Juicy Roast Chicken

Here's the first thing to come out of the food blog gift I mentioned in my last post. It's a roast chicken dinner. From my "inventory" list I used the Young Chicken and 1 of the plump organic lemons.

I don't really know how to roast a chicken. My mother likes to squeeze a lemon over the whole bird, then stick the squeezed lemon halves in the cavity. I did this, previously having tucked a bunch of sage leaves under the skin and rubbed the skin with butter. For roasting instructions, I used the Master Recipe in Julia Child's The Way to Cook (Alfred A. Knopf, 1989). Her instructions involved doing a different thing to the roasting chicken every 10 minutes--turning it on one side or the other, salting it, basting it, changing the temperature, etc. These steps go up to 70 minutes and then she says to just keep basting now and then until it's done--around 90 minutes in the oven with another 20 minutes or so to rest. It was a bit harrying to keep running back to the oven every 10 minutes, but I think I did OK.

Here's the bird on its side in the oven.



Here's the bird resting.



The end result: This chicken was just fabulous. My dining companions both asked for seconds and thirds, though one claims not to be a big fan of "plain" chicken. I LOVE chicken and a roast bird on a winter evening is the bomb. The breast meat (my fave part) was so fresh and perfectly cooked that it almost squeaked between my teeth, if you can imagine that in a good way. It wasn't fork tender (to me that evokes pulled pork and a certain amount of chewiness). No, it was knife tender. Like buttah. So good! (KG, we raised a forkful to you!)