Recipe: Roasted Chicken

During my time at L'Academie de Cuisine, we learned how to make a delicious Roasted Chicken.  While a chicken is easy to roast, it is hard to make it good.  I love making a chicken early in the week and using the meat to make other recipes.  It is so versatile and you can save the bones to make a wonderful stock.  

Ingredients:

1 roasting chicken (3 ½ lbs)

Mire poix

Salt

Pepper

Smashed Garlic Cloves

Herbs:  thyme, sage

Butter

Olive oil

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Remove the fat from the chicken.  Salt and pepper the cavity.  Add some smashed garlic cloves inside.  Stuff it with the mire poix.  Add fresh thyme and sage.  Make a compound butter with butter, sage, thyme, salt and chopped garlic.  Insert the butter between the skin and the chicken breast and spread it out.

Tip:  Use free-range chicken.

Tie up the chicken.  Close legs and tie them together.  Wings down.  Center of the strings under the wings and then up across the legs and use the end of the cartilage to tote, then around the legs and around the back and tie.  Cut the excess string.  Time to roast.

Heat olive oil in a medium nonstick pan over medium heat.  Start searing chicken on the leg, and then flip to the other leg.  After searing the sides, do the back.  Don’t use tongs.  Use the cutting fork between the legs and the wings.  

*You can do the same thing with a turkey.  

Let the skin crust before moving.  If the pan is not hot enough, the skin will stick.  Add salt on top.  Add the chicken into the oven.  After 5-10 minutes, baste and turn down the temperature to 375 degrees.  Breast is on top. 

How to tell it is cooked:  Put a fork in and shake.  If it is not bloody, then it is ready.  It is cooked when it is 165-170 degrees.  (Should take about an hour and 10 minutes).  

Let it rest for 1/3 of the time you cook it.  Lay it back side down. 

Remove the fat from the drippings and bring it back to temperature.

Cut it:

Remove the legs.  Remove the stuffing.  Put stuffing in the pan. 

Cut it in half.  Remove the bone from the meat.  Cut the wing at the end.  Preserve the skin around it to protect.  Add bones to the pan and string.  Put the pieces of chicken on a cooling rack. 

Quickly sear the bones with the stuffing.  Deglaze with white wine.  Put all of that back into drippings. Season with salt and pepper.  Make sure to reduce wine and pass through a chinois.  

Serve over basmati rice with jus on top.

Photo by Emily Clack