This is a fantastic dish to introduce eating back outside. Love eating outside full stop. This dish is perfect for the bbq, however, on this occasion I cooked it inside whilst cooking other meats on the bbq.

This dish requires two separate marinades, other than that, the oven will do the rest. Both the marinades give different levels of flavour and heat to the end dish. Quite a tangy heat, if you love a little heat this is the perfect chicken dish for you.

Ingredients-

1 whole large chicken.

Cracked black pepper.

Sea salt

First marinade –

Juice of two lemons

1 tbsp of garlic & ginger paste

1/4 cup of rapeseed oil

1 tbsp of chilli powder

1 tsp of salt.

Second marinade –

5 tbsp of ghee

2 red onions diced

3 green finger chillies diced

2 tsp of ground cumin

1 tsp of sea salt

1 tsp of ground pepper

1/2 tsp of garam masala

1/4 of a cup of natural yoghurt.

To finish –

1/2 a cup of honey.

Method –

Take a sharp pair of scissors and cut the chicken straight up its back to ‘spatchcock’ the bird. Push the bird down to crack the bones.

Using a sharp knife and score the meat making slits through the skin and flesh.

Taking all the ingredients of the first marinade – chilli powder, salt, rapeseed oil, lemon juice and garlic and ginger paste placing them all in a bowl. Whisk them all together.

Rub the marinade over the chicken making sure it goes into the slits you’ve created. set this aside for an hour or so.

For the second marine, heat the ghee. Once it’s melted added the onions.

Fry the onions for 10 minutes or so. The onions will become nice and soft and take on the flavours of the ghee. Preheat your oven to 180 / 190 if you’re using the oven.

Once the onions have caramelised and browned, remove them from the heat. Add them to a blender. Add in the chillies, cumin, salt, black pepper and garam masala. Blitz this to form a paste.

Transfer the paste to a bowl.

And in the yogurt and mix together.

This will then give you a lovely paste. I did have a taste at this point. Lovely heat coming through. I always taste as I go along as I think it’s part of the learning journey.

Cover the whole chicken in this paste, and again ensuring the bird is covered all over. Make sure all the slits are full of the paste.

Place on a roast tray / or bbq.

I cooked this for 1 hour and 30 minutes. The chicken was removed from the over and then coated with the honey then placed back in the oven for the final 30 minutes.

Once I was happy with the core temperature after using a food probe I sat the chicken aside to rest whilst I got the bbq going to cook the rest of food.

We sat outside and enjoyed the start of summer and the beautiful chicken.

Heavenly dish. The whole family enjoyed this.

Thank you for reading my ramblings if you have.

Thank you to Dan Toombs who again has inspired my cooking.