Here are some of the tips I’ve learned from my trial and error experiments with roasted chicken:

1. An instant-read probe thermometer is essential. I bought a probe thermometer last September, and it has dramatically lowered the stress level in my kitchen. It has a temperature probe that you simply insert in your roast or baked good or whatever, a thin, heat proof wire that runs out the oven door, and a base that rests on the counter. You can program it to beep when your roast reaches a set temperature. For a chicken (with the probe inserted in the thigh), I set it for 180 deg. I also use it frequently for pork tenderloins. This takes all the stress out of a roasted chicken. Instead of hovering in the kitchen and opening the door frequently to check the bird’s temp, now I sit in the living room reading waiting for that beep that tells me dinner is done. I have an Acurite “digital thermo timer,” from Crate and Barrel, but they don’t seem to carry it anymore. This model has a strong magnet on the back and can therefore be stored on the fridge, which works well for me.

2. Use a smaller bird. I think its best to use a hormone/anti-biotic free or organic bird, and those are usually smaller anyways. Whatever type of bird you use, I’ve found it’s easier to get a nice even roast if you use a smaller one, between 4 and 5 pounds. If you want to serve a bigger group, roast 2 or 3 smaller birds instead of one large one.

3. Herb butter. Rub the whole bird, including between the breast meat and skin, with lemon garlic herb butter. This leads to crispy skin and flavorful breast meat.

4. Use a real carving board. Also in September (my birthday month), I upgraded to a wooden cutting board with a carving side. (http://www.crateandbarrel.com/family.aspx?c=660&f=14057) The grooves on the carving side catch all of the juices as you carve into meat, which keeps the chicken from getting soggy in a pool of its own juices. It also makes it really easy to pour the juices from the carving board into a pan for making gravy or sauce.

5. Don’t have an audience on a tight schedule. Even with a good plan and some experience now, roasting a chicken always seems to take longer than I expect. I think its best for casual nights at home, when you can just eat when its done. Hungry guests would make the wait less calm, unless you provide good hors d’oeuvres.

Here’s the Recipe that works for me:

Lauren’s Roasted Chicken and Root Vegetables

Prep time: 30 min

Cook time: 1 hr 45 min

Serves: 2 hearty eaters with useful leftover chicken.

Equipment:

• Roasting pan with rack
• Probe thermometer
• Butcher’s twine
• Carving board

Ingredients:

• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Onions
• Olive oil
• Kosher salt
• Black pepper
• Steak Seasoning (McCormick Montreal style is nice)
• Herbs de Provence
• 5 cloves crushed garlic
• 1 large lemon
• 4 Tablespoons softened butter. (Soften in microwave on low for one minute).
• Chopped fresh herbs like rosemary, oregano, thyme, and/or sage.   If you don’t have frensh herbs handy, just use more dried herbs de Provence instead or other dried herbs.
• 1 whole chicken, 4-5 lbs.

Steps

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray the bottom of the roasting pan with non-stick spray.
2. To Prep your veggies: Cutt the potatoes, carrots, and onions into two-inch hunks. Toss them in olive oil, spread them out on the bottom of the roasting pan and season liberally with salt, pepper, steak seasoning, and herbs de provence. Toss a couple of the garlic cloves in with the veggies.
3. To make the herb butter: zest the lemon and toss the zest into a bowl with the softened butter and add the chopped herbs. Finely chop one garlic clove and add it too. Mush it all together with clean hands and set aside for now.
4. To prep the chicken: Rinse the chicken off in the sink and pat dry with paper towels. Cut the lemon into wedges and cut a small onion into a few hunks. Place these pieces as well as the remaining garlic cloves into the cavity of the bird. Use your fingers to carefully sepperate the skin from the breast without puncturing the skin. Stuff about a third of the herb butter between the breast and skin. Rub the rest of the herb butter all over the outside of the chicken. Cut a piece of butchers twine and use it to tie the end of the legs together to effectively close the cavity. Sprinkle the whole thing with kosher salt and fresh black pepper.
5. To roast it: Place the rack on top of the vegetables in the roasting pan, and place the chicken (breast side up) on the rack. Place the probe of the thermometer in the meaty part of the thigh. Set the thermometer for 180 degrees. Place the whole thing in the oven and wait for the beep. This should take about 1hr and 45min, more than enough time to clean the kitchen and read a couple chapters.
6. To carve and serve: Carefully move the chicken to a carving board. Cut off the twine. Follow the breast bone with your knife to remove each breast whole with the crispy skin. Cut off the legs. Serve a breast and a leg and a large scoop of vegetables on each plate. Enjoy.
7. After dinner, once the remains of the bird have cooled, carve and pick off the rest of the meat and store in an airtight container in the fridge.

