Look What I Did! The Roasted Chicken Experiment

Ok, this may seem funny to you... but look what I did... I roasted a chicken for the first time ever in my life. I know, it's about time girl! It was so simple and easy, and not to mention delicious. My husband is still really from the 'lusciousness' of the chicken. It's true, you can get to a man's heart through his stomach, but who would have thought it would have been because of a roasted chicken.

   

Here's how we start. I found this recipe online from Nigella Lawson, an absolutely gorgeous British chef who I have long admired on the Food Network.

Lemon Roast Chicken adapted from http://www.cookstr.com/recipes/lemon-roast-chicken-with-lazy-mash/print from Chef Nigella Lawson

Ingredients:

    1 x 3lb 4oz chicken

    1 lemon

    1 tablespoon sea salt/½ tablespoon table salt

    1 heaped tablespoon butter

    Dribble olive oil

    3 x 6–8oz baking potatoes

    ½ stick butter

   1 tablespoon sea salt

Directions: Preheat the oven to 425°F.

Make sure your chicken is at room temperature, and cut off any string or rubber bands. Sit the chicken in a roasting pan. Put ½ the lemon into the chicken cavity, and sprinkle a little of the salt in there as well. Rub the butter over the skin and dribble with a little oil. 

 

Put into the oven and cook for 1¼ hours. Here's a part that I added in... I chopped about 4 baking potatoes into wedges and tossed them with canola oil, salt, pepper and paprika.

Let the chicken rest in the roasting pan for 15 minutes, sprinkling over the remaining salt and squeezing over the other half of lemon while it sits, then move to a carving board.

Deglaze the roasting pan with a little water, letting the juices and caramelized bits from the roast chicken make a small-volume but intensely-flavored gravy to spoon over the carved bird.

I have never made real good wedges, but because they were in there for so long in a separate pan roasting away, they turned about absolutely delicious and crispy and moist inside, yum, yum!

Serve with a big bunch of steamed broccoli, do you see all that steam!!! It was so delicious, if you could taste this picture you would know!