PrintSunday Supper: Simon Hopkinson's Roast Chicken
Each Saturday evening we bring you a Sunday Supper recipe. Why on Saturday? So you have time to shop and prepare for tomorrow.
I'm a roast chicken freak, so I was immediately drawn to Simon Hopkinson's Roast Chicken and Other Stories
Hopkinson's book has become a surprise best-seller, and why not? The British magazine Waitrose Food Illustrated calls it "the most useful cookbook of all time." Now there's a blurb.
Roast Chicken
- makes 1 chicken -
Adapted from Roast Chicken and Other Stories
Ingredients
1/2 cup good butter, room temperature
1 four-pound free-range chicken
Salt and pepper
1 lemon
Several sprigs of thyme or tarragon, or a mixture of both
1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed
Procedure
1. Preheat oven to 450°F. Use your hands to smear the softened butter all over the chicken. Place chicken in a roasting pan with enough room to spare. Season liberally with salt and pepper, then squeeze the juice of the lemon over the bird. Place the herbs and garlic inside the chicken's cavity along with the squeezed lemon halves.
2. Roast in oven 10 to 15 minutes. Baste, then reduce oven temperature to 375°F. Roast 30 to 45 minutes more, with occasional basting. Chicken should be golden brown all over with a crisp skin and have buttery, lemony juices of a nut-brown color in the bottom of pan.
3. Turn off oven, leaving door ajar, and allow chicken to rest at least 15 minutes before carving. This allows the flesh to relax and retain the juices, resulting in easier carving and moist meat.
4. The resulting juices do well enough on their own, after a light whisk or stir, to serve as a "gravy"—no need to do anything more complicated.
Variations: You can try a "wet roast," in which a little chicken stock or white wine, or both, is poured into the pan at the beginning of roasting. This will give you more of a sauce, and it can be enriched further for differing results. Try adding chopped tomatoes, cream, diced bacon, a variety of herbs, mushrooms, vegetables, or whatever else you'd like.
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7 Comments:
Perfect timing, Ed... I love good roasted chicken, too. And I've got two 4# chickens sitting in the fridge, and was trying to decide how to fix them for dinner tomorrow night. I'm going to give this a try. Thanks!
LoCo at 8:40PM on 01/12/08
One question on the ingredients list, kind of rhetorical:
There's bad butter? Really?
mckaig at 9:17PM on 01/12/08
My husband has made this at least 4 times since I bought the book just before Christmas. He uses only about 1 tablespoon butter -- still delicious!
Dee at 11:29AM on 01/13/08
It must have just been a roast chicken weekend. I did Tyler Florence's Ultimate Roast chicken, more butter, more herbs, add onion and an orange (so I used a tangerine...it's what I had). Sooooo good!
jcrisco at 9:36AM on 01/14/08
I just started reading this Christmas present book yesterday. I'm excited for the roast chicken, but since I'm into chronology it might take a while. So far I only know about anchovies and asparagus. Who knows? I might go wild today and skip ahead to the R's.
Krista at 2:16PM on 01/14/08
Thanks for the recipe - I picked up a chicken last night and making it for dinner tonight.
eatmyfood at 9:42AM on 01/16/08
This is probably the most seductive, sensual and easiest feel good food on the planet.
Boscompb at 6:56AM on 02/27/08