Roast Chicken

I really like Michael Smith.  The chef, that is. He talks a lot about simple flavours, fresh ingredients, and he doesn't worry too much about exact measurements. Plus, in his cookbooks he actually explains why he does things a certain way. Imagine that, a chef actually giving away some secrets. Anyway, SO came home with a free-range, local, super-awesome blah blah chicken from the butcher. Not much more thought than to roast it in some fashion. Flipping through some Chef Smith books, in one recipe he advocates throwing everything in the roasting pan and just...well cooking the lot.  I closed the book, and started rummaging through the fridge. Here's what I found - not a bad hall, since we did groceries yesterday.

Roast Chicken ingredients - minus the chicken

So tomatoes, some carrots, the ubiquitous onions and potatoes, fresh rosemary, garlic, asparagus and lemon. That'll all do nicely. So now we just have to season the chicken with simple ground pepper and salt, and roughly chop everything and dump unceremoniously around the chicken. This is what is looked like.

Roast Chicken - before cooking

Was it too much?  Too little? Would it overcook or under cook?  Pshaw, doesn't matter too much. I wanted to just do it quickly and simply and see how it turns out.  Threw in the rosemary whole, and the lemon - well I've made the mistake before of putting in too much lemon slices. Doing that gives it a lemon flavour, sure, but imparts too much bitterness with all the rind.  So 20 minutes per pound at 400 F, and here is the result.

Roast Chicken

Wow, looks awesome. No basting, no stirring, nothing. I checked the temperature - supposedly 165F in the breast and 175F in the thigh, but opinion seems to vary on this so use your own judgement. The family was happy, and the chicken was wickedly moist - just unbelievable really, and the skin was nice and crispy.

And the bonus in all this, you can make some chicken stock with the carcass afterwards. See notes in the recipe below.

Roast Chicken
Roast Chicken Ingredients

• Whole chicken (the one I had was 1.8kg, fed the 3 of us plus two lunches)
• Whatever random vegetables you have in your fridge, plus fresh herbes. Hardy/strong herbs you can probably put in from the start, while more delicate herbs (like maybe basil) you may want to leave until close to the end. My veggie list went like:  4 large carrots (1" pieces), 2 large onions (wedges or thick slices), about 6 asparagus (1" pieces), 6 garlic cloves (cut in half), 3 full sprigs of rosemary, 3 tomatoes (wedged), 4 medium potatoes (wedge or cubed) and 3 thin slices of lemon. Also salt and pepper.

Method

1. Put the chicken in a roasting pan. Use one that is big enough to hold all the veggies as well without crowding everything too much.
2. Season the chicken.
3. Throw in all the veggies around  the chicken randomly.
4. Put in the oven, check for doneness with a thermometer.

Chicken Stock Ingredients

• Chicken carcass, all bones, skin, meat.
• the leftover veggies from the meal, unless you keep it for lunch the next day like I did
• 3 or 4 roughly chopped carrots
• 2 roughly chopped onions
• 3 or 4 celery stocks 
• 3 or 4 bay leaves
• Some dried rosemary leaves
• some dried parsley
• 1 Tb whole peppercorns
• a tsp or two of salt
• pretty much whatever veggie or herb you want

Method

1. Add the chicken carcass to a stock pot along with all the rest of the ingredients.
2. Fill with water so it just covers everything, should probably be in the neighbourhood of 10 - 12 cups of cold water.
3. Bring it to a boil, then reduce the heat until it is just simmering. Cook for at least 1 hour, and up to 2 hours with the lid cracked open. You can stir it once in a while.
4. Remove the pot from heat, let it cool a bit. 
5. Lift out the bones/veggies, or strain into another large pot with a colander or strainer. Whatever method works for you is fine, you are basically straining all the good stuff. Once I had strained stock, I poured it into warmed quart-sized canning jars with a super fine strainer.  Make sure to leave some "head space", you will have less chance of the jars cracking if you freeze.
6. Let it cools some more, and put it in the fridge overnight. In the morning, you can scrape off the bit from the top if you like. Now you can put it in the freezer. Some advocate freezing without the lids on (if you can), then adding the lids after frozen.