Monday, September 12, 2011

Sunday Night Dinner- Roast Lemon Chicken

This week I am in the mood to try new recipes. After looking through my binder of recipes (a mix of recipes torn from magazines, recipes printed from the Internet and Cook's Illustrated magazines) I decided that we would have Roast Lemon Chicken, a recipe I got from Cook's Country.

I chose it for Sunday's dinner because I am trying to use up all of the whole chickens that are in my chest freezer and because it seemed like a simple recipe to cook on a day that I like to be lazy.

Ingredients:

-Whole Chicken (this recipe called for it to be butterflied but I decided to just roast it the normal way)
-3 tablespoons grated lemon zest and 1/3 cup lemon juice from 3 lemons (I only bought one lemon because I didn't read the recipe good enough)
-1 teaspoon sugar
-salt and pepper
-2 cups low-sodium chicken broth (I used homemade stock that was in my freezer)
-1 cup plus 1 tablespoon water
-1 teaspoon cornstarch
-3 tablespoons unsalted butter
-1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley

Now it's time to cook!

-Put the oven rack to the middle setting and preheat the oven to 475 degrees. 
-Mix the lemon zest, sugar and one teaspoon salt and then rub two tablespoons of the mixture under the skin of the chicken. 
-Season the chicken with salt and pepper and then plop that baby into your roasting pan (try not to use a non-stick pan because it may make the chicken brown too quickly and do not use an aluminum pan as it may react with the lemon juice).
-Whisk together the chicken broth, one cup of the water, lemon juice and the rest of the lemon zest mixture and pour it into the roasting pan with the chicken. 

-Roast chicken until an instant read thermometer inserted into the thigh reads about 170 degrees (cooking time depends on if the bird was butterflied and the actual weight). 
-Move the chicken to a plate and let rest for twenty minutes (letting it rest will allow the juices to redistribute themselves throughout the meat which means you bird will be very tender).

While the chicken is resting it is time to make the sauce.

-Pour all liquid from the roasting pan into a saucepan (about 1 1/2 cups) and try to skim off as much fat as possible with a spoon. 
-Cook liquid over medium high heat until it has boiled down to about one cup of liquid.
-While the liquid is cooking down, whisk the one teaspoon of cornstarch into one tablespoon of water and then add it to the saucepan making sure to mix it in well.
-Simmer the sauce until it has thickened a bit and add in the butter and parsley. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

The chicken came out really good but I am pretty sure it would have had more of a lemon taste if I had actually read the recipe and bought three lemons instead of just one. The sauce was very good too though my husband wouldn't touch it because he is just not into gravy.

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