How to Roast a Chicken, or learning to love salt and fat
So I apologize ahead of time for not taking a picture of the whole chicken (we just dug right in) and I also apologize for posting this before lunch, since it will most likely make you hungry.
You will need:
A whole Chicken
Onions
Baby Carrots
Garlic
Butter (REAL butter, not Margarine)
Salt (I like to use Kosher salt)
Spices like black pepper, sage, rosemary or thyme*
Preheat your oven to 450° F.
1. The first step in roasting a chicken is to pick out your chicken. You want to make sure that it’s enough chicken for who you’re feeding, and if you don’t have a large roasting pan, then it has to be able to fit into the dish you’re baking it in. If neither of these are a concern for you, then just grab one. If the chicken is frozen, make sure you have ample time to defrost it before you want to eat it.
2. Now you have to prepare the chicken. I like to stick mine in a colander in the sink to wash it. It keeps it all contained and I don’t really have to wash out my sink :) Open the chicken’s package, and make sure that all the innards are out. (Chickens will sometimes have the livers, or neck or other innard parts tucked inside the cavity, you do not want those in your roast chicken, so take them out.
3. Put the chicken in the colander and wash it. Pull off any leftover feathery bits, and make sure to wash out the upper and lower cavities. Drain well.
4. While the chicken is draining, chop up some onions! For a 4 lb chicken, I usually find that one medium onion is fine. If you have a larger bird, you might want a large onion. Leave these onions in LARGE chunks (like 1″ squre large). You don’t want to dice them.
5. Also crush your garlic. You want almost whole cloves, but if you crush them, they will be sweeter, and the skins will come off very easily. I like to just mash them a bit with the flat of my big chef’s knife. It works very well.
6. Lift the breast skin. You do this by sliding your hand between the skin and the meat. As you go, break the connective tissue between the skin and meat so that the skin comes up easily. Cut some slices of butter and tuck them up under the breast skin. This will make the breasts moist and flavorful. If you are using fresh herbs (like sage or rosemary especially) tuck some of them up there too.
7. Begin to stuff the large cavity of the chicken. I toss a couple of garlic cloves, a bunch of baby carrots and about half the onion in there. If you like celery (neither C nor I do) you could actually put some in there, it would be good. The idea of stuffing the chicken with the veggies is that the moisture from the veggies keeps the chicken moist, and it really does work.
8. With the breast side of the chicken down, sprinkle LIBERALLY with salt. Salting the skin will help the skin be crispy and tasty. Also put a bit of pepper on it, and some of your herbs. Put the chicken into your baking pan (I use a Corningware French White 2.5qt oval casserole which holds a 4.5 lb chicken PERFECTLY) with the breast up.
9. Salt and season the breast side of the chicken, and place remaining onions, more carrots and garlic all around the chicken. Stick some more butter slices around as well for good measure.
10. Place the covered dish with the chicken in the hot oven. Chickens should be cooked 20 min per pound, so for my 4.5 lb chicken, that was an hour and a half. This is certainly not fast food, but it’s so worth waiting for!
11. When the baking time is about half up (45 min for me), take the chicken out and flip it. This will put the breast meat down. All the juices then flow into the breast meat (which is naturally dryer) and help to keep it moist and tasty. At this point, take off the lid as well, and then put it back into the oven uncovered for the remainder of the time.
12. Once the full time is up, remove the chicken from the oven, remove to a cutting board or cooling rack on top of a cookie sheet (this will catch the juices so they don’t end up all over your kitchen floor) and carve it up!
I like to eat it with the carrots and onions that were cooked with it (they’re really flavorful and soft), and this time C pan fried some potatoes, so we ate it all together. Nothing is quite so lovely as a roast chicken, and it makes your house smell so good! It’s not for people who are watching their fat intake unless as a special treat.
Enjoy!
M
*the old song was right! It’s a good way to remember which spices go well on a roasted chicken.
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Comments
Man, not only did you post this before lunch, but I have to fast until about 2pm because of a doctor appointment.
How not fair. As soon as I am done at the doctor, I am going to eat WELL, damn it. teehee. Chicken looks AWESOME. Do you have to use a whole chicken for this? I tend to not eat food that I have to tear off of the bone (it just grosses me out), so I’m more of a “boneless, skinless” kind of girl.
Posted by: Tina | August 11th, 2006 08:49
Hehe *Learning* to love salt and fat. I have that one DOWN!
P.S. What about the Parsley….(sage, rosemary and thyme)?
Looks tasty!
Posted by: Kim | August 11th, 2006 08:57
I haven’t cooked in a year (living with family and well, let’s just say you wouldn’t want to cook in their kitchen either)and I am SO looking forward to cooking our first meal in our new home. I’m printing up your recipe and getting ready to be all Martha Mayhem in the kitchen! Looks yummmmmmmmmmy!!
