Chicken recipe: Lemon, thyme and garlic quick roasted chicken

I made this delicious dish recently and it was so good that it needs to be shared! This chicken recipe was created by Jude Blereau, one of my favourite food writers and cooks, it is easy to make, and it doesn’t require lots of ingredients to taste fantastic. Here is the recipe:

Lemon, Thyme and Garlic Quick Roasted Chicken

Serves 4

Everybody loves a roast chicken and every recipe book will have a version, but often there’s no time to roast a whole bird, especially with a busy life and hunger pangs. Cutting the chicken into smaller pieces allows more browning of the skin, greater opportunity to flavour and the obvious (much) shorter cooking time. This is equally good pulled out of the oven and packed into the car for a picnic.

Kitchen notes: Any potato will work, but Kipfler or Fingerling will be especially delicious. There’s absolutely no reason you couldn’t add other vegetables to the tray – pumpkin, sweet potato, parsnip, carrot or capsicums.

Ingredients

• 4-5 generous sprigs lemon thyme
• 2-3 cloves garlic
• zest of 1 lemon and juice of 1/2
• 400g potatoes – scrubbed. For Kipfler potatoes simply cut in half (baby potatoes left whole, larger potatoes sliced 1cm thick).
• 1-1/2 tablespoons olive oil (or butter)
• generous pinches of sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
• 1.6 kg chicken or: 3 thighs (bone in and skin on), 2 wings, 4 drumsticks

Preheat the oven to 200C or 190C if fan forced. Finely cut the lemon thyme and garlic. Add to a bowl with the lemon zest. Place a little salt and pepper in a bowl. Lay the potato on a baking tray (rather than a baking dish with sides as you will get a crispier end result), sprinkle with salt and pepper, drizzle with a little olive oil, about 2 teaspoons and massage into the potatoes.

Cut the chicken on a separate board. First cut around the leg joint and then with your hands, move the leg from the body until the ball joint pops out. Cut the whole leg from the body with the knife. Cut through the middle of the leg at the thigh joint – you now have 2 legs, and 2 thighs.

Cut the wings from the body, leaving the base of the wing attached to the breast. Finally cut down through the breast. The knife should run parallel to and approx 2cm from the middle bone. The remaining carcass (with a little bit of breast meat) can be used for stock – see recipes and ideas see stock recipes and ideas here.

Stuff part of the lemon and herb mix under the skin of the chicken pieces and into any crevices. Place the chicken on the baking tray with the potatoes, and sprinkle well with salt and pepper. Wash your hands well, and then drizzle with a little olive oil – enough to lightly cover the skin. Press the remaining herb mix onto the chicken, sprinkle and squeeze 1/2 lemon over the chicken.

Place in oven and cook for 50 – 60 min or until the chicken is golden and cooked.

Source: Nova Magazine August 2012 issue – www.novamagazine.com.au/

What’s your favourite chicken recipe? I’d love to hear about it in comments below!

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Good health and blessings

Joanna Sochan
Wholistic Health and Lifestyle Therapist
Natural and Lifestyle Solutions for Abundant Health

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