughly chopped
• 1 tbsp dried mixed herbs
• 1 chicken stock cube or 200ml chicken stock (gluten-free, if necessary)

Method

1. Peel 8 garlic cloves and crush them with the oil.
2. Loosen the skin around the chicken breast, then spread the garlic paste under the skin. 
3. Place the chicken upside down in a roasting tin and leave overnight in the fridge (you can skip this, but it infuses the meat with garlic flavour).
4. The next day, turn over the chicken and place it in the roasting tin, breast-side up. Brush any oil that escaped the chicken over the skin and season the meat all over.
5. Preheat the oven to 220C/200C fan/gas mark 7.
6. Roast the chicken in the hot oven for 20 minutes, then turn the heat down to 180C/160C fan/gas mark 4.
7. Remove the tin from the oven and pour the tinned tomatoes around the chicken.
8. Scatter in the vegetables, along with the remaining garlic cloves and herbs. 
9. Combine the stock cube with 200ml water and pour over the chicken. Season well with freshly ground black pepper (the stock cube will likely be salty enough) and mix everything up.
10. Return the tin to the oven and cook for between an hour and 90 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through and its juices run clear, or its internal temperature at the thickest point is 70C on a probe thermometer.
11. Lift out and leave the chicken to rest while you tend to the sauce. 
12. Pull out the garlic cloves and carefully squeeze the cooked garlic from the skins. You need to make sure they’re cool enough first, or use gloves so you don’t burn yourself. Mix the garlic through the tomatoes.
13. You now have a few options. You can leave the sauce as it is so it’s chunky, or you can strain it through a sieve into a bowl or jug, discard the cooked vegetables and use the liquid as a thin sauce. You can blend some of the veg with the liquid for a thicker sauce, or you can use the liquid as the base of a gravy. Whichever you choose, it’ll be delicious.
14. Carve the roast chicken into slices and serve with the sauce.

Recipe from The Tinned Tomatoes Cookbook by Samuel Goldsmith (Murdoch Books, £18.99)