Lemon and Onion Roasted Chicken

By susanwadle

Ingredients

• 3 large carrots, peeled
• 3 parsnips, peeled
• 1 fennel bulb, quartered
• 2 handfuls fingerling potatoes
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 4- to 5-pound 5-pound roasting chicken
• 2 3 3 cloves of garlic, peeled
• 2 sprigs thyme or rosemary
• 1 large onion
• 1 lemon
• 6 to 8 sage leaves

Details

Servings 4
Adapted from food52.com

Preparation

Step 1

Roast chicken was the first thing I learned to make in an oven, if you don’t count American cheese slices melted on saltine crackers, which I used to make in 4th grade, after school, my house key still attached to a string of rawhide around my neck. Roast chicken was also the dish I used to order on occasional dates with Wall Street bankers while in college, because it was the cheapest entrée.

The added value here, as I alluded to earlier, are the slices of onions under the skin, which you should slide in carefully to avoid rips. You will see that

instructs you to choose any 2 out of the 4 vegetable selections and put them in the pan. I did not really understand this; was she saying skip the other ones, or use them later, and in which case when? Nevermind. I did not use the potatoes, because potatoes make me hostile, but I used more carrots and parsnips than she suggested, because I like a little extra. Roasted parsnips are now my new favorite thing – can I get an amen?

Heat the oven to 375 degrees.

Thoroughly wash the chicken, and pat dry. Salt and pepper the chicken cavity, and throw in the garlic cloves and either rosemary or thyme as well. Place the chicken breast side up on top of the vegetables in the baking dish.

Take the larger onion segments and place them under the skin, 2 segments per side of the breast. Take the smaller onion segments and place them under the leg skin. Any remaining, loose onion slices can be thrown into the cavity.

Slide 6 or 8 sage leaves under the skin, and you can place them on top of the onion slices. Conversely, you can place a sage leaf on each onion segment as you slide the onions under the skin.

Place the bird in the middle of the oven. Baste the bird occasionally with the pan juices that accumulate. The chicken will be done in 80 to 90 minutes. Test the bird for doneness by wriggling the leg, and if the leg comes out of the joint easily the chicken is done.

Let the chicken rest about 10 minutes before carving. To serve, place the chicken on a serving platter, surrounded by the roasted vegetables. Serve the jus on the side.

With the leftover chicken, I like to make a nice curry. Then I remove the lemons and herbs from what is left of the carcass and make chicken stock. Generally we get 2 days of roast chicken for two people, 2 days of chicken curry, and then stock to boot!

Add yours

Roast chicken is one of my favorite meals. Usually make Ina's, loading the roasting pan w/veggies. Made yours. The onion-slices-under-the-skin technique is wonderous - thank you and @bevi. Parsnips are grand (alas, didn't have any tonite). Have you made parsnip fries? Toss in evo, s+p and bake - awesome.

Thanks for featuring this Jenny. I always manage to butcher chicken well, when I most need the comfort, so recipes like this are lifesavers! Love the parsnip. And I will check out your running route, esp. the sculpture garden, when I go to LA this April for a conference, a city I really look forward to exploring. Hard to imagine a place without dirty snow banks right about now.

i bet that will make your dish delicious!

onions would be a great addition. i will try it that way too.

The curry that I love the best is Jane Brody's Quick Curried Chicken, because it is so easy and it produces a creamy sauce. I would describe the curry as relatively mild.

-Tear chicken off the bird.
-Finely chop a medium onion, 2 stalks of celery, and a clove of garlic and saute in a bit of olive oil in a large pan for 5 minutes.
-Add 2 TLS. curry powder. Mix thoroughly.
-Chop a Granny Smith apple, and dice a ripe banana. Throw into the onions along with a bay leaf. Cook for another 5 minutes.
-Add 2 tsps of tomato paste, and 1 1/2 cups of chicken stock or broth.
-Bring the sauce to a boil, cover, and simmer until the apples are completely soft. Let sauce cool slightly.
-Take out the bay leaf, and puree the sauce in a blender or food processor. If you like to have a few particulates in the sauce, do not blend all of it.
-Add the chicken pieces, and reheat.
-I like to add cashews or toasted almond slivers and either raisins or currants as well.

Enjoy!

Love roasted parsnips! It's tough to beat running on the beach in Santa Monica, but one of my favorite runs in DC was on the Crescent trail starting in Georgetown. But you probably found your way there by now.

Sorry, Jenny, I vote for the potatoes instead of the parsnips, but otherwise this is a fine way to roast a chicken. When I had a Meyer lemon tree in the garden, I used to put very thin Meyer lemon slices under the roaster's skin and then I'd tuck another lemon into the cavity, after poking holes all over it with a fork, along with some garlic and thyme. A bed of chopped onion under the chicken, olive oil all over the exterior, and into the oven - and you are so right about how good the house starts to smell. (PS - I hear you about the Crisco. My grandmother used to make mandelbrot - what Italian grandmothers might have called biscotti - with Crisco so that we could eat them with milk or meat meals. It wasn't until I made it to France at age 30 that I discovered how those cardboard objects were supposed to taste...)

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