Christmas Roast Chicken

I spent my past few Christmases away from Singapore for our family year-end vacations. This year, we returned from our Australia holiday in time for Christmas. Our celebration at home was a small scale affair over a simple home-cooked dinner that consisted roasted juicy whole chicken (in lieu of a big turkey) and cream-less cream of mushroom soup (in the next post).

 

 

 

 

Here is the recipe for this juicy and tender roasted chicken:

Roasted Whole Chicken

Recipe adapted from Jamie Oliver's Fantastic Roasted Chicken found here

 

Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken (I like to use kampong chicken for its tender and juicy meat)
• 1 lemon
• 8 slices prosciutto or bottle parma ham, thinly, sliced (I omitted this)
• 4 cloves of garlic, peeled, and, finely, chopped
• 2 handful fresh thyme, leaves picked, and, finely, chopped (I used 2 tsp of dried thyme)
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
• 100g softened butter
• 3 potato, peeled and cut in chunks (I also included 1 yellow onion and 1 carrot, all cut into chunks)
• 1 large celeriac, peeled (I omitted this)

  

Methods 

1. Preheat the oven to 425°F (I set my oven to 200 degree C).
2. Wash the chicken inside and out and pat dry with kitchen paper. Using your fingers, part the breast skin from the breast meat, be careful not to rip the skin.
3. Grate the lemon skin finely.
4. Chop prosciutto (if using) and add to the bowl with the lemon skin, garlic and thyme. Season, with salt and pepper and then mix it all into the butter.
5. Push the butter mixture under the chicken skin, rub and massage any remainder all over the inside and outside of the chicken.
6. Cut the peeled lemon in half and push it into the cavity.
7. Place chicken in a roasting tray (I line it with aluminium foil for easy cleaning) and roast in the preheated oven for 20 minutes.
8. While the chicken is cooking, parboil the potatoes in salted water for 10 minutes and drain. (I skipped this step)
9. Cut the celeriac (if using) into irregular chunks around the same size as the potatoes.
10. Remove the roasting pan from the oven and gently life the whole chicken out of the tray.
11. Spread the potato, onion and carrot chunks in the tray, toss and coat them with the melted butter that are left in the roasting tray.
12. Put the chicken back on top of the vegetables and cook for around 40 minutes (Mine was ready in 30 minutes due to it small size).
13. Leave to stand for 10 minutes before cutting out to serve.