It’s been pretty cold in Denver for the last month or so, and when it’s this cold I always think about roasting things.  Chicken has been my food of choice recently, and this recipe makes a good roast chicken – flavorful and moist but not overly flavored, so you can either eat it as is, or use the meat for other recipes like chicken pesto pasta or green enchiladas.  I used a 3.5 pound chicken this time, but you can easily accommodate any size bird with this recipe.  The seasoning is my creation but the cooking times came from Julia Child via foodnetwork.com.

Step 1:

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Remove about 5 tablespoons of butter from the fridge and let warm on the counter while you complete this step. Remove any giblets from inside the chicken and discard (or use for gravy if you like). Rinse the chicken with water and pat very dry with paper towels.  Drizzle the bird with olive oil and use your hands to cover the entire bird with the oil.  Sprinkle the outside and inside the cavity with salt and pepper.  Then cut up a lemon, and squeeze half of the lemon over the chicken, stuffing the squeezed rinds into the cavity.  Also into the cavity stuff a half an onion, coarsely chopped, and a few sprigs of thyme and rosemary.

Step 2:

Finely mince a few sprigs of rosemary and thyme (add some sage in there if you like).  Then take the butter that was warming up on the counter and, lifting up the skin of the chicken on the bird’s drumstick end, stuff the butter between the skin and the meat of the bird.  I forgot to warm up my butter so it didn’t smoosh as well as usual; as you can see in the pictures below it was a little lumpy under the skin but that didn’t impact the final tastiness. Stuff the minced herbs in following the butter and move the butter and herbs around under the skin to even them out as much as possible.  Move the chicken to the roasting pan.

Step 3:

Roast the chicken at 425 for 15 minutes, then reduce the heat to 350 and roast until the juices run clear.  The total roasting time should be 45 minutes plus 7 minutes for each additional pound.  So my 3.5 pound chicken took 70 minutes, with 15 minutes of that being at 425.