Roast Chicken Dinner: Foodie Underdog Recipe #2

If you think you couldn't roast a chicken to save your life, think again, foodie underdogs. You so can. You just need to follow the 30 + 30 + 30 rule, and you'll be serving up delicious roast chicken dinners every week. Everyone in the household will think you're a marvel of modern cuisine.

What's the 30 + 30 + 30 rule?
The cooking time is divided into three 30-minute slots, to give you a perfectly cooked chicken, veges, some delicious cooking juices, all ready at the same time, in one roasting dish. It goes like this:

• First 30 minutes: chicken cooks alone with the roasting dish lid on.
• Middle 30 minutes: veges added in with chicken, keep lid on.
• Last 30 minutes: take lid off. 

Easy, as long as you use a timer.

Roast chicken dinner
Makes 4 average-sized meals
Start about 2 hours before you want to eat. Don't panic. You won't be in the kitchen all this time. You'll only be there for about 15 minutes. This meal pretty much cooks itself.

Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken
• a bag or box of small, pre-washed potatoes (just because they're so convenient!)
• 6 - 8 carrots
• salt, pepper and olive oil.

Kitchen equipment

• a big roasting pan with a lid (or foil will do if you don't have a lid).
• a knife and chopping board
• tongs
• your oven, set to 190 degrees (375 if you live somewhere non-metric)

A little pep talk about buying chicken Free range? Organic? Fresh? Frozen? You choose. I get free-range chickens, because I think they taste better. But don't fret about it. Just buy the best chicken you can afford. If your chicken is frozen, make sure it's completely thawed before you start.
I can hear someone saying, "But I never buy a whole chicken. I only like skinless chicken breasts!" OK, time to stop that. Why?

• A whole chicken generally costs half the price of chicken pieces, per kilo. 
• A whole chicken has bones in it that enhance the flavour when it's cooking. 
• A whole chicken has skin on it that enhances the flavour when cooking.
• A whole chicken has thighs, and legs, and wings -- all much more delicious interesting than the breasts. 
• A whole chicken has a nice big cavity in it, which is ideal for stuffing with herbs, lemons, and all sorts of other things. But I'm getting ahead of myself. 

Please buy a plain whole chicken. Not one marinated in yukky sticky anything. Just a chicken.

A couple of enhancements, but only if you like

You can add different root veges into the mix. Turnip (or swede if you're a Southlander) and parsnips are good. And if you've got some fresh rosemary, thyme or lemon lying around, you can use them too. But totally fine not to. I just want to give you some options.

HOW TO

Turn on your oven
190 degrees, bake setting (that's 375 for non-metric ovens)
 While the oven is heating, you can get the chicken and veges ready for cooking.

 Prep the chicken

• Take the chicken out of its bag, and put it into the roasting pan. 
• Sprinkle it lightly with salt and pepper.
• Then put a bit of olive oil on your hands (about a tablespoon) and rub it all over the salty peppery chicken. If you're too squeamish, you don't absolutely have to do this. But it will make the skin crunchier and tastier.

• If you're using herbs, stuff them inside the chicken. You can stuff some lemon quarters in too if you like.
• Add 3/4 cup of water to the pan. You can use wine or stock instead, but water is just fine. 

Prep the vegetables
How many veges? Per serving, roughly: a handful of spuds, a couple of carrots, half a parsnip and a quarter a turnip should do it.

• Chop the veges into medium sized chunks. If the spuds are nice and small, you can leave them whole. You don't need to peel potatoes or carrots for this dish. Peel parsnips and swede if they have tough skins, but you can get away without peeling.
• Put cut veges into a big bowl.
• Drizzle some olive oil over them (about 1 - 2 tablespoons) and sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper.
• Stir them around to coat them in the oil and seasonings.
• If you've got a fresh lemon, cut it into quarters and put it in with the veges. Don't worry about pips.
• Cover with a cloth or plastic wrap if you like.

  
First 30 minutes

•  Put the lid over the chicken in the roasting pan (or cover with foil) and tuck into the hot oven (and shut the oven door!).

• Set a timer for 30 minutes.

Your chicken is going to spend the first 30 minutes steaming.

Stick the timer in your pocket, and head off to do something else.

When the timer goes off, it's time to add the veges to the roasting dish.

Middle 30 minutes

• Take the roasting dish out of the oven and admire your gorgeous steaming chicken!

• Tip the veges in, and give them a gentle stir around. (This photo is showing an awful lot of veges. I overdid it for 4 serves. But what the heck. It's always better to have too much dinner than not enough.)
• Put the lid back on. 
• Put the the roasting dish back in the oven.
• Set the timer for another 30 minutes.

For the middle 30 minutes, the chicken will continue to steam and the veges will steam along with it.
You can wander off again. Just keep that timer with you. 

When the timer goes off, just take the lid off the roasting pan. Set the timer for another 30 minutes. 

Last 30 minutes
For the last 30 minutes, cooking with the lid off, the chicken will brown up and the veges will finish cooking. You can continue to do whatever you like, or nothing at all.

When the timer goes off for the last time, dinner is done.

Is the chicken really done?
It would be remiss of me not to tell you how to check for absolute sure your chicken is properly cooked. Here are the tests:

• grab ahold of the end of one of the legs and give it a wee wiggle. Does it move easily? Can you pull the leg bone out of the chicken body quite easily? It's done.
• poke a sharp knife or a skewer into the chicken meat between the leg and the breast. Watch the juice that comes out. Is it clear? It's done.  (Bloody, not done)
• does your house it smell lovely and roast-chickeny? It's done.

If the chicken fails any of the tests above, put it back in the over for another 10 - 15 minutes and test it again. But if your oven is the right temperature, 1.5 hours at 190 will be enough.

Serve it up
Turn off the oven, and pop some plates into it for a few minutes to take the chill off them. Serve dinner right out of the roasting pan.

I use kitchen tongs for serving. You do not need to carve a chicken. Use tongs to rip the chicken apart, and to serve the veges. There will likely be some juice in the bottom of the pan (lemon flavoured if you used a lemon). Scoop it up with a spoon and drizzle it over the plates.

Who doesn't love roast chicken? Sorry to the vegetarians. Next Foodie Underdog recipe will have plenty of vegetarian options.

Can we make this recipe better?
If you try this recipe, and have any trouble or think you can make it easier, please let me know. Leave a comment and I'll get back to you.


What's Foodie Underdogs about?
Foodie underdogs are people who've never learned to cook, or don't like cooking, but have to feed themselves or other people.

Mealtimes are an ongoing pain in the ass for foodie underdogs. So I've decided to rescue them from their mealtime hell, with totally basic, doable meals, that require an absolute minimum of ingredients, hardly any kitchen equipment, and the least amount of kitchen time possible.

Read about the Foodie Underdogs project