French Roast Chicken
Gaylord is the kind of cook to throw ingredients at a dish without any idea of their quantities (he laughed when I asked him how many carrots he used, then he realised I was being serious) so this definitive recipe certainly has room to manoeuvre! We used smoked garlic but normal garlic will pack more of a punch of flavour so you may need less than we did. Taste as you go.Chop your vegetables into relatively big chunks so that they don't dissolve into mush during the long roast.Also, if you're looking for a mayonnaise recipe, I have one here (feel free to omit the wholegrain mustard).
Servings: 4
Ingredients
- 1.5 kg chicken free-range, ideally corn-fed
- 3-4 garlic cloves smoked or normal
- 4 tbsp unsalted butter softened
- 1 tbsp dried herbes de Provence
- ½ lemon
- 2-3 carrots peeled, chopped into big chunks
- 2-3 potatoes peeled, chopped into big chunks
- 1 onion quartered (no need to peel)
- 4 garlic cloves no need to peel
- 1 ltr chicken stock you may not need it all depending on the volume of your baking dish
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan/400°F. Remove the chicken from the packaging but leave on the strings so that the chicken remains trussed and cooks more evenly. Place it in a baking dish with high sides, large enough to fit the chicken along with surrounding veg. Season the chicken generously with salt and some pepper.
- Grate the garlic in a bowl and add the softened butter. Massage them together then smear it all over the chicken skin - it will be a wrestle but try your best! Sprinkle over the dried herbes de Provence then squeeze the lemon over the surface.
- Arrange all the chopped carrots, potatoes, onion wedges and garlic cloves around the chicken and season them with a little salt. Pour over the stock until the vegetables are submerged, then put the dish in the oven to roast for roughly 1 hr 30 mins (30 minutes per 500g). Every 20 minutes, remove the dish and baste the chicken with the stock.
- In the final 20 minutes of cooking, turn up the temperature to 220°C/200°C fan/430°F to colour the skin. Meanwhile, make a mayonnaise if you wish, and a green salad. At last, remove the chicken from the oven and leave it to sit for 5 minutes before carving to allow the juices to settle.Don't forget to enjoy the chicken oysters and to serve your French roast chicken with bread!