Roast Stuffed Chicken

I finally made stuffed chicken!! Those pictures of mouthwatering Thanksgiving roasted turkey or just pictures of roasted whole chicken had been in my mind for quite some time. I nevertheless never tried to make this type of chicken/turkey, because in my household there are only two people. Even though we both love eating, and it's one of our biggest passions, roasting a whole chicken for two just seemed to be exaggerating.

Geesh...but I bought a whole chicken a few days ago - and thought about making it into soup. But since I had made herbal chicken soup yesterday anyway, making another soup dish for today would be somehow boring... That's why I thought, why not giving it a try? Making roasted whole chicken, I mean. So, here you go, below you can see the picture of my roast stuffed chicken from today.




This stuffed chicken is a result of experimentation. I didn't have much in my pantry and even if I wanted to buy some more ingredients, I wouldn't be able to, since today is Sunday. So, I imagined what kind of stuffing might taste good for roast chicken. I decided on cream cheese, onion, garlic, chives, smoked pork chop, thyme and bread crumbs. I think that adding apples or other fruits like grapes would add more of a kick, but I only have bananas...and I don't think that bananas would taste good together with roast chicken...;-b).



Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken
• Salt and Pepper
• 2-3 tbs chicken stock powder
  
• 2 cups of red wine
• 1 cup of orange juice/apple juice
• 3 bay leaves
• Wild mushrooms - for garnish
  

Stuffing

• 1 onion, diced
• 3 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2 tbs cream cheese
• 3-4 slices Kassler (smoked pork chop) - optional
• 3 tbs bread crumbs
  
• Chives and thyme

What to do

• Preheat oven to 180°C.
  
• In a bowl, mix the onion, garlic, cream cheese, Kassler, chives and thyme. Stuff the chicken with this mixture.
  
• Rub the chicken with salt and pepper. Place the chicken in a casserole dish. Add red wine, orange juice, chicken stock powder and bay leaves. (If you have leftover slices of onion, chives or thyme, just toss them in the casserole dish)
  
• Bake the chicken for 1.5-2 hours.
• After 2 hours, remove the chicken to a platter.
• To make the sauce: Pour the chicken juice into a saucepan, add 2 tsp of flour (mixed with a bit of water) to thicken the sauce. Add salt/pepper/sugar to taste.
• Stir-fried Mushrooms for garnish: heat your skillet and add 1 tbs of olive oil. Add some slices of onion and mushrooms, then stir until slightly golden brown. Give a dash of salt and pepper. To be served with the roast chicken as garnish (but they taste good too!)
  

You can serve the roast chicken with oven baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, or just any kind of carbohydrates of your choice. I served mine with pan-fried potato dumplings and German red cabbage. I can imagine, stir fried green beans with a hint of garlic would also be a good accompaniment, but I didn't have green beans in my pantry, so had to make do with the red cabbage.