Saturday, March 14, 2015

Roasting a perfect chicken

The cold winter inspired me to use the "big" oven, as opposed to my cuisinart mini oven, a lot more. Not only to create some good ol' comfort food, but to take the chill out of the kitchen as well. Nearly every week I have roasted a whole chicken. A good size roasted chicken feeds us for quite a few meals. I always make a stock with the bones, which gives us a nice soup for dinner and a couple of lunches. Instead of a roasting pan I have switched over to my trusty cast iron skillet. I have combined methods from a few different recipes and have settled on this...

Place cast iron skillet in the oven and heat to 425 degrees

Rinse chicken and pat dry, season the cavity with salt and pepper. Place a lemon wedge, half a celery stalk, and a slice of onion inside the cavity. If you have fresh herbs you could throw some in as well.

Chop a couple cloves of garlic and tuck them under the skin. Brush the skin with vegetable oil and season with with salt and pepper.

Take the hot skillet out of the oven and transfer the chicken to it. Place in oven and roast for about 1 1/2 hours. I alway check the temperature at an hour. When done, transfer to a platter and let the juices settle for about 15 minutes.

What I like about using the cast iron skillet is that if you want to make gravy, you can do it right in the pan. Jeff is the gravy pro in this household, so I always leave that to him.

TWICE I have taken photos of my chicken roasting process. The uncooked chicken in the skillet looked a little icky, I didn't want to turn off my vegan friends, so that photo was nixed. The photos I took last night of my perfectly browned bird were way out of focus. I will blame the wine for that!

Instead of chicken pics, I will leave you with a photo of a pig (of course).



New piggy bank combo... green and shino!

8 comments:

  1. don't you hate it when you have an idea for a post and the photos aren't good. that has happened to me so many times. I thought you were going to say you made one of those chicken roasting pans I have seen that are made of clay and the chicken somehow stands up in it.

    How do you keep the oil from splattering all over the oven? Never heard of a cuisinart mini oven

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    1. We have a stoneware chicken roaster! It's the prototype that Jeff made for Salmon Falls Stoneware.... believe it or not we us it on the grill. I will have to post about that too.
      My skillet is a couple inches deep, spattering isn't a huge problem.
      The cuisinart oven is great! It's bigger than a standard toaster oven. Here is a link to the model that I have: http://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-BRK-200-Brick-Deluxe-Stainless/dp/B000O3RK7E/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

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    2. you probably have to copy and paste the link into your browser.

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  3. This is an extremely cute piglet, love it!

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  4. YES, your veg friends prefer the piggy bank to the raw chicken ;)

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  5. That's a great recipe. Good looking pig too, of course! You are piggy master also!

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