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Recipe  •  2 September 2026

 

Roast chicken and cabbage with soy butter

There are many ways to make cabbage delicious but it’s hard to improve on butter.

The result of adding nearly half a pack to the baking tray is the equivalent of liquid gold. Embrace it! Embrace, too, the spatchcocking of the chicken. You can either ask your butcher to do it for you or look online for tips. It takes less than five minutes and the time is more than made up for by how quickly and evenly the chicken then roasts. Serve this with plenty of steamed rice.

Serves 4 | Prep: 15 minutes | Cook: 45 minutes

Ingredients:

  • 2 hispi cabbages, quartered (1kg)
  • 2 heads of garlic, top 1cm removed
  • 2 bunches of spring onions, cut into thirds (160g)
  • 325ml chicken stock
  • 70g ginger, peeled and cut into matchsticks
  • 1 whole chicken, spatchcocked (1.7kg)
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 100g unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
  • 2 tbsp soy sauce
  • fine sea salt and white pepper

Method:

  1. Preheat the oven to 220°C fan.
  2. Put the cabbage, garlic, spring onions, stock and ginger in a high-sided roasting tray. Season the chicken all over with 1 teaspoon of salt and 1½ teaspoons of white pepper and sit it on top of the cabbage. Drizzle the chicken with the oil and roast for 30 minutes.
  3. Remove the chicken from the oven and stir the butter and soy sauce into the tray juices until melted, then use the mixture to baste the cabbage. Return to the oven for another 15 minutes, until the chicken is golden and cooked through and the cabbage is tender and caramelised.
  4. Squeeze out the garlic cloves, mix into the sauce and serve.

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