Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Roasted Chicken & Root Vegetables


This was another dish that my wife cooked up.  It is a pretty spot on representation of her cooking style.  She likes healthy meats.  Unlike me, she doesn't love cured meats, sausages, or really fatty cuts.  I like to call her a "meat surgeon" because she will meticulously remove all of the fat from a steak or a pork chop before she eats it.

She also likes vegetables.  That may seem like an obvious statement to you.  But when I was younger & single, I never really thought about eating vegetables.  I was basically a meat & potatoes kind of guy.  She makes a conscious effort to incorporate vegetables into her diet on a daily basis.  I think it's a great idea; and she has been a really good influence on my eating habits as a result.  For this dish she used beets, sweet potato, parsnips, red onion, garlic, and potato.


It was interesting to watch the high school cashier at the grocery store as she was ringing all this up.  We will often get looks, or even comments, about the fresh food we buy.  One woman even said "I want to come live with you guys."  Seriously.  Here's what all the veggies looked like all chopped up:


These vegetables just got a quick spray with the olive oil mister, and then some sea salt.  The vegetables were allowed to shine on their own.  But before those went into the oven, we had the bird.  Buying a whole chicken is really inexpensive.  I suspect that is because most people prefer their chicken boneless, skinless, and ready to go.  But if you're willing to get your hands a little dirty, this is a nice way to go.  We will probably get 3-4 meals out of one chicken.

Remove any organs inside the inner cavity.  Some people love these, we didn't use them.  Then the cavity was filled with garlic cloves, oregano, and salt.  Filling the inner cavity with seasonings will help to get more flavor into the bird.  The outside was given another "spritz" from the olive oil sprayer, and then we used a seasoning mix from my father-in-law.  This is the most simple seasoning mix we have; but it is really versitile. And it's good on almost anything.  It is quite simply garlic salt, onion powder, salt, and pepper.


Once the bird had been roasting for a while, we lifted the rack out of the baking dish, poured out any liquid that had drained out of the chicken, and filled the pan with the root vegetables.  This was my bright idea to free up some space in the oven to bake a loaf of bread.  But I also think it was a nice way to have that root vegetable flavor permeate through the chicken.

I have made my own bread a few times before.  But this is simply a Pillsbury loaf that you can buy next to the crescent rolls.  It turns out really nice:


As you can see from the first picture in this post, I like the dark meat.  I had some breast too.  But I have always been a sucker for the legs.  The Mrs. went for exclusively breast meat ... with only a little bit of skin.  The skin was crispy, salty, and delicious.  But she said she had to ration it because it isn't very good for you.

The house smelled great, we got a lot of vegetables, and we'll have delicious & moist chicken for several meals this week.  I think it was a great idea by my better half.  But of course, I already knew she had good taste. ;-)

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