Posted by: Inky | August 11th, 2006 09:26
Yes. I must try this. Sunday perhaps. Nothing like the smell of a roast floating through the house on a Sunday.
Posted by: Rachel H | August 11th, 2006 09:37
I accept your apologies for making me hungry…again. At least I knew it was coming. ;) All I can say is…YUMMMM! Salt and fat- my favorite food group! hehe.
Posted by: Nonnahs | August 11th, 2006 09:40
Yummy, yummy, yummy! I will make it this very weekend. Now, I will go and find something to eat.
Posted by: Isela | August 11th, 2006 09:55
I think I know what’s for dinner now.
Posted by: Beth | August 11th, 2006 10:14
YUM! Your episodic rendering of this reminded me of the first time my mom had to cook a turkey. She called her mom and asked her what to do, and my grandma said she’d mail her written instructions. The first instruction was, “Take a turkey and put it on the counter.” :) Too funny.
Posted by: Stitch-n-Snitch | August 11th, 2006 11:49
i think that you may have just snapped me out of my cooking slump. that looks so yummy!
Posted by: marti | August 11th, 2006 12:56
Huh, I never thought of stuffing a chicken with veggies like that. That looks really good!
Posted by: Lauren | August 11th, 2006 13:52
We really like roast chicken in our house. The one thing you do that I haven’t done is flip the chicken over half-way through the cooking. That’s genius — I’m going to try it the very next time I cook one!
We really like the recipe where you stuff chopped lemons and garlic in the chicken body cavity. That’s good eatin’ too. :)
Posted by: Janice in GA | August 11th, 2006 14:20
That looks so so good. YUM!
Posted by: Erin | August 11th, 2006 14:34
*drool*
Posted by: Chris | August 11th, 2006 20:59
I might have to go get a chicken for supper:) I usually stuff my roasted chicken with lemon, garlic and any fresh herbs I might have on hand (rosemary and thyme are favorites). I actually turn the chicken a couple of times during cooking and it comes out all lemony.
Posted by: Alison | August 12th, 2006 06:30
*sigh* It’s 9am and now all I want is to eat a roast chicken. I know – you did put a warning up – but now I want to eat a roast chicken….and carrots….and pan fried potatoes.
It looks most delicious!
Posted by: Chris | August 12th, 2006 06:55
OMG LOL Did you go to the Paula Dean School of Cooking where “everything is better with a stick of butter.”
Seriously that looks pretty darn tasty. Have you tried beer can chicken in the BBQ?
That’s another great way to have chicken.
Posted by: Barbp | August 12th, 2006 09:25
Maybe you should write a new post because I check your blog everyday and I can’t stand to look at this deliciousness anymore. Please….
Posted by: Beth | August 13th, 2006 17:52
Yum! I’ll have to try that technique once it’s cool enough to want to roast anything.
Posted by: Rose | August 14th, 2006 07:47
Looks yummy! As a devout watcher of Alton Brown’s Good Easts, I’d say that you’d want to let you chicken rest a few minuites after taking out of the oven before carving it. That gives it some time for the jiuces to reabsorb into the meat. That is standard operating procedure for any roasted meat, by the way. Happy eating!
Posted by: Alexa Angel | August 14th, 2006 23:13
Yummy, everything looks so good. I like your idea of adding veggies in the cavity, might have to try it. I have a recipe that calls for lemon and you roast those in the body cavity and halfway through the cooking time,squeeze fresh lemon juice over the body of the chicken which gives the skin a great flavor.
Posted by: Wanda | August 15th, 2006 00:21
The timing on this is perfect. (Granted, it took ten full days between when you posted it and when I read it, but the timing is still perfect.) Because money was a little lean this past month, thanks in part to the expenses we incurred during the power outage in our neighborhood (i.e. eating all meals out, paying out-of-pocket for internet service), we’ve been living a largely tomato-and-cheese-based existence this month. Yesterday was my first major shopping trip to the farmer’s market in over a month, and one of the things I picked up was a really beautiful, plump, four-pound Belle Rose chicken with the feet still attached. I’m going to lop those feet off, roast the birdie, cut whatever we don’t eat for dinner off the carcass and save it for chicken sandwiches, and put the carcass and feet into the stockpot. Just typing all this makes me happy. Thank you, dearheart. :)
Incidentally, last weekend I picked up a new book by Nina Planck called Real Food: What to Eat and Why, which makes a persuasive case for animal fat and salt. I love it when that happens. :)
Posted by: Bakerina | August 20th, 2006 08:12