Roast Chicken

This post is part of our update of  meals from the past few months using recipes based on published recipes. Please be aware that we've bent the recipes to our will. If you'd like the original recipe, have a look at the cook book linked in the post.

It was just the two of us this Christmas, so we made a roast chicken for  dinner. We made the Perfect Roast Chicken (p196) and A Consistently Good Gravy (p205) from Jamie's Food Revolution.

Chicken
Ingredients: chicken, onions, carrots, celery, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper, lemon, and herbs. We used a bay leaf dried rosemary, oregano, and basil.

Gravy
Ingredients: heaped teaspoon of flour, wineglass of wine, 1 L of broth.


Prep

• Preheat oven to 475 F.
• Wash and chop vegetables -- these are for the trivet that will become your gravy.
• Peel garlic.
• Pile vegetables and garlic into your roasting pan.
• Drizzle chicken with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.
• Prick lemon all over and put in microwave for 40 seconds.

Cook

• Put chicken on top of vegetables and put in oven.
• Turn heat down to 400 F.
• Cook for 1 hour 20 minutes.
• Baste the chicken after 40 minutes. If vegetables look dry add some water to prevent burning.
• When done, remove the chicken from the pan and cover with foil.

Gravy

• Remove 90% of hot fat from the roasting pan.
• Put pan on cooktop over high heat. If your pan is not cooktop safe (metal), transfer trivet and juices to a sauce pan. Be sure to include the bits stuck to the roasting pan.
• Add flour and stir.
• Mash vegetables with a potato masher to a lumpy mush.
• Tear off chicken wing tips and break them up in the pan.
• Add the wine.
• Boil a few minutes.
• Add the stock -- add it in a few batches to ensure your gravy isn't too runny. You may only need 1/2 L, but keep in mind some liquid will boil off.
• Break to a boil and keep scraping the bottom.
• Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes or until you reach desired consistency.