the good chicken cookbook: over 100 delicious and sustainable recipes

This is the go-to cookbook for sustainable chicken recipes, with advice on using the whole bird, preparation techniques and tips on chicken care.

Chicken is a superb meat. Tender and full of flavour, it is fantastically versatile, as well as a cheaper and healthier alternative to pork, beef and lamb. However, because of its budget-friendly price tag, it has also become associated with the worst in modern farming: poor conditions, chickens being injected with salt-water and antibiotics, and meat contaminated with salmonella.

But it doesn’t have to be like this. This cookbook reclaims chicken, showing how it can be incorporated into good, sustainable cooking. Marcus Bean, a farm-based TV chef and presenter, has made it his mission to take a fresh look at the chicken, from coop to kitchen.

Marcus gives you innovative and inspiring dishes that will also help you to reduce your impact on the planet, from lemongrass and thyme Scotch eggs to chicken tostada. To make the book easy to use, it is structured in response to the needs of our daily lives, so you will find a section with quick weekday meals, one with more leisurely recipes for the weekend, as well as a section for celebrations and occasions when you need a showstopper dish. The book includes:

• Over 100 recipes, many featuring parts of the chicken less familiar in the domestic kitchen, like the liver or skin
• Guidance on making use of every part of the chicken
• Advice on mastering preparation techniques such as jointing and spatchcocking
• Chicken care and rearing wisdom

Marcus Bean started his cooking career at a very young age, having helped in the pub that his parents ran. He beat top chef Martin Blunos in the final of Channel 4’s Iron Chef and has appeared on ITV’s This Morning. Marcus now runs Brompton Cookery School on a farm, where they aim to be as sustainable as possible, growing their own produce and using the eggs from their own hens.