Last night, at the request of a visiting out-of-town friend, my husband and I made the mistake of choosing the promise of entertainment over the promise of good food and agreed to try the M Bar and Restaurant just north of
Santa Monica and Vine. (http://www.mbarhollywood.com/index1.htm) I’m no comedy critic, and every comedy club must have bad nights every now and then, so I’ll just say that the show wasn’t good enough to make up for the horribly rude service and bad food. In order to get a seat at the 8pm show, we had to make reservations for dinner, and there was a $10 food order minimum, in addition to the $5 cover at the door. Now, this may sound cheap, but the food was really horrible, and much of it cost more than $10. Despite having a reservation, the three of us were seated at a table for two that was awkwardly placed in the main servers’ thoroughfare. There was no apology for this bad table. Since the three of us were squeezed into a two-top, there wasn’t room for my legs under the table, and as I struggled to find a comfortable position I was frequently bumped and stepped on by servers who then looked annoyed that I should dare sit where they had seated me.

I did not have high expectations for the food, but I had hoped that since the menu was fairly slim, mostly pizza and pasta, perhaps the kitchen was focusing on what they do well. Wrong. The $7 dollar caesar salad is swimming in dressing and featured flavorless pithy tomatoes. Penne Bolognese combined pasta cooked well past al-dente with a runny sauce. Fried calamari was crunchy but unseasoned and served with very bland marinara. Pepperoni pizza (which came out about 20 minutes later than the rest of the table’s order), was very greasy and unappealing.

So, if you find yourself at the M Bar for a show, see if you can talk your server into letting you spend your “food minimum” at the bar. There are plenty of much better places to eat nearby, and the show will probably be better after a few drinks.

I seasoned the whole pan with lots of olive oil, kosher salt, and pepper. I also threw some steak seasoning on the potatoes and dropped a couple thin pats of butter on the brussel sprouts.

I had made a dinner of roated carrots, beets, and potatoes before, but the brussel sprouts and sunchokes were an experiment, and overall not the most successful one. I roasted the veggies at 350 for just over an hour or so. I chose 350 simply because while dinner was roasting, I was also baking cookies as a thank-you gift for my neighbor who once again kept my plants alive in my absense.

Coming out of the oven the veggies smelled great, and looked apetizing, but weren’t nearly as pretty as when they entered the oven.

By the time the potatoes and beets were tender enough to eat, the brussels sprouts were definately way over done. I must admit that I’ve never liked brussel sprouts, but I haven’t had them many times either, and on all the foodie shows it seems like everyone is raving about brussel sprouts lately. Well, perhaps they can be quite tasty, but they weren’t this time. Dustin gave them a resounding “yechk”, and I only struggled through a couple bites before sepperating them from the good stuff and throwing them out.

I had never had sunchokes before, but having seen Harold use them with such success on the last season of Top Chef, I was anxious to try them out. Plus the guy selling them at the market said you can just roast them like potatoes, so they seemed like a good addition. In the end, they were just OK in this dish. They were the priciest ingredient in the pan, and probably the least exciting.

Overall, it was a great way to get back to California style eating, after a holiday season where it seemed like we hadhuge portions of meat for every meal. Not that I didn’t thuroughly enjoy it, but life takes balance.