I want to follow the last post with a meal recipe that clearly demonstrates the Paleo diet. If you are from the UK, then you should definitely recognise this meal: A traditional roast chicken Sunday lunch.
This is my mum’s roast chicken, I don’t always use this method but I love the way it creates a cosy, warming meal for the winter months.
Time: Allow 2 hours from putting the chicken in the oven to the meal being ready to serve.
1] Buy your Chicken.
I either buy my chicken from the butcher (£5-£6, he sells bigger and better quality chickens than you would usually find in the supermarket), or I buy a free range chicken direct from the farmer at his market stall (£13, these are massive and almost provide enough meat for a whole week). The farmer’s chicken is a more expensive buy – but brilliant value – unfortunately I only see his stall every two months or so.
On occasion I have bought supermarket free range chickens:
• Aldi’s free range chickens are cheap (£4.99) but I found the meat was tough and tasteless.
• I’ve had a nice enough (reduced) free range chicken from the meat counter at Tesco.
• Today’s tasty chicken was a yellow-stickered Asda Free Range chicken (£4 instead of £8).
Although none of these compare to the definitely outside roaming in the fresh air, free range chicken I buy from the farmer. 
2] The roasting dish
At the moment I’m using this enormous, heavy, Le Creuset dish. It is an ancient (much loved and well used) enamelled cast iron casserole dish.
Of course there are cheaper 33cm oval cast iron casserole dishes available, even on Amazon, and you can sometimes find second-hand Le Creuset dishes at car boot sales or on ebay.
3] Getting started
• Pre-heat your oven*
• Place your chicken into the centre of your roasting dish
• Generously season with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• If you want to put half an onion inside the chicken, do it now.
• Around the chicken, add about 2cm of water
• Cover and put in the oven for about 1 hour
*I pre heat my electric fan oven to 200 degrees Celsius and cook a medium sized chicken for about 1 hour 45 minutes. I hope that you know your own oven and can adapt oven heat and cooking times accordingly.
This way of cooking chicken is very forgiving, it is a lazy days method of roasting a chicken, and when it’s finished the meat will be wonderfully cooked.
One time I was making this, my husband pre heated the oven for me and I forgot to check the temperature. Two hours at 230 degrees Celsius and it was definitely overcooked! The chicken was maybe a little drier than usual but it certainly wasn’t ruined. It was difficult to tell once it was on the plate and we all enjoyed our meal.
4] After 1 hour add your vegetables.
Pre-prepare your vegetables.
• Peel and half 2 or 3 onions
• Peel and quarter 3 or 4 large carrots
• Cut some swede into thick chunky slices (see photograph)
Now add your vegetables around the chicken in the roasting dish. Cover and put back in the oven for 45 minutes.
5] 45 minutes later.
Usually your chicken is fully cooked at this point. If so, move it from the roasting dish and onto a serving plate. (If not, put everything back in the oven until fully cooked, then continue…)
This is when to put the rest of the vegetables onto the hob to steam. Broccoli, new potatoes, cabbage or kale, maybe some runner beans.
Now make the gravy. Leaving the vegetables in the roasting dish, add a chicken stock cube that has been pre-mixed with half a pint of boiling water. Next mix about 1 tablespoon of tapioca flour** with a little water to make a runny paste – add this to the gravy and stir.
Put the roasting dish back into the oven, uncovered, the gravy should be ready at the same time as the steamed vegetables.
** Before Paleo I would use cornflour to thicken gravy so I’ve tested several different cornflour substitutes and tapioca flour worked best. However, the balance needs to be right, too much tapioca flour produces over-thick gravy with an unpleasant gloopy consistency.
5] Serve.
You might be asking yourself how this is particularly a Paleo recipe, and that is a good question.
So what is different (Paleo) about this Roast Chicken dinner?
- I make more vegetables.
- I use a gluten free stock cube.
- Sage and onion stuffing isn’t Paleo so I don’t make stuffing.
- I have substituted the tapioca flour for the cornflour. That’s it.
Start with familiar foods.
Paleo food doesn’t need to be complicated. A piece of tasty meat surrounded by lots of veg is sufficient. The Paleo recipes you find online can sometimes appear as overly special, overly complicated, and just not the food you are used to eating. My advice is to keep it simple – start with what you already know.
Notes:
This meal could be quite heavy on the carbohydrates if you aren’t careful. If you are looking to lose weight, make sure you put more of the steamed green veg and onion onto your plate, and limit the carrot, swede and potatoes.
justFreda.com is not a food blog. When I put recipes on here they are most likely to be a description of what I cooked for dinner and, since my kitchen doesn’t get much natural light, the photographs will be quite basic.