Food Lust People Love: Milk-Roasted Chicken

Wednesday, June 18, 2025

Milk-Roasted Chicken

This Milk-Roasted Chicken is made with the deliciously odd combination of lemon and milk which creates the most tender chicken and a divine sauce. Add mushrooms and baby new potatoes for a one-pot meal.

I first started making a version of this chicken after watching Jamie Oliver’s show Oliver’s Twist way back in 2002. The episode was called Big Grub for Big Boys and Jamie was cooking for his local rugby team.

The original calls for sage instead of tarragon and fewer cloves of garlic, and no mushrooms or baby new potatoes so you could make this without them but I do love a one-pot dinner.

Milk-Roasted Chicken

This recipe, as mentioned above, is adapted from one of Jamie Oliver’s. It can also be found in his cookbook, Happy Days with the Naked Chef. Below I have given the amounts of mushrooms and potatoes I used this time. Know that if you want to add more or less of either, it’s all still good. Can’t find fresh tarragon? Use your favorite fresh herb. Thyme or even rosemary would be delicious.

Ingredients

1 whole chicken (about 3 lbs or 1.5 kg)

Fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

4 oz or 113g butter

1 cinnamon stick

2 big sprigs fresh tarragon

1 lemon

8 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed

2 1/4 cups or 540ml milk

5 1/2 oz or 156g baby button mushrooms

1 lb or 450g baby new potatoes

Method

Preheat the oven to 375°F or 190°C, and find a snug-fitting pot for the chicken. Cross the chicken’s legs and secure them together with string or silicone bands.

Season the chicken generously all over with salt and pepper, and fry it in the butter, turning the chicken to get an even color all over, until golden.

Start breast down and don’t try to turn it until you can move it slightly, about 7-8 minutes. If you try to turn it too soon, before it’s lovely and brown, the skin will stick to the bottom of the pot.

Remove from the heat, put the chicken on a plate.

Jamie says at this point, “throw away the butter left in the pot which will leave you with tasty sticky goodness at the bottom of the pan, which will give you a lovely caramel flavor later on.” I must confess, I just couldn’t do it.

Throwing away butter goes against my very ethos regarding cooking. Have you ever seen a French chef throw out butter? Oh, hell, no. They add more!

Strip the leaves off the tarragon and set aside a small pile for garnish later. Use a potato peeler to remove the lemon zest thinly in big pieces. Peel the garlic and hit the cloves with the side of a knife to crush them slightly.

Juice your lemon, but leave a little bit in one rind for squeezing over the cooked chicken.

Add the cinnamon stick, bigger pile of tarragon, lemon zest and garlic to the pot. Give it all a quick stir.

Put the chicken on top, breast side up and pour the milk and lemon juice around the sides.

Add in the cleaned mushrooms.

Roast the chicken in the preheated oven for about 45 minutes. Baste with the cooking juice from time to time.

Add in the new potatoes and roast for a further 45 minutes.

To serve, squeeze the last of the lemon juice over the chicken and sprinkle on the reserved tarragon.

If you serve from a platter instead of the pot, make sure to include the juices from the pan in a gravy boat on the side!

Enjoy!

Welcome to the 1th edition of Alphabet Challenge 2025, brought to you by the letter M. Many thanks to Wendy from A Day in the Life on the Farm for organizing and creating the challenge. Check out all the M recipes below: