Whole chicken on the braai and in the oven
A succulent well-cooked chicken, cooked on the fire and in the oven.
I love cooking chicken. It’s affordable, and versatile. You can cook it in a sauce, as part of a pasta dish and I have even cooked chicken in the air fryer before.
Sundays are for roast chicken though. I love cooking meat on the fire, but I find that when I want to cook a succulent whole chicken, the best way to do it is to finish it off in the oven.
In this recipe, I give away my secrets making a delicious whole chicken on the braai. My top tip is to cook the chicken on a fire, to get the skin crispy and full of smoky flavour, but to finish it off in the oven on a low heat, so that the meat becomes succulent and doesn’t dry out.
Try out the recipe below and find out for yourself - you will never cook chicken in any other way.
Ingredients
1 whole chicken
3 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp chicken spice or your favourite spice
1 cup of chicken stock
How to prepare whole chicken
Generously cover a whole chicken with olive oil and your favourite spice.
Over low to medium heat coals, braai the chicken.
In the meantime, preheat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius.
The chicken is ready when the skin is slightly charred and the smokey flavour is impregnated in the chicken. The inside won’t be cooked yet, but this is fine.
Transfer the chicken to a braising dish.
Add 1 cup of chicken stock and cover with foil.
Place the braising dish in the oven and cook for 1 hour and 20 minutes until done.
Enjoy! Please tag me on Instagram if you’ve made this recipe, I’d love to see it!
To see how I made it, watch the reel below:
More chicken recipes
Below the newsletter block, you will find some more chicken recipes.
If you’re looking for a chicken dish, you should really give this chicken, cauliflower and aubergine noodle recipe a try. The two recipes I mentioned earlier, are also good: creamy chicken, mushroom and biltong pasta and chicken parmesan with Hellmann’s mayo made in the air fryer.
About Shawn Godfrey
Photo credit: Niki M Photography
Shawn Godfrey is an entrepreneur based in Cape Town, South Africa. After the Covid-19 lockdown saw his business in financial distress, cooking was the creative outlet that helped to keep him sane. To keep track of his recipes, and encourage friends and families to join him, he starts his instagram account The Roasted Dad.
Fast-forward to late 2021 - on a whim Shawn (encouraged by his wife Lianne) enters MasterChef South Africa. It is a crazy time of life: running a 200 people business and struggling to keep it profitable, two small children with a third on the way, and about to move into a new house. But when Shawn gets selected to be one of the 20 contestants participating in the fourth season of MasterChef South Africa, he decides to go all in. Leaving his 7-month-pregnant wife to look after their then three and one-year-old children, he battles it out and comes back home five weeks later with the trophy and a million rand prize money in his pocket.
It all started with an Instagram account, but The Roasted Dad is so much more now. Shawn has stayed his entrepreneurial self and whilst he hosts Private Dinner Parties and Cook-with-Me Demos, does Restaurant Take-Overs, he still runs the lighting company and several other businesses.
On his blog, Shawn shares Restaurant Reviews and Accommodation Reviews, and gives an insight into the wild and wonderful life he leads together with his wife Lianne, and their three children Aiden (7), Olivia (5) and Harvey (3).
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In this recipe, I give away my secrets making a delicious whole chicken on the braai. My top tip is to cook the chicken on a fire, to get the skin crispy and full of smoky flavour, but to finish it off in the oven on a low heat, so that the meat becomes succulent and doesn’t dry out.