By Clare De Boer
Sometimes, delicious is obvious. You can’t miss the charred curds on tandoori chicken, the crisp edges on a lasagna, the ripe flesh of a peach. But what draws us to a bowl of rice cooked in coconut milk? Or bread pudding?
Desirability can be harder to spot when it’s one thing absorbing another. But it’s these saturation points — where an ingredient that gives meets one that takes — that comfort. We fold warm, peeled potatoes through mayonnaise, sauce our noodles in the pan and unravel over a potpie with a squidgy layer of puff pastry soaked with what’s below.
Food that’s long on this sort of satisfaction isn’t technical. In fact, while being a professional chef has given me technical ability, it’s a loyalty to my appetite that makes the food. My role at home — like any cook — is facilitator, here to provide the conditions that draw flavor and juices out of one ingredient to hand off to the next.
This recipe for chicken cooked with noodles is the opposite of flashy or groundbreaking.
Skimming the ingredient list, you could mistake it for chicken Alfredo. But too often chicken Alfredo is a wasted opportunity. Seared, sliced chicken breast and creamy pasta are combined only at the time of serving — a romance without rapport — but in this recipe, the two ingredients are layered in one pot with plenty of water to make something deeper, lighter and intuitive.
There are many ways to let chicken and noodles have at it: You can boil the bird and cook noodles in the resulting stock. You can braise the chicken to make a more concentrated sauce, which is delicious over buttered noodles.
This recipe splits the difference. It begins by roasting a whole, butter-rubbed, Parmesan-rind-stuffed chicken and a head of garlic under high heat. The skin and butter brown, the garlic sweetens, the bird infuses with the nutty flavors of the cheese. The pot is deglazed with water, less than you would use in a soup, but more than for a braise. Then, the noodles cook in the same pot so they can take in all that flavored broth. In a final act of generosity, the noodles share their starches with the broth, thickening it into a sauce.
Good things happen when ingredients are given a warm introduction and a chance to know one another.
One-pot creamy chicken and noodles
By Clare de BoerThink of this warming dish as a relay race, each ingredient handing its flavor to the next. During the (almost!) hands-off cooking, a head of garlic and a whole chicken stuffed with a Parmesan rind roast, then give themselves to salted water, which in turn flavors the egg noodles that soften around the bird. Salt and water are your best tools here: Season the chicken, season the water and season both again. Don’t hesitate to add more water as the noodles are cooking to make sure they’re submerged. Every brand will absorb a slightly different amount of liquid, and you want a result that’s splashy enough to take on all the Parmesan you will grate at the table. Use your largest pot so everything fits. A 7- to 9-quart Dutch oven has ideal proportions with its wide base and chicken-height sides. You can substitute any short, quick-cooking pasta for egg noodles, and introduce sauteed mushrooms, spinach or herbs at the end, if that’s your mood.
Yield: 4 to 6 servings
Total time: 2 hours
Ingredients:
1 whole chicken (3 to 4 pounds)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 Parmesan rind, plus grated Parmesan for serving
1 head garlic, cloves segmented, kept in their sheaths
1 pound wide egg noodles
1 sprig rosemary
3 tablespoons sour cream or crème fraîche
Preparation:
1. Heat the oven to 500 degrees. Remove the chicken and the butter from the refrigerator to lose their chill while the oven heats.
2. Pat the chicken dry, then rub the chicken all over with the butter (dot if it’s not smearable). Generously sprinkle salt into the cavity and all over the skin, then follow with pepper. Stuff the Parmesan rind into the cavity of the chicken and place the chicken in a large Dutch oven. Scatter the garlic cloves around the chicken. Roast, uncovered, for 30 minutes.
3. When the chicken is golden and a chestnut-colored caramel has formed around the base of the bird, transfer the pot to the stovetop. Squash the garlic cloves with the tines of a fork to squeeze out their roasted flesh. Discard the sheaths if you’d like.
4. Pour in enough water to come up mid-thigh around the bird (5 to 8 cups), avoiding the crisp breast skin. Bring the water to a simmer over high heat. Lower the oven temperature to 400 degrees and return the pot to the oven without its lid. Cook for another 60 minutes.
5. When the chicken looks like it’s giving up the will to hold itself together, remove the pot from the oven and place it on a burner over a high flame. Taste the liquid and season with salt.
6. Press the noodles into the broth and poke them down as they soften to make sure they’re all submerged. Add another 2 to 4 cups of water if necessary to keep the noodles just covered. Boil over high heat for 4 to 5 minutes, stirring the noodles occasionally, until they’re cooked through.
7. Turn off the flame and bury the rosemary sprig among the noodles. Let sit for 5 minutes for the rosemary to infuse and for the broth to thicken. Stir in 2 tablespoons of sour cream, taste and season the broth. Finish with a generous grind of black pepper and the final tablespoon of sour cream. Take the pot to the table and pull apart the chicken, serving it with a tangle of noodles, and lots of grated Parmesan on top.