Succulent slow roasted chicken with fresh carrots and beer rice
Most of the time when Stefan is on vacation, I fall out of my usual groove a bit and don’t run around like a crazy woman all day. You probably noticed by my lack of posts for the last week or so…and I’m just now starting to catch up on everything here in the house. I guess you could say that we both take a bit of a vacation when he’s off work. We all need a break sometimes, right? But unfortunately my lack of crazy also makes our eating schedule suffer. Not only do we need something for breakfast/lunch/brunch, but dinner has to be prepared too. A couple days we either got Thai food from the kiosk down the street or we ordered pizza from the local Italian place. But later into the week I finally got inspired to cook something as the carrots we’d harvested from our garden started to wilt. Why not grab the whole chicken from the freezer, cook up the carrots and throw in some beer rice. I just randomly selected a chicken recipe from my Southern Living: 30 Years of Our Best Recipes
We were thrilled with the results, and Stefan will never refuse any meal that includes beer rice. I was even able to include some of our own bell peppers in the beer rice recipe which made it extra special. The rice always turns out a little different every time but it’s always fantastic. The chicken was extremely juicy with a nice, mild flavor. Next time I might throw in a few fresh herbs to change it up a little.
Slow-Roasted Chicken
Ingredients
- 1 (4- to 4 1/2-pound) whole chicken
- 1 onion, cut into 1-inch pieces
- 6 cloves garlic
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 cup chicken broth
Directions
- Remove giblets from chicken. Place giblets, onion and garlic in a shallow roasting pan.
- Tuck wings under; tie legs together with string, if desired. Place chicken, breast side up, over giblets and vegetables; sprinkle with salt and pepper. Drizzle chicken and giblet mixture with oil. Add broth to roasting pan.
- Cover and bake at 350 degrees F (180C) for 1 hour. Uncover and bake 1 more hour or until a meat thermometer inserted in chicken thigh registers 180 degrees F (80C).
What I can’t understand is how you can find a 2 kg whole chicken: I am lucky to find a 1.2 kg one. It’s weird: I can find parts from larger birds, but not a whole large one.
To be honest I just used a 1.2 kilo bird for this recipe and it was just about right for the two of us plus Mack taking a few bites. In grocery stores I have never found anything larger than that…which really weirds me out when I think about how they get so many birds to weigh exactly 1.112 kilos or whatever it is. BUT, at our local farmer’s market I have found true roasting chickens STARTING at 3 kilos! So maybe there is a street market during the weekends that you can haunt and pick up a real bird. If they don’t have anything out be sure to ask; lots of them keep them in the back where they stay cold and fresh. And worst case just order some from a chicken farmer for the upcoming week. We get ourselves a huge turkey every year from a butcher who grows all his own meat. The only other place I’ve even seen turkeys for sale was Metro at Christmas and you had to call ahead and reserve them. It was a free for all!
Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog.
Cheers! Sandra. R.