Juicy poached chicken

How to make Jamie’s weekly poached chicken

Poached chicken is a wonderful thing to have up your sleeve. Easy to throw together and using just a handful of ingredients, it’s also full of flavour, making it a staple in the Oliver household – Jamie’s new book, Simply Jamie, has a whole chapter on it!

Even better, you can use every part of the juicy poached chicken and its broth in a variety of easy meals, saving you time and money, and reducing waste, too. Enjoy it as is, or surf the seasons with light chicken salads in summer and warm, comforting broths in the colder months – the world is your oyster!

Jamie recommends getting your poached chicken done at the weekend, meaning you’ll have beautifully silky meat and a lovely warming broth to enjoy in the days that follow. Big win.

Serves: 6

Total time: 1 hour 45 minutes

You’ll need:

1 x 1.5kg whole free-range chicken

4 carrots

4 sticks of celery

1 large onion

4 cloves of garlic

1 bunch of woody herbs (30g), such as rosemary, thyme, bay, oregano

1 teaspoon black peppercorns

How to make it

Prep your chicken & base veg

Place the chicken in a large pan with a lid and add any veg you have handy – chopped carrots, a few celery sticks and a peeled, quartered onion will work a treat.

Add your herbs

Here’s where you add lots of lovely flavour. Throw in a few unpeeled cloves of garlic and some woody herbs such as rosemary, thyme or bay. Add 2 teaspoons of sea salt and 1 teaspoon of black peppercorns, and you’re away!

Get poaching

Cover everything with cold water, making sure the bird is fully submerged, bring it nearly to the boil over a high heat, then reduce to a simmer. Cover with a lid ajar and poach for 1½ hours – or pop in some extra veg before the time’s up, if you like (see below).

Go big on veg

After the chicken has been poaching for about an hour, you could start bulking it out with a few extra seasonal veggies. For example, chopped swedes and turnips would be lovely in winter (just add them to the pan to cook with the chicken for the last half an hour), while summer veg will cook really quickly and be light and delicious. As long as you know how long they take to cook, the choices are endless! Below is a list of veg and their timings to get you started.

• Peeled, chopped swedes & turnips – 30 minutes
• Sliced cabbage – 20 minutes
• Chopped potatoes or new potatoes – 20 minutes
• Quartered fennel – 20 minutes
• Frozen or fresh broad beans & peas – 5 minutes
• Trimmed, chopped asparagus – 5 minutes
• Spinach – 30 seconds

Break it down

When the time’s up on the chicken, you can either eat it straight away, or leave it to cool in the broth ready to break down for the week ahead.

Pour the broth into a jug. Remove the chicken skin to a small bowl, then use a fork to strip all the meat off the bones and into a container. Spoon over any fat from the surface of the broth, then toss together. Discard the bones. Reserve the veg, squeezing the garlic out of the skins. Cover, and it’ll all be happy in the fridge for up 3 days – the hard work is done.

How to use your poached chicken

Juicy poached chicken is endlessly versatile and can be taken in so many directions, from flatbreads and fajitas to soups and sarnies. Jazz up your meat with some of our favourite suggestions:

• Keep it simple and divide the warm shredded chicken between bowls. Ladle some of the tasty broth and veg over the top and serve with a nice dollop of horseradish sauce or mustard.
• Big up the comfort vibes with Jamie’s easy Chicken stew & dumplings. This one also utilises your chicken carcass to add next-level flavour to the stew – big win!
• Toss your poached chicken in a zesty mayo, then stuff it in a nice fluffy roll with tomato salsa, watercress and apple to create an epic Chicken salpicão sub.
• Feed a family with this creamy Chicken, leek & pea pasta bake from the Chiappa sisters – it’s super simple and a real crowdpleaser.
• Take your lunches up a notch with a bright and beautiful Firecracker chicken noodle salad that’ll tick off some of your 5-a-day, too.
• Combine the meat and veg with soured cream, mustard and a puff pastry top and turn it into a deliciously warming Creamy chicken & chive pie, straight out of Simply Jamie.
• Check out Simply Jamie for loads more brilliant ways to use your poached chicken, including Chicken, sausage & mushroom stew and Speedy chicken curry.

How to use your chicken broth

Don’t be tempted to throw away any of the lovely chicken broth. Put it through a sieve and use it immediately, or bag it up and freeze it for a later date (up to 3 months).

• It will be fantastic as a stock for making risottos, gravy or soups
• Take it to new places by adding noodles and veg such as sweetcorn, baby corn, pak choi, chilli or sugar snap peas

Transfer your poaching skills

The good news is you can use the exact same principle to cook all sorts of other meats! The Italians do versions with beef shin, pork shoulder and even duck. Just remember that different meats take different times to cook – for duck, pork and beef shin we’re talking about 3 hours of poaching, or until the meat is falling off the bone.

Cooking on a budget? Mix up your recipe repertoire with these budget-friendly chicken recipes.