Herb and Garlic Roast Chicken

One recipe you can count on every Western food lover having in their repertoire is a great, standard roast chook recipe. Everyone's got a different twist:

• Do you stuff onoins or lemons or abnsolutely nothing up it's bottom?
• Do you baste or not?
• Do you slip some extras fat, butter or oil between the skin and the breast?
• What herbs and spices do you use, or are more of a good ole' salt an pepper cook?
• Do you cook long and low or hot and fast?

There are lots of different ways to make a great roast chook. Mess around and see what you like best. Maybe it's time for a change from the same old roast chook recipe you've been using since time immemorial.

I love a good roast chook. Especially an organic free-range happy chicken, like our friend Ron sells at the Strathcona Farmer's Market. I've had a few standard roast chook recipes that I've used through the years, and they're all great, but I'm feeling the need to shake things up a bit so I tried a new method this time around.

This one delivers a crispy skin and juicy interior without any basting at all, which, in my books already puts it ahead of the rest.

• 1 - 5.5 lb organic free range chicken
• 1/3 cup soft butter
• 5 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
• 1 + 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 1 sprig rosemary
• 1 large sprig thyme
• 2 garlic cloves, bruised
• 1 jumbo shallot (or 6 regular shallots), peeled and quartered

Allow bird to come to room temperature by removing it from the refrigerator 2 hours before you intend to start cooking it.

Preheat oven to 450F.

Rinse the bird and pat dry inside and out with paper towels.

Use your hand to loosen skin from breast of chicken. Cream together softened butter, minced garlic, minced thyme and rosemary and 1 + 1/2 teaspoons salt. Use your hands to distribute the butter mixture evenly between the breast meat and the loosened skin.

Combine 1 teaspoon salt and 1 teaspoon pepper. Use your hands to apply it to the inside of the cavity. Stuff cavity loosely with thyme and rosemary sprigs, shallot and bruised garlic.

Truss the chicken.

Sprinkle an additional 1 teaspoon salt over chicken. Place in roasting pan, breast side up.

Roast chicken for 90 minutes.

Comments

[McAuliflower]

Wow that's an amazing skin you've got going there! My chickens haven't ever come close :)

[Don]

Yum, nothing like a roast chicken on a cold winter's day! (not that it's been much of a winter here)

I just made a roast chicken recently too! But instead of the traditional, I went and removed the backbone and butterflied it, and rubbed lime, chipotles and adobo sauce, butter and honey under the skin of the breast and legs.

[Monique]

Great blog you have here!
We slow-roasted a chicken over the weekend. We stuffed the body with 2 cut limes, a quartered yellow onion, and a seeded ancho chili. Yummm. It made the best arroz con pollo ever. Great blog you have here!