Roast Chicken

Tonight we had one of those great meals that looks really fancy and complicated but actually requires less work than making ....spaghetti.  It just requires me to have a whole chicken ready for roasting. 

Doesn't this sound fancy?

Roast chicken seasoned with herbes de provence, cracked black pepper and coarse sea salt.

Delicata squash roasted, buttered, and sprinkled with brown sugar

Lightly steamed broccoli

Not bad for a weeknight meal at home. 

It's ridiculously easy.  Well honestly it was made a lot easier because the organic chicken I bought (on sale for $2.29 a pound!!  It's local and free range too!!!) was already cleaned, trussed, and tipped!  Woohoo!  If you don't know how to truss (tie up) a chicken, I highly recommend watching a video or two on how to do it.  It's not that difficult, but watching a video can probably save you some time.  I learned how to roast a chicken on the "Techniques Special" episode of No Reservations.

That episode also taught me to pull out the wishbone to make serving and cutting the chicken easier after it's been roasted. 

The original recipe from the cookbook I was looking at just uses butter, salt and pepper.  I remember looking at some recipes on allrecipes.com a while back and someone had suggested to stuff the chicken with an onion, so I did that.  I also thought one evening that it might be fun to add some herbes de provence just to see if it would make a difference and I think the flavor is nice.  So here's my take on how to make a great, simple, roast chicken.

Roasted chicken 

Slightly adapted from Everyday Food: Great Food Fast

Ingredients

1 whole chicken cleaned, trussed, tipped, with wishbone removed

2tbsp butter

3tsp herbes de provence

1/2 an onion cut in chunks

coarse sea salt

freshly cracked black pepper

Method

1.  Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

2.  Sprinkle a generous amount of sea salt and black pepper inside your chicken.  Sprinkle about a tsp of the herbes de provence and stuff with the onion chunks.

3.  Rub your chicken with the butter and sprinkle all over with more sea salt, pepper and the rest of the herbs. 

4.  Roast your chicken in the oven for 50 minutes.  The cookbook said to look for an internal temp of 165, but I was just going by my meat thermometer tonight which said that poultry should be cooked to 185.  I cooked mine to 185 and it took about an hour and everything was still juicy and tender.

Ta da!!  All done.  I even roasted my squash in the oven on the bottom rack.  I had to take it out earlier though because it didn't need quite as much time as the chicken.

Roasted chicken is a great meal to serve for a couple of guests or if you want some leftovers the next day (and don't have a really large family).  

I remember having some close friends over and making this with some roasted veggies and foccacia.  It was a great hit and I felt like I had made something so fancy, but everything was so simple.   Sometimes great ingredients speak for themselves I guess.  (I may have borrowed that thought from Anthony Bourdain.)

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Dear God,

 thank you for simple days.  Thank you for a nice trip to the park, an enjoyable trip to the store with my kids, and a relaxing evening with my family enjoying good simple food.  All of our blessings are too numerous to count and I'm sure many more go unnoticed, so thank you for those as well.  Amen.