When I think of a classic Sunday
dinner, it has to be a perfectly roasted chicken. Tender, moist meat, seasoned beyond compare with a crispy, golden
brown skin. That is what I am going to
share with you today, a roast chicken with a European flair. French style, herb roasted chicken is just a
delicious as it sounds but not nearly as difficult as you may think.
Cooking in the French style can
sometimes sound a bit intimidating, but I can assure you that most basic French
cuisine has simple roots of the peasant variety. Yes, there was Marie Antoinette, and her cake, but in reality,
the poor folks outnumbered the aristocracy and it is their food that we should
take our cue from. Simple, wholesome
ingredients like a perfectly sourced chicken along with fresh aromatics like
onions and Meyer lemons are the basic building blocks for a delicious
bird. Top that off with some good
quality olive oil and a generous sprinkling of homemade Herbes De Provence and
you have a bird that would have been fit to feed Marie herself with nary a
complaint to be heard.
Getting this underway is
easy! Go get yourself the best chicken
you can afford. I love to get mine from
a local shop that sources locally grown birds, however sometimes my wallet
screams at me and I just go for the grocery store variety when I can get them
on sale. Sometimes I can get whole
birds for .69 a pound and that is when I fill a portion of my freezer with them
because you can't beat a whole chicken for around $3!
Today I have two chickens that are
both between 5 and 6 pounds each. I
love to roast off more than one bird at a time and if I had had the room in my
oven, I would have roasted three of them as I intended, but for now one of them
went into the freezer for another time.
It takes just as much time and energy to roast off two or three chickens
as it does to roast one. Make use of
your time, energy, and electricity and get more for all your effort. You can do so much with leftover roasted
meats that the payoff really is enormous.
I washed and dried each chicken
and then place them on a wire rack inside of a rimmed baking sheet. This will help the air circulate all around
the entire bird and allow any juices and fat to drain into the pan without having
the bird boil in it's own juices. This
is what roasting is all about! Then I
sprinkled the cavities of the chicken with some of my homemade Herbes De
Provence and stuffed them with some halved, peeled onions and lemons, which I
squeezed over the top of the birds before stuffing them inside. This will help to perfume the meat and give
it amazing flavor.
Next I drizzled about a
tablespoon of olive oil over each chicken and gave it a quick massage to spread
out the oil. Then I sprinkled a copious
amount of the herb mixture over each one, completely covering them with a
luxurious crust of herbaceous goodness.
If you like, at this point, you can give the chickens a little spray of
olive or vegetable oil. This will help
the dried herbs not to burn so fast and give them a little more oomph! I use my Misto, oil sprayer for this, but
any commercial cooking oil spray will work just fine.
Then I roasted the chickens for
45 minutes at 400 degrees and then for an additional 45 minutes at 350 degrees,
making sure to keep them in the oven until their internal temperature, when
taken with an instant read meat thermometer registered at least 160
degrees. Make sure you take the
temperature in the breast as well as the thigh area. Also make sure that the juices are running clear with no signs of
red or pink. Then you can be sure your
bird is perfectly done.
You're not quite ready to cut
into that bird just yet though! Go
ahead and cover them with some foil and let them rest for at least 20 minutes
to allow all those delicious juices to settle and redistribute into the meat
before you are ready to sit down to a delicious meal of herb roasted chicken.
I served mine with some roasted
potatoes and onions along with a big green salad and we were very happy
campers! The best part is that there
are plenty of leftovers to have fun with in the coming week. I plan on making several dishes to feed my
family just from these two chickens.
They include a chicken burrito lasagna, Chinese chicken soup, chicken
pot pie, shredded chicken salad and maybe even a Greek inspired chicken
pizza. There might even be some meat
left over for egg rolls, you just never know.
Chicken is not going to waste in this house and it shouldn't in yours
either.
Happy Eating!
If you would like to see how I roasted my chicken, you can have a look, here:
