Roast Chicken Dinner

A roasted chicken dinner is classic comfort food. This one took two hours to cook, but pretty much cooked without too much interference. 

The recipe is from one of my Giada DeLaurentis cookbooks. Click here to get the recipe found on the Food Network website: Garlic and Citrus Chicken

One key is to gather everything you need before touching the raw chicken. I got out my big roasting pan and rack. Do what I forgot to do: spray the rack with nonstick spray! 

I cut up the lemon, orange, and garlic head, then put some salt and pepper in small bowls so I could use it while working with the raw chicken.  

I unwrapped the chicken, removed the packet inside, and rinsed and dried the chicken. After seasoning the chicken inside and out with salt and pepper, I stuffed as much of the citrus and garlic as would fit into the cavity.

Then I was supposed to tie up the legs, but my kitchen string had somehow disappeared. I was able to make slits in some of the extra skin to secure the legs. Not very elegant, but it seemed to work OK.

The chicken cooks for an hour before it is basted in a citrus sauce. It already looked pretty nice and it still had another hour or so to cook.

After I got the chicken in the oven the first time, I went ahead and made the basting sauce. In retrospect, I will probably skip this in the future. We don't eat the skin anyway, and it made the chicken and pan sauces more likely to burn.

When the chicken was almost finished cooking, I made a simple salad of mixed baby greens and tomatoes. I love a vinaigrette, and this is the easiest one ever. Put the greens in a bowl and sprinkle them with red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper. Toss together and adjust the proportions to taste. Add the tomatoes on top.

Another great quick side are these French green beans in a microwavable pouch. I'm not normally a fan of cooking in the microwave, but these are so quick and taste good. You just cut the corner off of the package and microwave them for 3 minutes. Then, for a little extra flavor, I put them in a small skillet and sprinkled them with red wine vinegar, olive oil and salt and pepper. 

All in all, it made a nice looking plate. 

You'll notice I did not take pictures of my great butchering skills. That's because I have none!

Try it this weekend. If you have a small family, you might even have more than one meal with this roast chicken.