Roasting a Chicken

Roast Chicken Fresh Out of the Oven

I love to cook! Funny thing about me and cooking, I kind of skipped learning the basics and just dove right into the gourmet stuff! The first meal I ever made was for my boyfriend little David Money (we called him little because there was another guy in our high school that was over six feet tall and his name was, yes… Big David Money). Anyway, I invited David over and made him a Lasagna dinner from a recipe I cut out of my ‘Seventeen’ magazine. Yes, I still have the recipe and it is my go to recipe whenever I make Lasagna!

Fast forward a few more years and I’m in college living in a sorority house. Although we had a kitchen and cooks the use of the kitchen was off limits to us. There was however a little kitchenette just off the Rec room and that is where I made my second memorable meal for yet another boyfriend, Mike Blanton. He was a Delta Tau Delta frat boy and although the relationship didn’t work out, we are still friends to this day. But I digress, using the little kitchenette I whipped together a tasty beef and broccoli stir fry using my Wok I got for Easter from my mom as an Easter basket! I still have the Wok and use it to make all our stir fry dinners at Chez Putnam! 

So, ask me to make Chinese or Italian… easy peasy, but ask me to make something more basic like roast a chicken I’m not so familiar which is why I decided to make this the topic of this blog post! Today I decided it was time I learned to roast a chicken! Fun fact, the recipe I used comes from one of my daughter’s kids cookbook called “Family Fun: Cooking with Kids”, the Disney edition! 

The recipe is wonderfully simple but can be tweaked as needed. For my rendition, I decided to through in some cut veggies on the bottom which included onions, butternut squash, a parsnip and mushrooms, then I placed the chicken on top of the veggies. The ingredients to roast the chicken are as follows:

One 4 to 5 lbs. roasting chicken

One lemon

One large onion, sliced

Two tablespoons olive oil

One teaspoon dried thyme (I eye balled the amount of time)

½ teaspoon coarse Kosher Sea salt

¼ teaspoon pepper

Step One: 

Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Remove the giblets, thoroughly rinse the chicken, and pat dry with a paper towel. Squeeze the juice from ½ a lemon over the chicken and place the other half of the lemon inside the chicken. Close the cavity with a small metal skewer and tie the legs together with string. 

Step Two:

To avoid the food sticking to the pan, I sprayed the pan with Pam. Make a bed of onion slices (this is where I also added the parsnip, butternut squash and mushrooms) the in the bottom of a roasting pan and place the chicken, breast side up, on the veggies.  Drizzle with the olive oil, sprinkle with the dried thyme, sea salt, and pepper and bake for 1 ¼ to 1 ½ hours, basting frequently, until the juices from behind the leg run clear. Let the chicken rest five minutes, then carve. Serves four to six people. 

To accompany this savory poultry dish, I roasted Asparagus with olive oil, sea salt, pepper, and parmesan cheese with wild rice (Uncle Ben). 

Bon Appetit!