A Chicken Roasted in Clay

so many lil pieces to have to pick off....i wouldnt bother with it.

Yes, the comparatively low edibility of clay might spoil the fun... But you don't have to use clay: you can roast some really great chicken (or fish) in a salt crust. Same priciple, comes off just as easily after baking and the little pieces won't bother - they're seasoning!

works best if the bird still has the feathers on it. We also used a bit thicker coating of clay, so it didn't break into little pieces, just split in half. The clay comes off with the feathers (taking the skin with it) and you have a very moist, yummy bird.

My father was a prisoner-of-war in the far east. As they were being systematically starved to death, with the daily food ration being a ball of rice about the size of an orange, the prisoners soon reached the state where anything which walked, flew, or wriggled was food.
He told me that rat baked in clay, in the embers of a fire, was a delicacy. An added advantage of baking in clay was that plucking or skinning wasn't necessary, the skin peels off with the clay.

Hedgehog was supposedly baked in a clay coating by gypsies (that's real ones, not didycoys).

@myrasam79 The parchment paper underneath helps keep the clay bits of the chicken.

@Sunfall We tried the salt crust as well! The clay cooked the chicken a little more evenly.

@Lady C I'll have to try it with an un-plucked bird one day!