2

I'm not looking for the recipies, I'm just looking for the principle behind this idea.

There is a product that I love which is a seasoning blend that you put in a roasting bag with chicken that then goes in the oven for an hour. The sauce that you end up with in the bag is thicker than water but not very thick at all.

The seasoning blend is floury with lots of herbs and spices in it and I'd love to try and replicate it so that I can get the taste without all of the preservatives in the store-bought version.

I guess that I'll have to experiment with the spices, but can anyone tell me more about the floury base? Is this just flour or is there something like corn-starch in these things?

Rachel
  • 476
  • 4
  • 6
  • 10
  • 4
    Surely the list of ingredients on the packet would give you some clue? – ElendilTheTall Feb 16 '12 at 12:49
  • 3
    Commercial spice mixes often contain flour or starch to keep the spices from clumping, maltodextrin as a "filler", and sometimes roasted maltodextrin for umami. Except for the last purpose (which is better achieved by other means), I don't see why you would want to recreate this at home, it doesn't make your chicken taste better. Is it only the slight thickening you want to achieve? – rumtscho Feb 16 '12 at 13:35
  • I guess it's just something different to try with roast chicken that's going to be a different taste to the things I cook from scratch now. – Rachel Feb 16 '12 at 14:59
  • @ElendilTheTall I have a number of different products, one of them says corn starch but others dont. – Rachel Feb 17 '12 at 16:27

2 Answers2

3

Without a reference to the specific product, I would assume that it is in fact flour.

It's very common for many chicken (and other meat) recipes to call for dredging in either seasoned flour, or flour followed by an egg wash and spice/breadcrumb mix. Since these commercial mixes obviously have to be completely dry, they are most likely to be seasoned flour.

Check out some recipes for seasoned flour (alternatively called seasoning flour), you'll probably find them to be very similar to the mixes you've been using.

Aaronut
  • 54,811
  • 24
  • 191
  • 303
0

I usually greese with ghee, giving it a nice base flavour. Then use salt and black pepper along with a mix of rosemary and thyme. Plenty thyme. Yum yum. Also, grease it well so that it won't dry out in the oven. Open it every 5-10 minutes and spoon the grease back on top. Oh, boy, now I'm hungry.

Zelmor
  • 1
  • 3