Deb over at Murrayhill5, is doing a great job reviewing some of the many great Food Blogs out there. See tells us she has time for this because she’s “in one of those ‘I don’t know what to eat don’t know what to cook’ funks.”
From reading some Food Blogs I can see the tendency to feel like your cooking for an audience when you post what you cook and eat. I certainly feel like I do sometimes. I don’t usually post the sort of simple meals I eat every day. When talking to some of my friends who don’t cook, I’m always surprised to hear that they’ve never attempted to make their own pasta sauce, or have never roasted a chicken. A nice juicy roast chicken, with its skin bristling with browned herbs, isn’t an instant meal, but it takes less time to prep then it does to write about.
The other night I didn’t feel like cooking so I roasted a chicken, with some potatoes. Instead of going to KFC, or even worse that rotiserrie place (the chickens taste like deisel fuel to me) I stopped at the Devon market and bought a whole chicken, a giant package of chicken drumsticks and thighs for later in the week, some flour tortillas, 3 lemons, some bok choy, and a package of black fungus mushrooms. The total was $9, less than a bucket of chicken without the sides. The whole chicken was $4 and the package of legs was $2 and some change (priced at 39 a lb.). The price alone is enough to convince you not to take-out.
When I got home, I washed and seasoned the chicken. To season it, I skinned the zest of a lemon, chopped it up and tossed it over the chicken with lots of pepper, salt and rosemary. The rest of the lemon, with the rind removed, got cut up and thrown inside the chicken with an onion. I tied the legs together, poured some lemon juice over it, put it on a rack in an iron skillet with some potatoes and it went into a hot (450F) oven for 15-20 minutes. I turned the heat down to 350F and I goofed around for an hour or so.
My probe thermometer alarm let me know when the internal temperature reached 160F. Yea, yea, I know the UDSA says it should reach 180F, but the temperature will rise another 8-10 degrees while the chicken rests for a few minutes, and 180 is just plain overcooked.
Arguements abound about whether you should turn up the heat to brown the chicken before or after the cooking process. I’ve tried both and I think my method of browning first makes for juicier legs and thighs. The size of the chicken might makes a difference though. For those big fat purdue roasters, I usually cook them part of the time under a tin foil tent.
In any case, it took me longer to wash the bowl I seasoned the chicken in, then it did to prep this meal.