marco pierre white’s roast chicken
Marco Pierre White has a recipe for roast chicken, and it is quite frankly mad.
If you read through his autobiography, The Devil in the Kitchen, you will suddenly be stopped by him discussing his method for roasting a bird. He writes about it not in a true recipe style but in prose, describing how he famously roasted a chicken for Michael Caine.
The timeline he sets out sounds completely wrong: you sous-vide the bird for 10 minutes, brown it in a pan, and then blast it in the oven for just 30 minutes. 10 minutes isn’t long enough to do much of anything in a water bath, and 30 minutes in the oven sounds like a fast track to food poisoning.
Is it just a weird anomaly in his autobiography? No. If you look across his other books, the chaos continues:
- Wild Food from Land and Sea: Cook on the stove, roast for 15 minutes.
- Marco Made Easy: Roast for 40 to 50 minutes.
- Marco’s Great British Feast: Roast for 25 minutes.
- Canteen Cuisine: Roast for 25 minutes.
- Mirabelle: Roast for 35 minutes.
One of the common criticisms of Marco Pierre White cookbook recipes is a distinct lack of quality control. Marco clearly knows what he’s doing in a professional kitchen, but when it comes to translating it to print, it feels like no one dares to check his words or question the timings.
Understanding the Method
Before writing this method off completely, there are two crucial context clues to keep in mind:
- The Cut: Marco generally prefers to work with a chicken crown. This means taking off the legs, wings, and wishbone, leaving just the breasts mounted to the bone. You have far less mass to deal with, and you avoid the classic dilemma where the thighs and breasts need different cooking times.
- The Quality of the Bird: He often specifies using a high-quality bird, like a Poulet de Bresse. High-quality, expensive birds generally have more intramuscular fat and less tough muscle, meaning they naturally cook faster and stay basted from the inside.
Intrigued by the bizarre setup, I decided to test the autobiography method exactly as written to see if it actually works, and then tested a simplified version to see if the water bath is even necessary.
The Verdict: Does It Actually Work?
I have to admit, I was incredibly sceptical. A 30-minute oven roast for a whole chicken crown felt like a recipe for a pink centre.
But when I sliced into the cross-section, it was absolutely perfect. Not a hint of pink, glistening with moisture, and completely cooked through. I am genuinely dumbfounded, but it works beautifully.
The difficult part of this method is the pan-searing. Maneuvering a heavy chicken crown in a ripping hot pan with spitting fat is a bit of a chaotic mess. If you don’t mind the cleanup, the results speak for themselves.
The Control Test: Skipping the Sous-Vide
To see if that bizarre 10-minute water bath stage actually contributed anything, I ran a side-by-side test. I took an identical chicken crown, skipped the sous-vide entirely, seared it in the hot pan, and blasted it in the oven for the same 30 minutes.
The result? It wasn’t quite as good. The straight-to-pan version wasn’t as remarkably juicy, and oddly enough, the skin wasn’t quite as crispy. It seems that ultra-hot 80°C dip for 10 minutes does something to prep the skin and start softening the underlying fat layers before it hits the pan.
If you want to try the definitive Marco Pierre White roast chicken recipe, don’t skip the water bath. It sounds mad, but it delivers an incredibly juicy bird in record time.
Marco Pierre White Roast Chicken
Equipment
- Vacuum sealer
- Sous-vide water bath
- Heavy frying pan or skillet
Ingredients
- 1 High-quality whole chicken crown wings, legs, and wishbone removed
- 1 generous knob of butter
- Salt and freshly cracked black pepper
- 1 tbsp vegetable oil for searing
Instructions
- Prep and Bag: Place your prepared chicken crown into a vacuum pouch. Marco gives absolutely no mention to seasoning in his book text, which is highly unlike him, so I recommend throwing a handful of salt and a good knob of butter straight into the bag to help things along. Seal it up using a vacuum sealer.
- The Quick Water Bath: Set your sous-vide machine to 80°C. Drop the sealed chicken bag into the water and leave it for exactly 10 minutes. Note: 80°C is incredibly hot for sous-vide - usually we work around the 50–60°C mark for poultry - but follow the system.
- The Sear: Remove the chicken from the bag. Heat a heavy pan over a high heat with a splash of vegetable oil (butter will burn too quickly at this temperature). Sear the chicken crown vigorously on all sides until it is deeply browned. Turn on your extractor fan; it's going to get noisy and smoky.
- Season and Roast: Transfer the browned chicken to a roasting tray. Season the exterior generously with salt and pepper. Pop it into an oven preheated to 200°C for exactly 30 minutes.
- Rest and Check: Remove the chicken from the oven and let it rest for 10 minutes. Always verify the internal temperature with a digital probe thermometer at the thickest part—it needs to hit the high 60s°C to ensure it's completely cooked and safe to eat.