Look for a Delia Smith chicken casserole in her main cookbooks and you won’t find one by that name. What you’ll find is Chicken in the Pot, and that’s the recipe on this page. A whole chicken is browned in olive oil, then cooked in one pot with bacon, shallots, carrots, turnips, white wine and stock.
It’s her take on poule au pot, the French chicken in a pot linked with Henri IV. He wanted every family in his kingdom to be able to afford it every Sunday. The card follows The Delia Collection: Chicken (2003), while her Complete Cookery Course has an older version that’s almost the same.
The pot goes into the oven with no lid, just foil laid over the breast, and the mushrooms only join it halfway through. That matches her general advice to add quick-cooking vegetables to a casserole late. There’s no cream in it, as the sauce is boiled down and thickened with butter and flour, so it’s a homestyle chicken casserole rather than a creamy one.
Plenty of people come here looking for a slow cooker version, so it’s worth knowing that she can do without one. How to Cook Book Three lists a slow cooker among her kitchen casualties, since she can cook slowly on the hob or in a smaller oven. Her Cookery Course does give slow cooker timings, though, and the first FAQ shows how I’d use them.
Delia Smith’s Chicken in the Pot (Chicken Casserole)
Course: DinnerCuisine: FrenchDifficulty: Easy4
servings20
minutes1
hour30
minutes900
kcalA whole chicken browned, then baked without a lid alongside bacon, shallots, root vegetables, mushrooms and wine, carved and served under its own glossy sauce.
Ingredients
- For the chicken in the pot:
1 chicken, about 1.35kg (3lb)
3 tablespoons olive oil
225g (8oz) unsmoked lardons or chopped pancetta
12 shallots or button onions, peeled
4 medium carrots, peeled and cut into 2.5cm (1in) chunks, or 6 whole baby carrots
4 small turnips, peeled and quartered
1 clove garlic, crushed
275ml (10fl oz) dry white wine
425ml (15fl oz) chicken stock
225g (8oz) dark-gilled mushrooms, sliced
salt and freshly milled black pepper
- For the herbs:
1 small bunch of parsley stalks
a few celery leaves, if you have them
2 sprigs of fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
- For the sauce:
1 rounded tablespoon softened butter
1 tablespoon plain flour
Directions
- Heat: Preheat the oven to 200°C (180°C fan), gas mark 6, and get out a 3.5 litre (6 pint) flameproof casserole.
- Bacon: Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in the casserole and fry the lardons with the shallots until they’ve coloured a little. Lift them out with a slotted spoon and set them aside.
- Brown: Add the rest of the oil and, when it’s fairly hot, brown the chicken whole. Hold it by the legs with a cloth over your hands and keep turning it until it’s golden all over. That takes 10 to 15 minutes in all, then lift it out.
- Vegetables: Fry the carrots, turnips and garlic for about 5 minutes, stirring, until lightly browned. Return the bacon and shallots, push everything to the sides and sit the chicken in the middle.
- Simmer: Pour in the wine and stock and add the parsley stalks and celery leaves, tied in a bundle. Put in the thyme, bay leaf, salt and pepper, and bring it up to simmering point.
- Oven: Put the casserole in the oven without a lid, with a piece of foil over the breast, for 30 minutes. Uncover and baste the breast with the stock now and then. Take off the foil, add the mushrooms and give it another 30 minutes, basting fairly often.
- Sauce: Lift out the chicken, drain it well and set it on a warm serving dish with the drained vegetables and bacon around it, throwing away the herbs. Boil the liquid hard on the hob until it has reduced by about a third. Work the butter and flour into a paste, whisk it in and keep whisking as it comes back to the boil and thickens. Check the seasoning, carve, and pour the sauce over the chicken and vegetables.
Notes
- The chicken is done when the juices from the thickest part of the thigh run clear with no pink. That check is my own rather than one from the book.
- Shallots peel far more easily after a minute in boiling water, another tip of mine.
FAQs
Can I make this chicken casserole in a slow cooker?
Yes, though the slow cooker version is my adaptation, not hers. The timings are hers, from the casserole notes in her Complete Cookery Course. She gives around 5 hours on high or about 8 on low, with no harm done if it’s left for 10, and the pot needs about 20 minutes to heat up first.
You’ll need a large oval slow cooker for a whole 1.35kg chicken. I’d brown the bacon, shallots, chicken and vegetables in a frying pan as in steps 2 to 4, then move it all in with the wine, stock and herbs. Add the mushrooms for the last hour and boil the liquid down in a pan at the end, as in step 7.
Is a chicken casserole the same as a chicken stew?
Almost. Her Complete Cookery Course treats stews, casseroles, ragouts and hotpots as one way of cooking under different names, with a single difference. A stew cooks on top of the stove with the heat underneath, while a casserole cooks in the oven with heat all around the pot.
She adds that the meat in both is cut up fairly small, which a whole bird isn’t. Her 1992 method also says to brown it as you would meat for a pot-roast. To my mind that makes it half casserole, half pot-roast.
Which casserole dish should I use?
A flameproof one that holds 3.5 litres (6 pints), because it goes from the hob to the oven and back to the hob for the sauce. In the same notes she picks heavy cast iron with an enamelled lining. It heats evenly, works on the stove and in the oven, and looks good enough to take to the table.
Size matters too. She aims for a pot that holds everything comfortably without lots of empty space. She puts the average family casserole at 2.5 litres, so this recipe asks for a bigger pot than usual.
How is her 1992 version different?
Only in small ways. The Complete Cookery Course (1992) uses a larger 1.6kg chicken with its giblets, and 225g of unsmoked streaky bacon in one piece, cut into chunks, instead of lardons. It allows ¾ teaspoon of dried thyme in place of the 2 sprigs, and the oven, timings and sauce are the same.
Its 425ml of stock is made from those giblets. The 2003 version simply asks for chicken stock, such as her homemade chicken stock.
Does she have other chicken casserole recipes?
Yes, though none of them goes by that name either. The Delia Collection: Chicken has several more made in a flameproof casserole, among them Coq au Vin, Chicken Basque, Chicken Cacciatora, chicken in cider and Spanish chicken with butter beans, chorizo and tomatoes.
