Four Days from One Meal: Day One

photo credit to Yvonne Wong, as shown on Style Me Pretty.


One of the best things about roast chicken, other than pure deliciousness, is the many ways that one small bird can be used to make dinner. Last night, I prepared a 3.8 pound chicken, roasted with butter, rosemary and onion. For sides, I made mashed potatoes and braised spinach (the mashed potatoes will come into play again later in the week). For the next four days, I am going to show you how to make four meals from one small chicken and eight baking potatoes, plus a few other things.

Unfortunately, I didn't even think to take a picture of my beautiful roasted chicken until after we had carved it up. So, just imagine a nicely roasted chicken with-extra browned skin, the surface lightly scattered with rosemary sprigs, cracked black pepper and pink Himalayan sea salt.


Buttery Roast Chicken

I followed a basic recipe from the New York Times Cookbook, and made some inventive changes of my own. Adding butter to the top of the chicken gives the skin a rich, brown color, while placing frozen butter under the skin allows the chicken to be basted with butter as it cooks.

One 3 to 4 lb chicken
Salt and freshly cracked black pepper
One small onion, peeled and cut into quarters
Four or 5 sprigs fresh rosemary
2 tablespoons softened butter
4 tablespoons frozen butter, cut into small pieces

An hour before starting to cook the chicken, pluck any remaining feathers, remove giblets and rinse the inside and outside; pat dry with a paper towel. Trim excess fat and neck; set aside for chicken stock, if desired. Sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper, set the chicken aside and bring to room temperature for about an hour.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Place the onion and most of the rosemary inside the cavity of the chicken. Remove the rest of the rosemary from the stem, reserve. Using fingers, gently lift the skin from the top of the chicken. Slide the frozen butter inside and distribute evenly. Rub the softened butter over the skin of the chicken, and sprinkle with the reserved rosemary.

Bake the chicken for 18 to 20 minutes per pound, about 1 1/4 hours. Every 20 minutes to half an hour, baste the chicken with the pan juices. Towards the end of the cooking time, begin to check for doneness by moving the leg of chicken up and down. If it moves easily, the chicken is done.

Roast Chicken

I've been feeling nostalgic lately for some of the foods I first learned to prepare while in high school and college. One of my favorite dishes to make was a roasted chicken with garlic, lemon, honey and herbs. It was originally printed in Yankee Magazine, sometime around 1996. The recipe is not available on the magazine's online archives, so I decided to reproduce it from memory.
While the chicken I made is not not exactly as I remember it, the result is a warm-tasting, savory-sweet chicken dish. It is surprisingly flavorful, given the relatively small number of ingredients used. Below is my version of Honey and Lemon Roasted Chicken.

Honey Lemon Roasted Chicken
Adapted from Yankee Magazine
-1 4 to 5 pound roasting chicken, preferably organic or kosher
-1 lemon half, juiced; the lemon reserved
-2 or 3 whole garlic cloves, peeled
-1 1/2 tablespoons chopped garlic (I used garlic from the jar), or about three medium-sized cloves
-1/8 cup honey
-1/8 cup olive oil, plus more, for rubbing the chicken
-salt and freshly cracked black pepper, to taste
-Four springs fresh rosemary or thyme (optional, or to taste

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Rinse the inside and outside of the chicken and pat dry with paper towels. Trim any excess fat. Place the chicken in a large glass pan. Place the whole garlic cloves and juiced lemon half inside the cavity of the bird. Drizzle olive oil on the outside of the bird, then sprinkle with salt and pepper and rub into the skin. Place in the oven and allow to roast for 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, mix the rest of the olive oil with the honey and lemon juice, then add the chopped garlic, salt and pepper. After the chicken has been in the oven for 20 minutes, remove from oven and baste with the lemon and honey mixture.
After basting, place back in the oven for another 20 minutes, then remove and baste with the lemon and honey mixture. Spoon the juices on the bottom of the pan over the chicken. Continue this pattern until the chicken is thoroughly cooked. Roasting chickens typically require 18 to 20 minutes per pound for cooking when there is no stuffing inside the cavity. Allow the chicken to rest 15 minutes before carving.
If desired, use the extra pan juices to make a gravy to spoon over the meat.