Growing up, we had roast chicken most Friday night’s. This tradition started off at my grandmother’s house. She would serve hers with roast potatoes, rice, peas and carrot. My mom made sure to continue the tradition when she passed away. And it is the meal I most love to cook for the children.
Everyone has their own, perfect way to cook roast chicken. I think mine is best of course – but give it a try to see if I am right! They key to roasting a chicken to perfection is placing it breast side up and leaving it to do its thing in the oven. I know the photograph below does not do the meal justice. I usually make a trivet of vegetables for the chicken to sit on. This includes carrots which I peel and cut at an angle. Baby marrows which you might know as courgettes or zucchini. Baby leeks which have been trimmed. A mixture of baby potatoes and sweet potatoes to suit everyone’s taste. And anything else I have to hand. I season them very generously and as the chicken cooks, it drips lovely chicken fat over the vegetables. This makes them extremely tasty.
Roast Chicken
Ingredients
- 1 free range chicken
- 4 chicken wings
- 1 handful of mixed herbs, tarragon, flat leaf parsley, dill
- 2 cloves garlic, cut in half
- ½ lemon
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper to season
- paprika for sprinkling
- olive oil or duck fat if you have
Method
- Preheat the oven to 180° Celsius
- rinse the inside and the skin of the chicken under cold water
- pat dry and season the cavity with salt and black pepper
- lightly coat the skin with olive oil or duck fat
- season with salt, black pepper and paprika
- stuff the cavity with the herbs, garlic and lemon
- season the chicken wings with salt, pepper and paprika
- place the chicken wings into the roasting pan and rest the chicken, breast side down on the wings
- cook, together with your choice of vegetables for between 90 minutes to 2 hours, depending on the size of the chicken
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We love roasting chicken especially because the next day is Chicken MAyo sandwiches in the lunch boxes!
what a perfect left over lunch!