It was all about trying something different. I wanted to make rock cornish hens for the family, but, I wanted to try something a little different with them before I committed to cooking four of them and serving it for dinner. I do have my pride and it had potential to fail. I prefer my failures to have a softer blow to my ego than dinner that went south. Of course I am kidding, my kids have eaten many failures. Some they didn't even know it.
I prepared the hens in two different ways, so there are a couple of things I would want to do differently next time. Despite that, they were both delicious and I would be happy to eat either again. In spite of it being a cooking chicken kind of post, there is alwaysaflower to color my world. For me, for you.
The first hen was marinated approximately 24 hours in peri peri sauce. I did this by rinsing the bird in cold water and patting it dry, then putting it in a quart-sized bag with enough sauce to generously coat the bird. I then closed the bag, removing as much air from it as I could.
This method allows me to use a lot less sauce than if I did the same in a bowl since the bag hugs the sauce close to the skin (rather than having to put enough to cover it) and does not allow air to dry it out
After 24 hours, the bird was removed from the bag, put in a baking dish breast-side-up (with the wings tucked close to the body and the drumsticks tied together) with some small potatoes, and cooked at 350F for approximately 1 hour, basting twice with butter in between. I removed it a couple of minutes early, put some extra sauce on the chicken, and put it back in the oven for a few minutes to almost caramelize the sauce a bit. (it doesn’t really caramelize because there is no sugar in it, but looking for that effect.)
I did not time everything correct, so the chicken ended up sitting in the oven for some extra time, hence the slight shriveling in the pictures, but the drippings coated the potatoes in delicious flavoring, but a lot of it dried out and stuck to the pan. The Cornish hen doesn’t have as much fat content as a regular chicken, hence no drippings.
The taste was good, but the presentation was a fail. I will have to figure out better string to tie the drumsticks. the potatoes were delicious and I will try it next with the rice. This was the next day, otherwise I might have tried to cook them at the same time.
