Simple, delicious roasted chicken

Can you do me a favor? I want you to cook this weekend. Cook for yourself, or cook for your family. It doesn’t matter. Just get in the kitchen. It won’t take up much of your time, and the results will be amazing.

Are you with me? Good. You’re roasting a chicken.

Roast chicken with potatoes and carrots

Ingredients:

1 roasting chicken (about 8 lbs.)

If you’re cooking for one, go with a small fryer, about 4 pounds — reduce the cooking time to about an hour


5 Yukon gold potatoes
6 carrots
Olive oil
Kosher salt
6 Garlic cloves
1 lemon (or onion or bell pepper–more on that in a moment)
Pepper

Supplies

A roasting pan or dish
A deep casserole dish
Aluminum foil
Chef’s knife
Large serving spoon

Start with that chicken. Unwrap it, let it drain a little, and set it in the roasting pan. Salt it inside and out. And really salt it. You should be able to see the individual flakes of kosher salt dusting the breast and the tops of the legs. Inside, it should feel like wet sand, there’s so much salt in there–two big pinches for the inside, one big pinch each for the outside’s top and bottom. We’re talking big, four-finger-and-a-thumb pinches, ok?

Great.

Now set your oven for 400 degrees (204C). While the oven heats and the chicken comes to temperature, go ahead and cut your potatoes and carrots. I like to cut the potatoes into cubish shapes approximately one-inch on a side. I cut about a half inch from the end of each carrot, half them, then cut the thick ends in half again lengthwise.

Put the potatoes and carrots in the casserole dish, drizzle them with olive oil, sprinkle them with salt and mix them together.1 Cover the dish with aluminum foil.

Using the side of your knife, crush the garlic cloves and toss them inside the chicken. There’s no need to peel them or anything, since you won’t be eating them later. Then quarter the lemon and shove two of those quarters into the chicken (the other two quarters? I don’t know. Make lemonade or something).2

Has your oven beeped yet? If so, great. Slide the roasting pan and the casserole dish into the oven. If they won’t fit side-by-side, put the chicken up top and the casserole down low. If it hasn’t beeped yet, just wait. It will soon.

Now leave everything alone for about an hour and 20 minutes. Yes, you can do whatever you want to. Play with the kids, watch tv, it doesn’t matter. At the end of an hour and 20 minutes, pull out the pans and set them on the stovetop. Let the chicken sit for another ten minutes or so before carving it up.

To plate, spoon the potatoes and carrots onto a plate, sprinkle a little pepper on them, and nestle a piece of chicken on top. Then spoon on some of the chicken’s rendered fat and other juices from the roasting pan.

Congratulations! You roasted a chicken, and it tastes awesome.

Variations:

You could try to roast the chicken with some herbs–a couple sprigs of rosemary inside and one on top, or you could try the same thing with sage.

You can use the leftover chicken to make an amazing rosemary chicken pasta, shred it to make sandwiches, or cook it with cumin, lime, salt, coriander and a little water to make chicken fajitas (don’t forget the onions and peppers). My family’s usually able to get three meals out of one large chicken, each different and each delicious.

Go! Cook! And let me know how it goes, ok?

1. If you use your hands, make sure to wash them thoroughly first. In fact, you should probably wash your hands more often anyway.

2. Any fairly sturdy vegetable or fruit will work for this. Essentially, what you’re looking for is something that will impart some moisture and some flavor to the chicken. A red onion work great, as does a bell pepper. Just slice it, and shove the pieces into the bird. You might even want to experiment some time and use a pear or an orange. I’d stay away from anything too fragile, though, and anything too bitter.