Justin's Junior Chef Bloggette - Perfect Roasted Chicken

My Mom bought me my first cookbook for Xmas. It is Jamie's Food Revolution by Jamie Oliver. I have to say that Jamie is a really good cook and I like his stuff.  My Mom likes his stuff too and she and my Dad even went to see him live in November.

This chicken recipe is really easy and funny because you stick a lemon up the chicken's butt.  Haha...I said butt.  I also took the pictures this time with my new iPod that I got for my birthday.





Jamie Oliver's Perfect Roast Chicken (with potatoes)

1chicken about 3.5 pounds
1.5 lbs fingerling potatoes
2 medium onions, peeled and cut in half
4 carrots, peeled and cut to serving size
2 stalks celery
1 bulb garlic
olive oil
sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1 lemon, left whole
small bunch of fresh thyme
3 bay leaves
1 cup stock or water (my add)

Take the chicken out of the refrigerator 30 minutes before it goes in the oven.  Preheat oven to 475 degrees.
Jamie says don't peel the vegetables but we peeled the onions and carrots.  Break the garlic bulb into cloves, leaving them unpeeled (gulp).  Pile all the potatoes, vegetables and garlic in the middle of a large roasting pan and drizzle with olive oil.  Drizzle chicken with olive oil and season well with salt and pepper.  Prick the lemon all over with the tip of a sharp knife (pop the lemon in the microwave, if you have one, for 40 seconds to really bring out the flavour). Put the lemon with the herbs inside the chicken's cavity, along with the herbs.

Put the chicken on top of the vegetables in the roasting pan and put in the preheated oven.  Turn the heat down to 400 degrees, and cook the chicken uncovered for 1 hour 20 minutes*.  Baste the chicken half way through with the water or stock.  When ready, take chickent out and put on a cutting board to rest for 15 minutes.  Cover it with foil and a kitchen towel and put aside while you make your gravy.

To carve your chicken, carefully cut down between the leg and the breast (it should almost just pull off).  Cut through the joint and pull the leg off.  Repeat on the other side, then cut between the thigh and drumstick to you have 4 pieces of dark meat.  Angle the knife along the breast bone and then cut down a little at a time to remove the breast in its entirety from the carcass.  Slice the breast up so that each piece has some skin attached. Then turn the chicken over and use your fingers to get at all the tasty, juicy bits from underneath.  You should be left with a stripped carcass, and a platter full of lovely meat.

Mom's Note:

We inserted our digital cooking thermometer in the chicken and made sure that it read 180 degrees in the middle and at the thigh so we knew it was ready. 

* Letting the chicken set out for 30 minutes seems to be an essential step.  We only left ours out the time it took to prepare the other ingredients, and I found it threw off our cooking time by....well 30 minutes.  So if you don't have time to let the chicken come to room temperature, then I suggest budgeting for an extra 30 minutes cooking time.  Result was by far the juciest roast chicken EVER made.  I

If you aren't sure about how to properly carve a chicken or turkey, especially cutting off the breast, watch this series of photos from the Huffington Post on How to carve a turkey.  I prefer this method to cutting slices off the whole bird.