Impressive Roast Chicken
Do you ever need to impress your family or dinner guests? Enter this Impressive Roast Chicken recipe. What makes it so impressive? It always yields the most incredible flavor with the most minimal effort. Roast chicken is one of my husbands most favorite dinners. It makes me laugh every time because all I think of is how much like Ina Garten’s husband, Jeffrey, he is in that regard. I don’t blame him, there is something so rustic, simple and classic about this Impressive Roast Chicken. I love to serve it with a side salad, or roasted carrots.
Good quality roast chicken starts with the chicken itself. I always buy an air-chilled chicken as I feel they give the very best flavor. The cavity of the bird gets filled with wonderful aromatics. You don’t need to peel or cut anything just shove it in there. Chicken stock can be substituted in place of the white wine, I prefer the wine’s acidity to the end flavor but stock works just as well. The potatoes in the bottom of the pan have two purposes. One, it keeps the chicken from sticking to the skillet while it bakes. Two, they get brown and crispy on the side that touches the pan and they also cook in the chicken fat and produce one hell of a side dish to accompany your Impressive Roast Chicken. You won’t want to skip on those.
Impressive Roast Chicken
Ingredients
- 1 russet potato large
- 1 3-4 lb whole chicken (I prefer air chilled)
- olive oil
- kosher salt
- black pepper
- 2 tsp thyme leaves (fresh or dried)
- 1 head garlic
- 1 lemon
- kitchen string
- 1/2 C dry white wine
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Slice potato into ¼" thick round slices. Place in the bottom of your skillet or pan.
- Pat chicken dry and place on top of the potatoes in the pan. Slice lemon in half and insert into the cavity of the chicken. Take bulb of garlic and cut it in half and place in the cavity of the chicken, skin and all. Use kitchen twine to tie the legs of the chicken together using figure eights and then simple knots. Rub 1 TBSP olive oil onto the skin of the chicken. Sprinkle evenly with 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp pepper and thyme leaves.
- Place in the oven and roast for 1 hour and 10 minutes.
- Pull chicken out, and increase oven temp to 450 degrees. Pour wine into bottom of pan and place chicken back in the oven and continue to cook for 20 minutes.
- Pull chicken out of oven and allow to rest for 15 minutes.
