Jamie Oliver's Chicken in Milk

The Recipe

A few years ago I noticed this rather odd recipe on Jamie Oliver's site. It called for roasting a chicken in a big pot with a pint of milk, a lot of lemon zest, a cinnamon stick, and unpeeled garlic cloves. Milk, cinnamon, and chicken were three things I wouldn't ever think to combine; it sounded like a bad recipe Mad-Lib. And yet its very strangeness enticed me. I was familiar with the Italian method of cooking pork in milk for tenderness and flavor; would this be similar?

Here's the basic process.

1. Brown a whole chicken in copious amounts of olive oil or butter.
2. Pour in some milk, two lemons' worth of zest, a cinnamon stick, and fresh sage leaves. Scatter in a handful of garlic cloves in their jackets.
3. Bake for 90 minutes.
4. Pull apart and eat.

Ingredients

• 1.5 kg free-range chicken
• olive oil
• ½ a stick of cinnamon
• 1 good handful of fresh sage
• 2 lemons
• 10 cloves of garlic
• 565 ml milk

• Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 190°C/375°F/gas 5.
  2. Season the chicken generously all over with sea salt and black pepper, then fry in a snug-fitting pot with a little oil until golden, turning the chicken to get an even colour all over.
  3. Remove from the heat, put the chicken on a plate, and throw away the oil left in the pot. You'll be left with tasty sticky goodness at the bottom of the pan which will give you a lovely caramel flavour later on.
  4. Put your chicken back in the pot with the cinnamon, sage leaves, lemon zest, unpeeled garlic cloves and milk.
  5. Cook in the hot oven for 1 hour 30 minutes, or until cooked through, basting with the cooking juices when you remember. The lemon zest will sort of split the milk, making a sauce which is absolutely fantastic.
  6. Pull the meat off the bones and divide it onto your plates. Spoon over plenty of juice and the little curds. Serve with wilted spinach or greens and some mashed potato, if you like.