Roasted Chicken | the-corvallis-carrot

ROASTED ROSEMARY CHICKEN

INGREDIENTS:

1 whole chicken

3 oz onion

1 carrot

1/2 celery stick

3 sprigs of rosemary

1/2 stick of butter

2 qts of water for making stock

Preheat oven to 435.

The following may not be suitable for vegetarians. Roasting chicken is very easy to do, and you can yeild a lot of chicken from it. Whenever I roast a chicken I'm able to get at least 4 meals from it. From this chicken I was able to make chicken noodle soup, chicken fried rice and still had 8 oz of chicken breast left over for salads or just to pair with any veggie and starch. I like to roast chicken as opposed to buying the breasts separately because I'm able to cook all of it at once so it makes cooking dinner throughout the week much faster. Also it's very tender when it's cooked in its own juices. You may see that I didn't truss the chicken. Trussing (click to watch video) is just wrapping up the legs to make sure the breast doesn't dry out while cooking. I always stuff the cavity though and I've never had a problem with it drying out. If you want to truss, go for it, but you really don't need to if you fill up the cavity.

Gather together all of your ingredients.

Make sure you remove the giblets, you don't want to cook them in your chicken.

Cut up butter and veggies. Rub rosemary into butter. I like to keep the pieces relatively small.

Put everything into the chicken.

I have a pan that I like to roast my chickens in, but any high temperature resistant pan will do. Put in the oven for 30 minutes.

When the timer goes off use a spoon to baste the chicken with the melted butter and chicken fat and return to the oven for 40 minutes.

Voila! Roasted chicken is complete.

It's better to be safe than sorry though, so make sure the temperature of the chicken breast is 165 F. This way you know that your chicken is fully cooked.

I like to let my chicken rest for at least 20 minutes before cutting into it. This lets all the juices settle. If you cut into it right when it comes out of the oven you're likely to have a cutting board covered in juice and you'll end up with dry chicken. If you have a lid to the pan you cooked it in, just cover it, you can also just put aluminum foil over it so it doesn't cool down too quickly.

First I start by cutting off the thighs.

Then I remove the wings and skin. You can keep the skin on if you want, I just like to add it to my stock for more flavor.

To remove the breast I just run my knife along the backbone and cut it off. It doesn't have to be super clean, the more meat left on the carcass the more flavorful your broth will be. I also remove the meat from the thighs and save the bones for the stock.

Pour excess fat through strainer and into container for future cooking. If your pan sticks like mine does you'll be left with a bunch of little bits.

Throw giblets in the pan.

Cover with 2 qts of water.

Place carcass in water, along with the veggies that were in the center. Turn onto a low simmer for 30-45 minutes.

Pick off any extra meat off of the thighs and other bones for chicken noodle soup.

When you've cleaned off most of the bones you can strain the liquid. You should get just under 2 qts.

This is the butter/fat that was strained before. I like to save it for fried rice and other chicken dishes.