Tea-Basted Roasted Chicken

Name: Tea-Basted Roasted Chicken
Yield: Serves 4
Ingredients: 2 ounces/60 grams unsalted (sweet) butter; Salt and freshly ground black pepper; 1 teaspoon/4 grams granulated sugar or to taste; 1 quart/1 liter water; 6 cloves garlic, peeled then crushed to release their aroma; ½ cup/100 grams Keemun tea leaves; 2-inch/5-centimeter piece of ginger root, peeled and sliced into coins; Olive oil to coat roasting pan and to brush on chicken before roasting; 1 cup/250 milliliters vegetable stock (homemade or canned will do); 1 large whole roasting chicken (2 to 3 pounds/1 to 1.5 kilograms), well washed and dried

Preparation info

Serves
4

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Cooking with Tea

By Robert Wemischner and Diana Rosen

Published 2000

About

The charm of this dish is its simplicity. What could be better than a chicken roasted to perfection, golden brown and crisp-skinned, paired with a dusky, dark, tea-based sauce? The sauce takes its inspiration from the yak-buttered tea of Tibet, but in this case the tea is Chinese and the butter is the American variety. No matter where you are, you can enjoy this dish, infused with the aura of the steppes of central Asia.