I’ve been meaning to write down my roast chicken for a while but I was trying to perfect the recipe as much as I could. Roasting a whole chicken can seem like a daunting task but trust me when I tell you that the small amount of prep work required yields delicious results. I made a roast chicken following the Engagement Chicken recipe from the Glamour magazine cookbook 100 Recipes Every Woman Should Know: Engagement Chicken and 99 Other Fabulous Dishes to Get Everything You Want in Life.
The lore of the whole roast chicken is that a magazine editor handed her recipe to an assistant looking for the perfect dish to prepare for her boyfriend who loved it so much that he proposed. Three more staffers made the same roast chicken and they too got engaged. Since then, over 60 women have also credited the recipe for their engagement and so a legend was born.
I have tweaked my recipe over the past 10 years to make my perfect “Engagement Chicken,” which T raves about each time I make it. Note: I’m still not engaged. I do however, impress guests each time I make the dish. I also love making it for a Sunday supper and eating the leftovers during the week. I also salvage the carcass for chicken broth, which I then incorporate into other recipes.
INGREDIENTS
– 1 (4 to 5 pound) roasting chicken
– Kosher salt
– freshly ground black pepper
– 2 lemons
– 1 whole head garlic, cut in 1/2 crosswise
– Extra Virgin Olive Oil
– 1 Spanish onions, peeled and thickly sliced
– 1 lbs baby potatoes, cut in 1/2 crosswise
– 2 large carrots, peeled and cut into chunks
DIRECTIONS
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
Remove and discard the chicken giblets. Pat the outside dry. Liberally salt and pepper the inside of the chicken. Put chicken back in fridge while you prep other ingredients.
Cut the lemons in quarters, peel and thickly slice onions, cut baby potatoes 1/2 crosswise and cut carrots into thick chunks.
Place 1/2 of quartered lemons in the chicken along with the garlic and reserve the rest of the lemons. Brush the outside of the chicken with olive oil and season the chicken liberally with salt and pepper. Tie the legs together with kitchen string and tuck the wing tips under the body of the chicken.
Place the chicken in a small (11 by 14-inch) roasting pan. Toss the reserved lemons, carrots and sliced onions with olive oil, salt and pepper. Pour evenly around the chicken.
Roast the chicken for about 1 hour and 15 minutes, until the juices run clear when you cut between a leg and a thigh. Let the chicken rest for 10 minutes then carve.
Put vegetables on serving plate and top with carved the chicken. Serve and pour juices from roasting on chicken.
