The Recipe Room

The smell of roast chicken wafting through the house on a Sunday when everyone is together but beetling away on their own thing, is one of my true pleasures.  Perhaps it’s because it throws me back to comforting childhood memories or perhaps it’s just the new memories we are creating. Either way, it’s a good feeling.  I can begin to smell that delicious scent now, as I’m doing a basic roast chicken whilst I write this blog.  Once you have roasted your chicken, and if you don’t eat it all in one go, there are so many yummy dishes you can create with the leftovers, such as chicken wraps or sandwiches.  Keep any leftovers wrapped up in the fridge for a couple of days.

There are so many different recipes for a roasting chicken: different herbs, spices, stuffings, and preparation methods.  I want to share the way I do a basic roast chicken with you.  When I know that I am not going to have lots of time to prepare my roast, I buy one ready-made from the butchers or the supermarket, so that I can simply pop it on the tray, cover it with my choice of spices and roast away.  If you can find an organic chicken, that’s even better.

Ingredients:

• 1 whole chicken, bought ready to roast
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• A few pinches of salt flakes
• A couple of pinches of ground paprika
• A few pinches of ground cumin

Steps:

1. Preheat the oven to 200ºC.
2. Lay the chicken on a roasting tray.  Rub over with the salt flakes; drizzle over with the olive oil; and sprinkle over with the cumin and the paprika.  Then wash your hands really well.
3. Loosely cover the chicken with aluminium foil and roast it in the oven for 30 minutes before removing the foil and roasting at a lower temperature of 160-180ºC for another 20 – 30 minutes, depending on the size of the bird.  Always check the label for weights and cooking times and ensure that the chicken is thoroughly cooked before serving.  To check that the chicken is cooked throughout, you can pierce the thigh meat with a sharp knife or skewer.  The juices will run clear when the chicken is cooked.
4. Once done, turn the oven off and leave the bird in to rest in the cooling heat for 10 minutes.  Remove from the oven, carve and serve.

Duration: 10 minutes preparation time, 1-2 hours cooking time.

Recipe for: 4 servings

Tags: Basic Roast Chicken, chicken, chicken recipes, cumin, olive oil, paprika, whole chicken

This entry was posted on Thursday, 26 April, 2012 at 12:40 pm by Charlie Locke and is filed under Main Courses, Meal for 4 people. You can follow any responses to this entry through the feed RSS 2.0. You can leave a comment, or make a trackback from your own blog.