Sunday, August 26, 2012

Lemon and thyme roast chicken


Recipe and photo from here.

We've been on a quest for a while to find a nice roast chicken recipe. It's not easy. I quite enjoy a home cooked roast chicken, but Chris doesn't like roast chicken as much as he likes other roasted meats. He says it's because roast chicken was just about the only roast his family ever had when he was a kid, so it quickly became done to death for him.

Tonight we tried this one. It wasn't too bad. Unfortunately, in the picture from the magazine it all looks a bit burned. Not sure what was going on with the food styling there.

It was pretty easy to make. No stuffing involved. I don't mind eating stuffing, but making it adds extra time to the cooking that I'm mostly too lazy to bother with.  To cook the roast, you just heat the oven up to 200 degrees. Then you wash the chicken under cold water, pat it dry, and put it into a roasting dish breast side down. Then you stick a lemon that you've cut into quarters into the cavity, and put a couple of halved lemons, a whole clove of garlic cut in half crossways and some thyme around it. Add about three quarters of a cup of chicken stock to the dish, sprinkle more thyme on top, spray the chicken with some olive oil and season it with salt and pepper.

Then you cook it for an hour and fifteen minutes (that's for a 1.8kg chook, we had a 2.1kg one so we gave him a bit longer). After that you take it out, flip the chicken over so it's breast side up, and cook it for another fifteen minutes or so.

Serve with all the usual roast chicken accompaniments. We had potatoes, corn and beans. The juice in the pan would probably make a nice light gravy to go on the meat, or you could mix a regular gravy mix into the juices if you wanted to.

Usually with a 2kg roast we have leftover meat to use for sandwiches but most people went for seconds tonight so the carcass is pretty bare. I think that means it went down well.

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