Coronation Street Blog: Cooking with Coronation Street

Greetings! Here we go with the third of our Cooking with Coronation Street blog posts in which we take recipes from this little gem of a book from 1992 and see what they turn out like when cooked at home by Corrie fans.

The first recipe we tried from the Coronation Street cook book was Betty's Hot Pot. You can find out how that turned out with Gemma and Michael from Conversation Street, the Coronation Street fan podcast here.

And the second recipe was when I turned my hand to making Angie Freeman's lentil soup. You can find out how that turned out here.

Today was the turn of Alec Gilroy's Whiskey Chicken.The recipe is one of a few under the heading of 'Bet and Alec Cooking with Booze' and when one of the most famous couples ever to have worked behind the bar of the Rovers Return tell you what you should be cooking, well, who's to refuse them? Not me, that's for sure. And so, here's how we go on cooking this at home.

First, we gathered the ingredients which were simply whiskey, an onion, whiskey, mushrooms, whiskey, carrot, whiskey, chicken, whiskey and chicken stock. The recipe also called for double cream but we used creme fraiche instead. Did I mention the whiskey?

Once the chicken had been browned in a pan, in went the onions to soften followed by the whiskey.

Now this bit was interesting! The recipe called for it "to flame" and so we set it on fire, which was a bit scary. You'll see the photo below is, er, slightly blurred as I jumped about a foot backwards once my husband set the whiskey aflame.

After the flames (finally!) went out and the alcohol burned off, we added the chopped mushrooms and carrots and the chicken stock, then it all went into a casserole dish in the oven for 45 minutes. Ten minutes before the end of the cooking time, we added the creme fraiche and stirred it all in. When it was ready we served it with baked potatoes, as below...

However, I felt it might have been better served with rice. Now then, to the taste - what was it like?

Well, it wasn't bad. I think we both agreed that it wasn't brilliant and there was no taste of whiskey at all in the dish. It was just about all right. The chicken was cooked wonderfully and was tender and soft, the veg was tasty but the whiskey sauce let it down, being too runny and tasting of little more than chicken stock. A much more reduced sauce would work better, we felt. But maybe this was our fault for not using double cream as instructed?

Would we cook this one again? Possibly yes...but not for a very long time. And we both agreed that if we did cook it one again, we'd slice potatoes and cover the top of the dish with sliced potatoes and cook it a la hotpot for a tastier treat.

All in all, it was not bad - but not great. It might have satisfied Alec for using up his leftover whiskey in the Rovers Return, but I'm afraid it left a bit of an odd taste in our mouths - and almost burned the kitchen down in the process too!

Keep your eyes peeled for the next of our Cooking with Coronation Street blog posts coming very soon.

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