Mama's Roast Chicken

Thank goodness our family didn’t have to eat my cooking every day; we each would have weighed in at more than 250 lbs.  My ability to add fat to a recipe has been recognized and brought under control by my wife’s watchful eye. My daughters have learned to serve themselves if they want a civilized portion, as opposed to mine which is designed to sate teenaged boy’s appetite. (Unfortunately we have never had one around.)

If it weren’t for my wife, vegetables would come only from a can, salads would consist exclusively of a wedge of iceberg lettuce with homemade 1000 island dressing and soup would be courtesy of Campbell’s. And then there’s chicken. In a recent post, you have seen one of three of my recipes for the preparation of chicken (the other two are grilled or smoked).

In future postings we will explore a variety of chicken recipes, courtesy of my wife and our collection of more than 200 cookbooks, but for today we’ll focus on roast chicken.

Before I joined my wife in the kitchen, the only thing I put in a roasting pan was beef. Herbs only existed in a dried form from McCormick’s. The things I’ve learned and shamelessly stolen from her repertoire are legion.

We’ve tried a variety of roast chicken recipes over the years, some called for various herbs and butter under the skin, and some called for stuffing. Our current favorite is remarkably simple, if you have the ingredients. 

Mama’s Roast Chicken

Ingredients:

1 4-6 lb. roasting chicken

Kosher salt

Freshly ground black pepper

1 large bunch of fresh thyme

1 lemon, halved

1 head of garlic, cut in half crosswise

2-3 tablespoons olive oil

(If this is too healthy for you see the recipe for gravy at the end of this recipe.) 

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees

Prepare the chicken by rinsing it thoroughly inside and out making sure to remove any excess fat and any giblets that may be in the cavity. Pat the outside of the chicken dry.

Liberally salt and pepper the inside of the chicken. Stuff the cavity with the thyme, lemon and garlic.

Rub the outside of the chicken with the oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Tie the legs together with kitchen string and tuck the wing tips under the body of the chicken.

Place the chicken in a roasting pan.

Roast the chicken for 1 ½ hours, or until the juices run clear (no evidence of blood) when you cut between the leg and thigh.

When cooked, remove from the oven. Move the chicken to a plate and cover with foil as you prepare the rest of the meal about 15 minutes.

Slice the chicken into its parts, legs, thighs and breast. I recommend removing the breast whole and then slicing it crosswise into inch thick portions. 

Gotta have gravy? Here ya go:

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons of fat from the bottom of the roasting pan reserved in a small bowl after roasting

1 cup of chicken stock

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

After you have removed the chicken from the roasting pan, drain all the fat from the pan, reserving the 2 tablespoons, add the chicken stock to the pan and cook on high heat for about 5 minutes, until reduced, scraping the bottom of the pan.

Combine the 2 tablespoons of chicken fat with the flour in the small bowl by whisking it until smooth.

Add the fat and flour mixture to the stock in the pan whisking to combine.

Reduce heat to simmer as soon as the mixture comes together. Salt and pepper to taste.

Stir the mixture periodically until you are ready to serve.

If it gets too thick, add a tablespoon of cold water at a time to return to desired thickness.

Serve the gravy on the side.