Chicken in Salt with Fennel, Thyme and Lemon

Holiday season 2007. I decided that it was time to finally make a chicken the way I'd seen it made on The Tonight Show. The Naked Chef showed up and made this chicken completely entombed by salt. I was watching it going, "No way! It'll taste terrible!" But then it got done through the magic of television and Jay Leno couldn't stop eating the chicken! I thought then and there that I needed to make this chicken.

It took me years to get on top of it, though, cause that's how I work. I decided I wanted to make it for Rob's family over Christmas. But I had to make it myself first, just to see how it turned out. It took a while to make, but once it was cooking, WOW it smelled great! And it tasted good, too! Very moist and tender. So good.

We ended up making it for Rob's family, which required making 3 chickens at once. It was crazy, but so yummy! I suggest this recipe to anyone who wants to put in the time (and expense--fennel is really costly!). And if you make a slightly bigger chicken, you can have leftovers for chicken sandwiches.

Jamie Oliver's recipe for
Chicken in Salt with Fennel, Thyme and Lemon
from his book "Happy Days with the Naked Chef"

3kg/7lb coarse rock salt (or kosher salt)
8 heaped teaspoons whole fennel seeds, cracked
2 eggs, beaten
2 lemons, halved
1 tablespoon peppercorns
1 bunch fresh thyme
Olive oil
1 x 2kg/4 1/2lb organic chicken
1 bunch fresh parsley, ripped
8 cloves garlic, skins left on, squashed

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas6.

Put all the salt into a bowl with the fennel seeds, eggs, lemon juice (keep the skins), peppercorns, and a wine glass of water and mix together. Bash up the thyme in a pestle and mortar and add a couple of good lugs of olive oil. Scrunch it up and rub this flavoured oil all over your chicken, finally pushing any excess inside the cavity along with your parsley, garlic, and squeezed lemon halves. The idea here is to tightly pack the cavity so it bulges and no salt can get in.

Get 4 long pieces of tin-foil and put them on top of each other to make a large square sheet, around a metre/39 inches square. Lay on 1/3 of the salt, making it around 2cmn/three quarters of an inch thick. Put your chicken on top, then pack the rest of the salt around it. Because the salt is slightly wet it should stick to the chicken - make sure that the chicken's skin hasn't been pierced. Carefully fold up the sides of the foil and scrunch it at the top. You can rip off any excess foil - basically the foil is there to hold the salt together until it hardens.

Place the chicken in the preheated oven and cook for 2 hours, then remove from the oven and allow to rest for 15 minutes. Take it to the table with 1 or 2 really nice salads, some bread, and a bottle of white. Rip open the foil and crack the salt crust. It will fall apart easily and reveal the fantastic-smelling chicken. Pull the skin away and tear the meat from the thighs and the breast - absolutely pukka. This is gorgeous served with horseradish mixed with creme fraiche or with some homemade basil mayonnaise.

Tamra's tips from making this recipe:
1 - We decrease the amount of fennel. We use about half the amount the recipe calls for. Mostly because it cuts down on expense.
2- We increase the amount of salt a little. We get the salt in 3-lb. containers, so we use 9 lbs. per recipe instead of 7.
3- We cook the chicken for the 2 hours the recipe calls for and then leave the chicken in a just-barely-warm oven for another hour. It seems to be the moistest this way. And so long as you don't break the shell, the chicken will keep its heat for quite a while. You have to eat it pretty fast after you start cutting into it, though, cause it loses its heat quickly, too. We usually put it in a shallow dish and cover it with foil to try to maintain the heat a little.