Sometimes…a proper food adventure is needed!
I picked up an amazing Burrawong Gaian chicken from my friends at Dulwich Hill Gourmet Meats…
…and tracked down a very old recipe on the bookshelf…we last attempted this in 1985…
I made a salt crust using flour and a kilo of very affordable Australian cooking salt…
We carefully sealed up the neck end of the chicken, firstly with toothpicks (break the sharp ends off so that they don’t pierce the foil)…
…and then by folding the wings over to hold the skin in place…
The skin was rubbed with soy sauce and oil, then a marinade of perennial leeks (I didn’t have any spring onions), ginger, sugar, soy sauce, sherry, water and five spice powder was carefully poured into the now closed cavity. It took a bit of effort, but we managed to seal up the bottom of the bird to most of the liquid inside…it was a two person job…
The prepped chook was wrapped in two layers of well oiled, thick foil…
…and then wrapped in the rolled out salt dough. The entire parcel was baked for a total of four hours…
Cracking open the concrete hard shell took a bit of muscle…
…and resulted in quite a bit of debris…
But it was so worth it! The finished chicken was tender and extremely flavoursome, but not overly salty. The white meat was just a tad dry – I think when we make this again in another twenty years time, we’ll have to remember to roast the bird breast-side down.
The following day, the tiny bit of meat leftover had a texture and flavour that resembled a really good smoked chicken…
Lots of work, but great fun! If you do give this a go, make sure you wrap your chicken really well – you want to make sure the foil package doesn’t leak, or the salt can seep in. And whilst it’s delicious served hot with rice, I think it would also make a brilliant cold sandwich filling!
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
Very interesting recipe, Celia!
I love how daring you are in the kitchen, always trying interesting things and what’s even better, sharing with us!
Hope you are headed to a wonderful weekend…..
Sally, this was great fun! Completely trashed the kitchen though.. ;-)
Nice chook! :)
Bernie, it really was!
The name doesn’t really seem appropriate – it sounds quite luxurious (and very tasty)!
Such an interesting way of preparing chicken. It looks just perfect.
Very interesting recipe but looks great!!
What a great job to try all these interesting recipes and share them with us. I would love to have a bite of that chicken.
Oh wow – looks amazing! I remember having an ancient cookery book that had this recipe in. I think it was a special for a dinner party! In Spain they sell special salt for using to bake a whole fish in salt (it’s sort of wet, coarse salt), but of course you don’t have to cook the fish for quite as long so it doesn’t taste salty when it’s done. Big hug x
I’ll have to check my cookbooks because I’m sure I have the same recipe and haven’t looked at it for years. I may give it a go now
That’s a great recipe book… One of the first I bought when newly married. I bought 3 when they were reprinted for my children when they left home. Still refer to it for the classic flavour combinations… The pickled cucumber just as good as Din Tai Fung!
You have three children? ;-) Haven’t met the third one yet! :D
I remember that recipe from all those years ago. Maybe I should try it.
yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum..
I’m sure you will have had plenty of time to think about how to perfect this bird in another 20 years time!
Wow, 2 people to wrestle a little chicken! You’re amazing to remember a recipe from 1985 – I barely remember things that I cooked a month ago. This really does sound like a great chicken though.
I love all your food adventures. Imagine keeping a recipe from a magazine that long. I am just at the start of my baking adventures and it’s hit and miss. That’s what cooking is all about:)
I remember doing this – all those years ago – it was great fun! I also remember a passion for roulades and boning chickens. I only boned out two birds because I seemed to wrestle the poor things all round the kitchen and practically ended up on the bench with it. I do love your new glasses in your September Kitchen photo and it’s lovely to see your impish smile again.xx
Thank you for a big weekend-to-come smile even tho’ you have made me feel somewhat ‘ancient’ . . . In all the ‘dinner party clubs’ to which one inevitably belonged in the 1960s and 70s Beggar’s chicken came up quite regularly: a favourite show stopper and lovely to eat!! Should really ‘do it again’ to show those younger what supposedly does qualify as a ‘retro’ recipe!!!
That page looks like it’s from a Womans Weekly cookbook. Food seems to taste even better when it’s come about via an adventure :)
It does, doesn’t it! :)
I have the same cookbook and I’ve made this beggar’s chicken and put it on my blog. I have an organic chicken in the fridge and I was wondering how to cook it and thought of that great recipe from the AWW and thought I’d do beggar’s chicken again. Isn’t the flavour and texture of the chicken wonderful! xx
Snap! I’ll go looking for your blogpost, Charlie! It’s a messy job though! :)
Ha! Found it! I’d even commented on it three years ago! :) Are you really going to try it again now? x
Love all the flavours with this recipe Celia and I am sure my mom used to do something similar or was that with fish…
Have a beautiful weekend.
:-) Mandy xo
What an adventure – how exciting! I’d know that cookbook anywhere…. ; )
I’ve had beggars chicken before but didn’t realise it was salt baked. I was smacking my lips with the flavours you used – it looked perfect at the end.
Celia, I really loved this post and it reminded me of a time when I was young…probably about 7 or 8 in the early 80s. We lived on a property in outback NSW (just as I do now!) and one of our neighbours was quite a progressive cook, for the time! She would host what seemed to be sophisticated, boozy dinner parties where the adults would indulge in food & drinks while us kids watched videos or something!?
Anyway, I remember on one of these occasions she cooked Beggar’s Chicken, I think it may have come from the Women’s Weekly Chinese cookbook, the book had a reddish cover from memory. We thought this was very exotic; you have to remember it was the early 80’s in the outback! Just accessing chicken was quite a challenge. They were happy days.
Your chicken looks lovely and I agree…sometimes we all need a food adventure x
PS this would be good in the wood oven, as you said on Twitter. It might be time to relive some old memories!
This recipe is intriguing !! I’d like to try it sometime. (Although I hadn’t planned it, I ended up ‘taking the summer off’ and not posting — or following — anything/anyone. I’ll be getting back to all that soon & I’m looking forward to seeing all the new things you and others I follow will be coming up with.)
Looks like a fun way to try baking chicken. Certainly worth a try every 20 years!
What a great way to keep in all that amazing chicken flavour, it wouldn’t taste anywhere near as nice with a boring old supermarket chook. Yummo! Xo
Is that the good old WW chinese book? I made this chicken when that book first came out, thought I was VERY special! You are very neat Celia, I’d have left and wings all over the place :)
I think we had that book too! As kids I remember this recipe looked impossibly exotic :) And any dish where you get to lay into dinner with a mallet looks pretty fun!
Ooooh, I know that book…. nicely executed, Celia xxxx
I’ve done a salt crust once. My first try with the dough was less than spectacular with a lot of pasting and patching. The chicken was outstanding though.