France in Focus

On the radio this am it mentioned an article in the Times about cooking chicken for 35 minutes. I cannot access the article - can someone please shed some light on the subject?

The article was Are supermarket cooking instructions ruining the Sunday roast? and about supermarket whole chicken wrapper recommendations for cooking times being up to an hour too long.

Tesco suggested roast a whole chicken for 85 minutes at 180C when it would reach 93C but the inside of the bird reached the ideal cooking temperature of 74C after 35 minutes. Lidl’s suggested 95 minutes at 170C but it was at 74C by 39 mins. Other supermarkets had similar differences. So there was a waste of energy and additional fuel expenditure.

The conclusion was to roast at 180-200C, not worry about timing, but to test for when the thickest part of the chicken, usually the breast, reached a minimum of 74C.

But it means you need to have a good meat thermometer and to test several parts to make sure there is none below 74C.

We usually spatchcock the (small) chucks (coquelets) we buy, and poke with a pointed knife to check if cooked enough.

Have posted a number of times that our gas oven is only used to bake bread and cakes.
I cook every thing on top in a heavy pressure cooker without the pressure weights on.
With chicken it's toss them round in some butter then pour in half a litre of white wine, bring up to simmer, turn glass down to lowest for a couple of hours, Beautiful, do rabbit same way as all meats but lamb/mutton and pork is done in beer, beef in red wine except for steak for me, its just turned over in hot pan, yes blue.