My Roast Chicken Recipe

Ingredients:

  1. Large Roasting Chicken (Perdue has good organic ones at any grocery store and they are usually very large and bred for roasting) – 5-6 lbs or so.
  2. Mesquite seasoning (you can buy McCormick brand at any grocery store or if there is a Costco close by, their Mesquite Sweet seasoning is great!)
  3. One large lemon.
  4. One large Springs of fresh Rosemary
  5. 2-3 fresh sage leaves
  6. One teaspoon of smoked sweet paprika
  7. Freshly ground black pepper
  8. 6-7 white evenly sized potatoes
  9. 2-3 stems of fresh celery
  10. 2-3 medium sized white onions.
  11. 4-5 thin organic carrots
  12. A pound of fresh green beans.
  13.  Two tablespoons of good quality extra virgin olive oil
  14. 4-5 large cloves of garlic

Directions:


1.    Wash the chicken in cold water and remove the bag of organs from its cavity.
2.    Pat the chicken dry with paper towels so that it is dry inside and out.
3.    Heat the oven at 350 F.
4.    Separate the skin on the breasts by pulling it apart with your hands and make kinda pockets there (on the top side of the chicken.)


5.    Rub the chicken inside and out with a mixture of mesquite favoring and paprika and coarsely ground black pepper.  Use about 2 table spoon of mesquite and a teaspoon of paprika and a teaspoon of pepper.  Rub this spice rub inside the skin pockets and on top as well – rubbing it into the surface all over.
6.    Cut the lemon into 6 slices (remove seeds) and place two slices inside the chicken’s cavity, one thin slice between the skin pockets on the breasts and keep two slices for mixing with the veggies that will sit on the bottom of the roasting pan.
7.    Cut the celery sticks into 3 long pieces each. Stick the 2-3 sticks into the chicken cavity.
8.    Peel the onions and cut then into 6-7 wedges each.


9.    Place a couple of springs of the rosemary inside the chicken’s cavity and also 2-3 cloves of garlic and 2-3 wedges of the onions.
10.    Also place some sage leaves inside the cavity and a couple in the skin pockets.
11.    Wash and cut the potatoes into halves and place at the bottom of the roasting pan.
12.    Also add the celery sticks and carrots on the bottom of the pan along with the remaining onion wedges and garlic cloves.
13.    Pour generous amounts of Olive oil on the chicken and rub it in – also pour it on the veggies at the bottom of the pan and rub it into all of them.
14.    Reduce the oven temp to 325 F.
15.    Place the Chicken (breast side up) in the roasting pan (pyrex baking dish is good) and place in the oven with a tin foil tent on top of it.
16.    Roast the chicken in the oven for around 75-90 minutes and keep basting it regularly with the juices that collect at the bottom of the pan at 10-12 minutes intervals.
17.    Also stir the veggies around a bit so that they cook evenly and get mixed up with the juices and absorb the flavor of the spices and the chicken.
18.    Remove the tin foil tent after this and let it roast some more till the skin looks crispy and brown.
19.    While the chicken is roasting, cut and wash the green beans.
20.    In a separate pot of boiling water, add the green beans for 4-5 minutes of cooking and remove from hot water immediately.
21.    Place the cooked beans in an ice bath to shock them (this way they retain their bright green color).


22.    When the chicken is almost done, spread the cooked green beans into the bottom of the roasting pan and also baste them with juices that collect at the bottom. Bake them for another 8-10 minutes.
23.    Check the inside of the chicken with a cooking/meat thermometer to make sure that it is cooked thoroughly. When you check with a thermometer, make sure that the end of the thermometer goes into the meatiest part of the chicken without touching the bones (which heat up and cook much faster).
24.    Rest the chicken for 8-10 minutes before carving it.  This ensures that it stays juicy – if you cut it just as it comes out of the oven, the juices flow out and the chicken breasts get too dry.

 

 

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comments

  1. Permalink Submitted by Swati Raman Garg on Wed, 26/12/2012 - 09:48

    love that last pic.. being a veggie, attempting to do a full chicken will be difficult but if i ever do it… the hubster would love it!

    • Permalink Submitted by Shabnam on Wed, 26/12/2012 - 17:20

      Hi Swati – good to see you here 🙂 I follow your blog through the Indian Food Bloggers Network!!! The Roast Chicken recipe (Just make sure you get large whole broiler chicken with the skin still on it) is actually very simple and tastes great…let me know how it turned when you try it. You know my mom has always been a veggie and my dad the complete carnivore and so for years I observed the strange dynamics between them – he’d bring home every kind of edible critter and she’d make delicious stuff out of it without ever tasting a bite of it 🙂 HAppy New Year to you!!!

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